The circle of life bucket was picked up from a video we saw on YouTube, the guy had a bucket with holes all over it to let flies in and maggots out. He had put dead rats inside it that he had caught, then hung the bucket off the ground so that the maggots would drop to the ground and the chooks could eat them. Shay named it the circle of life bucket because we were having major issues with rats once the run had been moved to the grassy paddock. We devised several traps to try and catch the little pricks but they were smarter than us. I believe the final count was 8 rats and 5 mice by the time we gave up and made the dining hall for the chooks. So the circle of life is: the rats eat the chook food, the maggots eat the rats, the chooks eat the maggots, then we eat the eggs.
We have put the bucket on top of the run where the wire is so that the maggots fall down when they crawl out, this way the chooks can just nip them up off the ground. I have added holes since the original shown above as the maggots were not dropping out very well.
Since installing the new dining hall we have not seen any rats near the chooks, they still visit the compost bin though so that is next on my list.
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