Daytime chicken predator trouble!!

[rwwelco1]

We lost our first chicken this week during the day too and of course it had to be my favorite, Polish Hen named Cher. The only thing we found where just a few tail feathers....so sad. I agree you probably have rats and should set some traps.

 

[bobbi-j]

I vote rats. If you can keep your chickens and other animals out of it, I think poison is going to be your best option for getting rid of them.

 

[kyoko900]

Yeah, the i'm going to hope for wharf rat, casue i've been told we don't have weasls around here only minks....and i can't kill them i think. i guess i need to save up for a trap....we can't put poison out cause of a cat we have. He goes into the chicken pen using the top of the door, doesn't hurt the chickens since a rooster (rhode island red) attacked him, he just watches them. Could a wharf rat get out of a five gallon bucket? i've been told that you can catch rats and weasls with them...

 

[denasfarm]

Sounds like rats to me. Before we moved we lost more birds to RATS than to any of the other predators combined, including neighborhood dogs.
They Killed all my quail, most of my baby bunnies, bit my LF birds at night and carried off any and all bantams at the barn.
Rats are very bad! Glad we finally moved away. Our problem rats were the Large Brown Field rats (Bigger than bricks).
Good Luck with it. We never did get it under control!!

 

[denasfarm]

We tried five and seven gallon bucket/water flip traps, and two different wire catch (and release) type humane traps, One was specific for rats. Nothing worked. I did catch my chickens several times and a neighborhood cat.
The rats were too smart.


Quote:

 

[La Mike]

A small tin cup with cat food and anti-freeze set down in the hole will do the trick
As long as it is deep enough in the hole none of your other pets can get to it you have no worries
Otherwise quarantine your other pets and rid yourself of the rats they can devastate a flock even withouth touching them from the diseases they carry
The urine marking can be ingested from feed your flock is eating

 

[kyoko900]

ok, off to the store tomorrow to get rat poison.

 

[bobbi-j]

When we were infested with rats (One winter, they moved into the coop that was sitting on the ground - I had so much straw on the floor, that I didn't see the holes they'd chewed through to get in. I finally discovered them in the spring when I was cleaning out the coop, and they started poking their heads up through the holes to see what I was doing.) we put the poison under a metal box, and put a cement block on top of it so the cats couldn't get into it. We have outside cats, and have never had a problem with them eating poisoned rats. But then, my cats don't eat the rats when they do kill them. Just leave them on the doorstep for me...