Rat - Chicken Pests - How To Protect Your Chickens From Rats

Rats

General Information and Description

Widely considered a pest in homes and farms, rats are long-tailed rodents in the biological superfamily Muroidea. Black rats commonly seen at home belong to the Rattus genus in the family. Their large size distinguishes them from mice.

Rats like to live alongside humans, and take every opportunity to prey on their food and livestock. These predators often do their dirty work at night. Rats are also known to carry zoonotic pathogens, or animal-borne diseases like Leptospira and Weil’s disease. In fact, the Black Death that plagued Europe in the 1300s is believed to be caused by black rats carrying the tropical rat fleas. Today, they are known to carry diseases like swine fever and foot-and-mouth disease.

Range

Rats have a highly sensitive sense of smell that leads them to sources of food, both processed and alive. They live in areas right inside the poultry farm or in close proximity to your livestock. Some may even live inside your home. Rats enjoy burrowing underground or creating dwelling spaces in cellars and basements. These help protect them against eagles who are their natural predators. Rats are rarely seen in the mornings, and do their damage at night when most of the world is asleep.

Methods of Kill

Rats' predatory prowess centers on their powerful teeth, which can gnaw at wooden barriers. They are known to eat through chicken wire with their razor sharp teeth. Their relentless gnawing can give them access to livestock and other types of food. While they are not generally known to attack larger animals, they will attack adult roosters and hens which defend themselves furiously by killing rats with their sharp eagle-like claws. However, chicks are easy prey. Rats are known to pounce on and bite a chick continually until it is immobilized while other rats come in like vultures to finish it off. Eggs are also eaten.

Prevention & Treatment

One way to ensure that rats don’t do much damage to your poultry business is to leave nothing for them at night. Regularly collect your eggs. Gather your chicks in one place, and secure them with metal wire mesh screens that won’t allow rats through.

If you have sacks of feed stored in unprotected wooden sheds, rats can gnaw through and get to them. You may want to build concrete shacks or store your feed in large air tight storage bins to reduce the smell. A number of options are thoroughly discussed here.

Also, place rat poisons and rat traps in observed locations where rats come in. Just make sure you regularly check it and throw out dead rats so the chickens don’t eat them. Another option is to mix corn meal with plaster of Paris in equal parts. The plaster will dry and harden in their stomach for an eventual death.

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