Do your chickens partake of the raptor ancestor's behavior? I've seen some flocks go absolutely nuts for rodents and other totally ignore them.
We've been battling mice in our garage, use of snap traps and a drop bucket have granted us a tally of 24 so far. The cats were useless.
Not their fault. We bred them to keep hunting even when not hungry so they would guard our granaries. Evidently this was done by making it play behavior.
I think you get an indulgence for having done a hard good thing right off, and can devote the rest of the day to wanton pursuit of pleasure.
Of course, but they would kill many more rats and mice than they needed to feed themselves. Rats' reproduction speed is linked to how much food is available. We also bred cats to breed fast, but even so, they had to be little playful killing machines to keep up.
Another factor is that not all mice are mice - sorex are mice-looking but not mice and apparently not tasty at all to both cats and dogs. So they are harmed and killed but rarely eaten.
I sometimes speculate that the little, heartless, playful elves were bred like cats by the Aesir as neotenic child soldiers for Ragnarok. But I digress.
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We've been battling mice in our garage, use of snap traps and a drop bucket have granted us a tally of 24 so far. The cats were useless.
I think you get an indulgence for having done a hard good thing right off, and can devote the rest of the day to wanton pursuit of pleasure.
I don't suppose we could breed shrews to hunt mice for us. They would wind up robbing people on the street. At best.