01-04-2015, 11:17 AM
quote:
Originally posted by MarkP
Terracore:
Did you have to train your chickens to go after them? Seems like if they were good eating the chickens would figure that out for themselves, but I read in the past about people trying to encourage or train the chickens. Same with chickens and slugs.
Chickens will go after anything that moves, so I think they train themselves to be curious in coquis. Since the chickens are active during the day, and coquis at night, my uneducated guess is that the coquis just look like food, moving or not. Chickens have a different kind of vision than humans do and can see coquis and other food where we just see leaf litter etc. Chickens can eat just about anything but they spend the majority of their lives foraging for protein, usually in the form of bugs and nasty critters.
Chickens quickly learn from each other. So long as one chicken in the flock thinks coqui are food, all of them will.
When I'm out working in the yard a few chickens always follow me around. I broke apart and removed a small rock wall and no sooner did I lift a rock up off the ground there was a chicken plucking up the slug, worm, centipede, or whatever else was underneath. As soon as one picked it up she would run away with it, followed by other chickens trying to steal it from her.