Slimy, yet satisfying...?

[Crisses]

I have been trying to train my 2+ week old bantam chicks to eat bugs. First, on any introduction of bugs to the brooder, half the chicks run screaming like girls. A few will gladly eat armadillo bugs, ants, etc. and they ALL go crazy over freezedried mealworms -- when I hold one out it's gone before I can blink.

I have a worm bin, and I've tried a couple times but my chicks won't eat the earthworms -- a few will take tentative pecks, but they won't eat them. And they really don't like slugs. Any attempt leads to a lot of upset behaviors like wiping their beak in the sand or running over to the waterer LOL -- and because I'm using sand as bedding right now, the worms & slugs don't last long anyway, they just get dessicated by the sand and eventually dry up in the brooder heat.

I'm in New York, our slugs are really small (compared to some of the whoppers you get in the South!), and the earthworms are not much bigger than the mealworms. Is it the slimy feeling that's getting them?

Obviously we need to hook these chicks up with The Lion King or something....

I thought for sure that chicks would eat worms -- of course if they don't it's great news for a garden! However, not eating slugs is bad news.... there are slugs everywhere, and we've had a lot of rain over the last couple weeks, so they're all over my garden & mini greenhouse. Heck, I harvest them from the siding of my house...

Should I wait until they're older to try to slug-train them again? I don't want their beaks gunked up any more than they do....

 

[linguafranka]

me too! our girls barely peck at works & slugs. ignore snails completely. they like bugs IF theyfind them on their own.

they are only 5 mos old. i figure they will figure it out?

i was hoping they'd make short work of our snails & slugs :-(

 

[Crisses]

Well, at least my chicks aren't discriminating on things with wiggly legs -- I went under some pallets today and harvested over 100 bugs -- I snuck a couple slugs in there but I'm sure they didn't get eaten. But they ate earwigs, spiders and of course the armadillo bugs....my wee troopers made a meal of it, and would have eaten more...

I was a little surprised that they weren't upset at spiders. They were small garden spiders (mini daddy-long-legs types), of course, but they weren't upset by it. At all.

Later I found a tick on my leg and fed it to them. ... They ate it too.

Yay! Please eat my ticks. Turn them into eggs, children.

I took a large mayo jar, tipped the pallet almost upright, and scraped the edge of the empty mayo jar along the wood to have the bugs drop right into the jar. If the earwigs got feisty, tap the jar on the pallet and they fall back in.... I easily got several hundred bugs without having to chase them or pick them up by hand.... Figured it's great training for the chicks. Eventually they'll have to get their own.

 

[jondee]

My hens won't eat slugs. They go nuts over snails, they love earwigs, sowbugs, various little garden grubs, earthworms, millipedes, and little frogs (???!!!!!! That one startled me!). A couple of them even tried to eat an alligator lizard (about 4" long). But slugs? No how, no way.

I wish there were a way to change their minds, because we do have a lot of slugs around here, from the little gray garden slugs to mondo, 6" long banana slugs.

Joni

 

[Crisses]

Quote: Have you tried the "scissor method"?

All I have are the little grey garden slugs -- no banana slugs up here. So cutting them up doesn't really work well.... I'll try it every now and then, though....couldn't hurt.

However, some sand sprinkled around your garden will definitely work too, if they're eating your 'good plants' -- it cuts their skin, they dehydrate & die...they avoid sand like the plague, because for them it IS the plague.... I'm using sand as bedding, it's one reason the slug training doesn't do so well. As soon as the slug hits the sand, it's covered in it.... makes it pretty unappetizing. So it gets a few experimental pecks, but that's it. Maybe when they're older and can just slurp the whole thing down....

I used crushed eggshells in my garden -- that works too -- and then my struggling plants took off.....

 

[HEChicken]

Some of the bugs you are trying to feed are things chickens generally don't like. Ants usually taste terrible and they will avoid them. Most chickens don't like slugs either. I have one that will eat them but the others will turn away if offered one, and I've even had one take it thinking it was a treat and then drop it when she got the taste of it and wouldn't go near it again. There is debate on whether it is good to feed earthworms to chickens, as some believe they are carriers of internal parasites and shouldn't be fed. I don't go out of my way to feed them, but don't try to stop them eating them if, while free-ranging they find one and want to eat it.

Mealworms are a good "starter" bug for chicks - yummy and it will give them a taste for the fun of bug-eating. Just be sure to offer them grit if you are feeding anything other than chick feed.

 

[Crisses]

Yeah, my girls live on sand bedding, and I give them actual chick grit occasionally too....like every 2 days or so....but from the article on using sand as a bedding, they said that it serves as grit too....so they have all the grit they could need, I think...certainly seems so from their poo....

Anyway, that's one of the reasons I posted about the worms & slugs -- I'd read that chickens eat earthworms, and then I saw them resisting them...

I started them on an ant that was crawling across the floor in the room with their brooder -- their first bug encounter. Actually, it got into their cage, I just kept it from leaving. While most chicks ran away in horror, but one finally attacked it, then fell asleep with it in her mouth. When it dropped out of her mouth, the spraddle-legged chick grabbed it and ate it whole.

I tried a couple ants, they did eat them, but since then I gave up on ants because they're so challenging for the chicks. And ants aren't as much a garden menace, anyway. Neither are pillbugs/armadillo bugs, which are wood compost bugs -- but they seem to love eating them. I wasn't sure about the earwigs, but they seem to like them just fine -- they're more challenging than the armadillo bugs because they move faster and climb better...so they're up the sides of the brooder. But that's a good challenge for my birds. These guys fly several feet up.... so they jump up to peck at them.

I took 3 cockerels to my yard with a pet carrier yesterday. Water in the carrier. We were out maybe 15 minutes, but they weren't very adventurous yet. For all of their chest-bumping in the cage and all, they had no idea how big the world is.... I didn't want to bring all 9 out because I was afraid if they all roamed around I'd have a hard time getting them back to their brooder, and I thought the girls would appreciate a little time without the boys making a ruckus.... but they were quite tame....

 

[HEChicken]

LOL - yeah, if they are on sand, you don't need grit. I did read that in the OP but forgot by the time I was writing my reply. What I do to introduce them to the outdoors, is put them in a little pen outside. Years ago I threw together a 2x4 frame and covered it with chicken wire so that DD's guinea pig and later, rabbit, could spend some time outdoors eating grass. Now that little pen serves as my chick's introduction to the outdoors. The first nice day after they are 2-3 weeks old, I carry them out in a cat carrier and leave them in the little pen. It means they get some outdoor time but I don't have to worry about when it comes time to bring them in as they are already contained.