will chickens eat ants?

[NuthatchKnollChickens]

Awesome! Thanks for all the input, everyone.

 

[Dinos_rock]

My chicken ignores ants, either that or she can't see them.

 

[WriterofWords]

There's something they don't eat? I haven't found it yet.

 

[chickens4jojo]

Mine Snack on any ant they can find!

 

[maymay8]

this was just the thread i was looking for. my chickens are totally ignoring a booming ant population in our backyard. these ants are half black half red ants and they bite. our chickns are about 3 motnhs old bantam silkie cohcins and they just look right past the ants! grrrr.....

 

[rbd171]

i got a dozen mix breed layers. they were about 8 weeks old when i put them under a light in their chicken coup/run. In the run, was a 2.5 foot high Thrasher ant hill. On a warm day, thousands would appear on the hill to sun themselves. My layers were still discovering their world when two of them wondered up to the top of the hill. I could tell the ants were mad, and i watch a couple crawl up one of their legs and bite the soft skin on its leg. the bird looked like it was going into shock! staggering and stumbling. Had it been a cartoon, it would have been funny but these were MY GIRLS! Now I was mad. The chicks were not eating them and they were showing a healthy sign of respect by keeping their distance.

two weeks passed. i treated with a safer boric acid powder and sugar concoction to try and kill. No luck and not quick enough. Ants still claiming their territory. Then, I backed off the feed a little and I'll be darn, they started getting even with ants. It took no more than 4 weeks but the girls won the war. The ant hill is no more, when they learned there were sweet morsels just under the surface, the hill did not stand a chance.

 

[bluey]

My chickens won't touch ants either, no matter what color or species.

Ants secrete formic acid as a defense mechanism. Formic acid is fairly pungent and I can't imagine tastes good to a chicken.

 

[CitySoil]

My 10-week-old barred rocks and black stars love ants. Here in South Louisiana, all we have are fire ants.

Yesterday, free ranging in the yard, they found a pile of leaves (a bag plucked from the curb in front of a neighbor's house and dumped amid some azaleas but never spread.) Three or four were clustered atop the pile pecking and scratching away.

I investigated and found them going after ants. I peeled back the top of the pile with a rake and uncovered the innards of an ant nest ... complete with hundreds of taste white ant pupae.

Soon, six pullets were working over the ants and the pile.

I love my fire-ant predators.

 

[greenvorlon]

Currently, i'm planning on building a chicken coop where there's a large bed of ants - I'm assuming that this is generally ok, and the chickens can fend for themselves?

 

[write2caroline]

Mine don't eat the small ants but they like the ant caviar when I find a mound and dig it up for them.

maybe they are just spoiled!
Cal
Jax FL