Will a chicken eat a mouse?
I wouldn’t expect a Cornish
Cross to even try, but
most other breeds might give it a taste test if they’re hungry enough.
I’ve never heard of anybody raising mice for this reason, but it might
work as a feed supplement if you fed your chickens the smaller, younger
ones.
Image credit goes to Youtube
user ThE cHicKeN cHaNnEL Fowl Play.
Feeding mice to chickens
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About The Author
Anna & Mark
Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton are a pair of back-to-the-landers who have been homesteading for over a decade.
Our cats catch moles, mice and rats all year long. (Mostly moles in the yard in summer, and mice/rats in winter.. the latter is not a feature I enjoy about living in the country in a very old house..)
Anyway, when we find a “gift” on the front step, we toss it into the chicken yard (meat birds and layers in there at various times of year). Also the ones that we catch ourselves in snap traps. (Not poisoned, of course!!)
I started doing that after I read a bit somewhere from Joel Salatin who talked about folks doing that in “back in the day”, especially in winter when there weren’t any bugs for the birds to scratch up.
Years ago mice came into our coop of 12 hens and all seemed quite harmonious out there, despite me not liking the critters. The chickens didn’t mind sharing their food, but more and more mice appeared (as an ample food source will do).
I was cleaning the coop one day, scooting mice out into the pen. It only took one hen to try a mouse and the peace was broken. It was rather horrifying, but my pampered Wyandottes (well fed) ate every last mouse they could catch. It was not pretty. We never had another mouse.