North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Rondi Anderson <nafex@mokalive.com>]

My Black Spanish and Bronze and the free range chickens for that matter 
would love baby  and small mice/rodents for lunch any day! Also baby 
bobwhite and frogs and grasshoppers make good snacks too.

Rondi
On May 3, 2004, at 9:47 PM, nafex-request@lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> Message: 10
> Date: Mon, 3 May 2004 22:46:53 EDT
> From: Jwlehman@aol.com
> Subject: [NAFEX] Wild turkeys, mice & voles.
> To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
> Message-ID: <f.2876ce68.2dc85e1d@aol.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> After the e/m advising wild turkeys ate mice & voles I send an e/m to 
> the
> Indiana Dept. of Natural Resources to confirm.
>
> Here was the reply:
>
> Subj:   Wild turkeys, mice, and moles 
> Date:   5/3/2004 11:39:55 AM US Eastern Standard Time
> From:   sbacks@dnr.state.in.us
> To: Jwlehman@aol.com
>
> Dear Jerry,
>
> To my knowledge I have never seen mice or voles listed as a food item 
> in any
> study regarding the food habits of wild turkeys.  Wild turkeys do like 
> to eat
> invertebrates (insects, spiders, etc) when they are available.  I 
> would not be
> surprised that once
> in a blue moon a wild turkey might ingest a small mouse or vole in 
> mistaking
> it for some caterpillar or grub but I certainly don't think they would
> actively seek them out as a prey item.  You would be better off 
> encouraging
> foxes, and weasels than wild turkeys if mole and voles were a problem.
>
> Thanks for your inquiry,
>
> Steve Backs
> Wild turkey Project Leader