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What? You mean your chooks are too refined to eat cockroaches? What are they? Related to Charlie or sumthin’???

OH, FFS…!!!!

R A I D !!!!!!

So, preparing to officially become a third world country again are we?

Is this another one of those things one must accept, like stabbing and car rammings being part and parcel of living in a major city?

Remember the Inktober drawing you did of the cockerel giving a bug to the hen? Consider an elaborate, colorful and bejeweled cockroach (think Fabergé darling) being handed off between two chickens done in black—so the only color is the cockroach. Stick a shockingly high price on it: many £££££. 🙂 All the chickenistas will want it, and so will the blatticulturists!

“I was only looking for an automatic chicken feeder.”

Wait!

When did you get automatic chickens?

Next you’ll tell us the neighbors have electric sheep.

As for electric roaches, well

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/robot-cockroach-animal-collective/

Since Some Veg opened that line of inquiry.

As a non licensed medical amateur I’m required to ask:
Are these fully automatic chickens or semi-automatic chickens?

What caliber are they?

Have you gone through the proper authorities and filled out the forms – (The man from the Automatic Chicken Detector Van will have them if you haven’t got them already).

Have you been depressed lately?

Everybody in my chicken FB groups has been complaining about RATS EATING THEIR CHICKENS AT NIGHT.

Rats. Eating chickens. EATING THEM ALIVE. While the little peckerheads dream. They can fend off a rat if they’re conscious, but they’re helpless in their sleep.

So I don’t let there be food leftover in the run at night.

But chickens get up at the crack of dawn, and I…don’t. Workdays, I get up at 8. I figure they can stand a few hours without food.

But weekends and days off? I’m not happy sleeping in, because I lie in bed and dream of hungry, angry chickens.

So I’m looking for one of those petfood containers that opens up on a timer. They make proper ones for chickens, but they’re hella expensive. A cat or dog one will do for a proof of concept.

That’s what I was looking for.

Ah, but best be careful lest the rats be able to gnaw through the container. Them suckers have sharp teeth, and can probably get through any nonmetallic container with ease. Of course, if they’re sufficiently stuffed, they might not hanker for thighs or breasts, and thus become chicken feed with the rising of the sun. If y’all ever get sun in Blighty, of course…

Ya know, I bet one could do well financially reprising “Angry Birds” with hungry, angry chickens. One would need to take care to not infringe on copyright, of course, but still…

One would of course incorporate cockroaches and rats and random “night” during which the rats could attack the chickens followed by random “sunrise” where the chickens could get the rats.

Maybe the new cat will be a good mouser.

The new cat is a splendid mouser, as a matter of fact. He was bringing home one a day when we first let him out, as a little teeny dude. Cats are pretty hesitant about full grown rats, though.

I don’t think they can gnaw through the container in one night, Mark. I’ll watch it for damage, naturally.

I keep the main food supply in a big plastic bucket next to the run and they haven’t even begun chewing on that. The compost barrel next to it has been chewed on, but they still haven’t managed to get through to ‘the good stuff’.

Durned-Daughterinlaw has a weird cat feeder that plays (at about 0500, freaking yours truly out) with her recorded voice – “Josey! It’s time to eat! Josey! It’s time to eat!”

Then the thing goes grindwhirr grindwhirr grindwhirr and fills the bowl with kitty food.

I much prefer “meeeeoooowwwwwwww, meeeeeowwwwwwww”, “Delilah! be quiet!” sounds at 0500.

Plastic buckets? Get ya one of these –
https://www.horseloverz.com/wild-birds/other/galvanized-steel-locking-lid-only?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9J_J7M7g3wIVnv_jBx1YWQarEAQYCSABEgIqEvD_BwE

No no, that’s just the lid! no wonder it was so damned cheap!

Here, I meant this.
Behrens 6 Gallon Rust-Proof Steel Locking Lid Trash Can(6 gal) – from Amazon.

“Keeping cockroaches successfully”? All you need for that is a zip code in the Deep South, esp. in the Noo Awlins area. They’ll find their own chow. (I flea-bombed my place late last year, and it worked beautifully; haven’t seen a Blattidae since.)

My cats are pretty much useless as roach-catchers. Oh, the big ones, sure; but the smaller ones are beneath my furry thugs’ notice.

Any Whizzo Chocolate fans out there?

“Why don’t you move into more conventional areas of confectionery,
like Pralines,
or Lime Cream,
a very popular flavor I’m led to understand.

I mean, what’s this one?
Cockroach Cluster,
Anthrax Ripple,
and what’s this one?
Spring Surprise…”

Since this is Old Blighty we’re talking about here, which has elevated eccentricity to a degree seen nowhere else save San Francisco, maybe I’ll buy it.

But I’m suspecting a giant goof, on the order of the ships where the fronts fall off. Which roped in such credulous simpletons as Piers Morgan.

Mrs Fert asks if you’re able to set traps for the rats, or will there be too much of a chance of an innocent critter getting caught?

She also suggests maybe get a marten or ferret to hunt the rats. But being a weasel, you’ve already thought of enlisting some of your mustelid cousins.

@Anonymous – My favorite is Crunchy Frog.