Best way to rid myself of foot long (not including tail) rats??

[Anime2lover]

We have been battling these rats for close to two years now and it seems like their only getting s.arter. we have tried live traps, jaw traps (worked once on a mouse only), and poison (worked on two mice, and one rat just recently). Can anyone recommend any really good affordable rat traps.

This is one of our enemies

 

[David61]

A good dog and cat.
A bb gun (the venator mkll AEG electric)
1/2 hardware cloth the coop and store feed in tight containers.
The cat will take out some.
A good rat dog will hunt them, show you where to look and dig them out. I do a rat killing (dig them out) twice a year. The dog gets most of them and when they climb up something to get away from the dog, bb gun. The Tomcat bait plugs do a good job in the bait boxes. i put a tables spoon of grain/scratch in the box with the bait plug. They eat it all up. My rat numbers are way down so the TOMCAT bait traps are working. I have to really look hard for them now at night. My dog is not liking the lack of action it at all.
I will sometimes leave the chicken door open to the walk in coop untill late at night and easy out and drop it. sometimes i trap one. Nowhere to go with 1/2 HW cloth. Say hello to my little dog. lol Sweet Pea makes short work of it.

 

[TOR]

I remove food source best I can and use poison in the holes, cover holes so chickens cant get to it. Rats will go in burrow and die. I use poison with Bromethalin, some anti coagulants the mice rats have built immunity to the chemicals. So I have read.

Traps I heave never used a weasel trap for rats, but look up weasel trap. weasel trap would be easy to make and I bet effective, as long as you remove the food source.
whatever they are eating.

 

[dawg53]

Big rats will easily fit in this electronic trap, see post #18 pics:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/rat-issue.1556841/page-2#post-26370741

 

[Callender Girl]

My best success came with using an electronic trap. They're not inexpensive, but it worked and I didn't have to handle dead rats.

 

[Anime2lover]

My best success came with using an electronic trap. They're not inexpensive, but it worked and I didn't have to handle d

Thank you. We can't just pick up feed due to the size of our flock. But we will be trying to move it into a more rat safe area.

 

[Al Gerhart]

Do a forum search for Howard E.'s posts on rodent control or just search using rat and chicken as the key words. I've posted links to Howard's posts dozens of times in the hundreds and hundreds of rat/rodent threads. This subject has been beaten to death, the solution is as simple as no longer feeding the rodents. Nothing else is needed.

 

[McChooky]

We have been battling these rats for close to two years now and it seems like their only getting s.arter. we have tried live traps, jaw traps (worked once on a mouse only), and poison (worked on two mice, and one rat just recently). Can anyone recommend any really good affordable rat traps.

This is one of our enemiesView attachment 3363016

STARVE them out and they'll eat each other.Hardware cloth is your friend.

 

[Anime2lover]

STARVE them out and they'll eat each other.Hardware cloth is your friend.

We can't just remove the food sources due to the size of the flock and how much they scatter the food.

What are you suggesting to do with the hardware cloth? They managed to dig holes under ours, how did you do yours?

 

[McChooky]

We can't just remove the food sources due to the size of the flock and how much they scatter the food.

What are you suggesting to do with the hardware cloth? They managed to dig holes under ours, how did you do yours?

1/2" Hardware cloth top and bottom over all openings and vents in the coop and run both with a 2 foot skirt around the bottom.Every inch of it.