I'll make sure they get more protein next winter because that would explain the lack of eggs this winter, until recently. It will probably be tinned salmon because I don't buy red meat.
I threw a freshly caught mouse from a trap to a chook once and marvelled as it got it head first into its beak and somehow got the whole lot down. Last summer I realised the holes in the ground near the chood shed were made by mice when I flooded them with a watering can. I got hoses down to the pen and started flooding them out with the chooks grabbing them and eating them as fast as they could but they couldn't keep up so I had to kill them to stop them getting away. Then the magpies turned up and were flying off with the dead mice and in the end there would have been close to 100, all cleaned up by the chooks and magpies. They have never returned to the chook pen but I see the same holes in the paddock where they are welcome to live and assume they might be a native species, quite small.
