Any harm feeding chicken dead mice?

[WAchick]

I have mice to feed my snakes and they are having too many babies. Any hard if I feed my extra defrosted baby mice to the chicken? Would be make them more vicious?

Thanks.

 

[silkiechicken]

I'd go ahead and feed reptile grade pinkies and jumpers to my chickens if I had any. I can't think of any reason eating a meat would make any animal more vicious.

 

[WAchick]

Does size matter? Something they can swallow in 1 "bite" like a pinkie better or a hopper which they might have to tear apart?

 

[wood&feathers]

It will amaze you what a chicken can "swallow in one bite". They are fundamentally omnivorous. It isn't "vicious" when they eat a cricket. Watching my rooster kill and eat a mouse or baby snake is a lot less "vicious" than watching a house cat do the same.

When I had my old rooster (a giant RIR/Rock mix) I was moving a tarp off the coop when a nest, with mouse, fell out of the folds. He instantly nailed it in the head, picked it up and ran across the yard. He tossed his head back on the run with the whole flock in pursuit and swallowed it - an entire adult field mouse, faster than typing a few words in this sentence.

Having kept a couple corn snakes I am simply amazed how much and how fast a chicken can swallow.

Thus the question isn't whether such things are safe to feed your chickens, but whether the tastes of your particular birds will allow them to regard mice as food. The birds are such individuals - I have a couple that turn their beaks up at dried meal worms!!

 

[WAchick]

I'll give it a try next time and see what happens. Among 13 of them I think at least 1 would like it. I'd prefer to give them dead ones instead of live mice, just doesn't feel right.

As I am typing this I have a litter of mice being born right now.

 

[lclough1998]

Huh, wonder if you could teach the chickens to eat mice and rats so they could keep their coop rodent free. Maybe train them with little dead mice, then larger dead mice then small rats, then large ones, then maybe when they saw running rats they would get them?

 

[akovia]

Attack Chicken Ninjas! Yes

 

[janinepeters]

Chickens are omnivores and it is no more vicious for them to eat mice than it is for us to eat chicken. I've seen mine eat small toads, and I'm sure they would eat baby mice if they could get them.

 

[wood&feathers]

At least with tame mice you don't have the parasite problem.

 

[ONSTAD1]

lol... this might be the most bizarre/macabre thread ever