Small black rat in chicken coop??

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SCOUT123

SCOUT123

Songster
5 Years
Apr 25, 2014
219
6
111
San Jose, CA
A few weeks ago I'd been noticing poop in my chickens' feed. It only happened once or twice. I'd thought it was some wild bird's poop, so I just dumped the feed out and gave them some more uncontaminated feed. However, when my mom went to let the chickens out for me yesterday, she said a small black rat darted out the opening. In retrospect I haven't really cleaned the coop much in a long time, but I'll do that today. What should I do? Will the rat do any harm to my chickens? I want to set up a trap, but I'm afraid the chickens will step into it. How do I get rid of the rat? These are pet chickens and they really mean a lot to me.
 
SCOUT123 said:
A few weeks ago I'd been noticing poop in my chickens' feed. It only happened once or twice. I'd thought it was some wild bird's poop, so I just dumped the feed out and gave them some more uncontaminated feed. However, when my mom went to let the chickens out for me yesterday, she said a small black rat darted out the opening. In retrospect I haven't really cleaned the coop much in a long time, but I'll do that today. What should I do? Will the rat do any harm to my chickens? I want to set up a trap, but I'm afraid the chickens will step into it. How do I get rid of the rat? These are pet chickens and they really mean a lot to me.
Click to expand...

Clean out the coop, look for entry points and seal off, then use a live trap the chickens cant set off. I would look on amazon...

Good luck

Gary
 
IdyllwildAcres said:
Clean out the coop, look for entry points and seal off, then use a live trap the chickens cant set off. I would look on amazon...

Good luck

Gary
Click to expand...
Thanks for the advice! I'll clean out the coop later today.
I was thinking of using peppermint oil in the meantime, before the traps come. Will the scent of the peppermint oil harm the chickens? I don't want it to hurt their respiratory systems.
 
Cleaning the coop will do no good...not really.
You nee to set traps or poison....set safely where the birds can't get at them.
There are many ways to do this...do a search.
 
I've recently dealt with a persistent coop rat - while he wasn't directly harmful to my chickens he was stealing a lot of feed and tunneling under the walls, leading to coop stability concerns. He was too smart to get in traps (I used both electric and glue, only resorted to glue due to the fact that the rat was chewing the wood on the coop itself) and I didn't want to use poison since he was right there with the chickens. I ended up making a temporary apron around the coop itself (my run is aproned, the coop is inside the run) and that plus the traps around the coop deterred him from breaking in for a few days. I then took away both those things and he showed up that night and tunneled in, but I had put down hardware cloth on the coop floor so he was stuck in the dirt under it, and we chased him out of the tunnel and took care of him with a stick. We didn't want to do it but the rat had to go!
 
SCOUT123 said:
Unfortunately, I'm still finding bits of rat poop in their feed and on the ground. Will an item like this help?

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Just-Sce...NqiM59RMa6uiSTRdwCbrQaAl_N8P8HAQ&gclsrc=aw.ds
Click to expand...
It's Coyote urine http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/pdfImages/56/56fd1025-b891-4fef-aa4c-fd135def729e.pdf
I seriously doubt that will work to keep rats,or anything else, away.

Take the chicken feeder out of the coop at night.... and maybe try baiting a trap with some of the chicken feed.
 

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