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Turning mice into chicken feed

Henk Lenting

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posted 1 year ago

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This seems like a good place for my question, I just hope it's the right forum.

I currently have some mice living in places I don't want them: my garage and my house (as opposed to the mice in the places around my garden where I gladly let them be). I'm starting to be succesfull in catching them with some no-kill traps (as my wife demands).

Now I've read that releasing a mouse into the wild will result in something like a 90% chance of the mouse dying anyway. So if the mouse will likely die, I'd rather put it to good use as some homegrown protein for my chickens.

Here's the question though: how would you kill some mice in order to feed them to your chickens?

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Phil Stevens

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posted 1 year ago

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note to the squeamish: you might want to skip this post

How big are your chickens? Larger breeds can swallow a mouse, so releasing the trapped ones in the coop is one option (they might get away, though).

To humanely kill a trapped mouse, you will need to devise a way to hold it so that you can dispatch it instantly with a blunt object. I personally don't think drowning is humane, but it's simple. There's also carbon dioxide, which makes them lose consciousness and then asphyxiate. I once used the gas produced by a batch of homebrewed beer to euthanise a pet rat (that was hard but I am glad I did it that way). Then there's freezing. Some people say freezing is painless...I'm not sure about that.

After you've done the deed, quartering the mice will make them easier for the chickens to consume.

Anne Miller

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posted 1 year ago

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Mice as chicken feed sounds like a good plan.

The easiest way to put a mouse to sleep would be to put the trap and all into a plastic bag and put it into the freezer.

Soon the plastic bag can be removed and the mice can be feed to the chickens.

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Flora Eerschay

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posted 1 year ago

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Or you can use a spring trap, that instantly kills the mouse? Just check it often so that the mouse is still fresh when you feed it to chickens. I think mouse is too small for cervical dislocation or something like this, and considering that you first have to catch and hold it somehow, and it already went through the stress of being caught in a live trap, I think spring trap is just as humane in this scenario. Just make sure that the bait is edible for chickens too.

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Gary Numan

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OP:

Your wife said don't kill the mice. Has that stance softened upon hearing mice make decent chicken food?

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Henk Lenting

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Location: Roodeschool the Netherlands

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posted 1 year ago

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Gary Numan wrote:OP:

Your wife said don't kill the mice. Has that stance softened upon hearing mice make decent chicken food?

well... sometimes don't ask don't tell does work, or it's better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission ;)

Phil Stevens

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Technically, if you release a live mouse in the chicken coop, you're not killing it....

Rebecca Norman

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If you choose to drown them, my advice from experience is it's better to put the whole trap in the bucket of water so the mouse can't swim desperately around on the surface for ages. If submerged in the trap, it's all over in a few seconds, much less than a minute.

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Eino Kenttä

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How about a deadfall? More DIY than a spring trap. A friend of mine used to catch mice in his cabin like that. Hard to think of any more humane way to kill them. They literally won't know what hit them.

Rodents make great chicken feed. I used to live in a place where the cats would often leave dead voles in front of the door. We took up the habit of throwing them into the chicken coop, after cutting a small hole in the skin so the chickens would see the colour of the meat. As soon as the chickens understood what we were giving them, they went crazy.

Anne Miller

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I have always used the no kill traps ours was called a `Tin Cat`.

I am no longer the person who does this chore. The cat takes care of the mice now.

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