Help, help, rats everywhere....

[Princess_Layer]

Quote:
I always remove the food and water every night when I lock our hens in the coop. Are you suggesting removing the straw/hay that I have in the coop? They don't sleep in it, they just scratch around in it mixing it with the moss and poop. Should we not be using that then?

Sorry for all the questions.

 

[txchickie]

We got the Tomcat bait boxes and bait from TSC and baited them AWAY from our house and barns (we have an outdoor female mouser cat, but she can only do so much). The bait boxes are kind of $$, but it WORKS and they will keep all children, dogs, cats, chickens, etc....out of the poision.

We got the peanut butter bait and filled the boxes and within a 2 weeks saw a huge decrease in the amount of mice and rats around here.

 

[rcentner]

there are hav-a-hart traps for rodents, idk how well they work

 

[aprophet]

A piece of 3"pvc pipe 1' long X (3) , (1) 3" TEE or WYE Fitting put each 1' piece of pipe into each side of the TEE then put peanut butter on anticoagulant rat poison toss poison into the pvc rat trap nothing can get to the poison except rats they are used often in grocery stores that and glue traps set along the walls

 

[arch_cpj]

Ive always wondered why folks were worried about using poison on the farm Rats are the spreaders of more disease and cause more trouble than poison will ever do... If used responsibly the poison will not kill your farm animals the odds are small you will ever see the dead rats We had an infestation a few years back and I poisoned heavily.. I used 8 packs of poison kept it from the animals and never saw but 1 or 2 dead rats at the time I would see 10 - 20 at night... I now keep a few pieces of bait out all the time FYI if you want a nice bait btation a piece of 3 or 4 inch PVC 1 foot or so long with a cap on one end workd well throw the bait in and zip tie the PVC to a wall or whereever and you have a pet proof bait station...

 

[chickerdoodle]

Don't know about a goose but Parson (or Jack) Russell Terriers are the best rat killers!

As previously stated removing the food and hiding places keeps them away. We are just building our coop now and are using 1/2' hardware cloth everywhere and all tight construction. Rats cannot get through that--mice can but chickens will eat mice. Even the henhouse will be 30" off the ground so no place for the little buggers to hide. So with all of this planning I am hoping we will actually elude those nasties Bwa ha ha ha ha!!

IF it doesn't work I will have to go back to the drawing board...

 

[Castaway]

Quote:
Wow. Those critters are smarter than I thought.

 

[Gypsy07]

We had geese for a while but they didn't ever pay the rats the slightest bit of notice. The person who mentioned jack russells is spot on though. We have a miniature JR grump, she's only about 10lbs and she's a demon ratter. It's almost scary to watch her working, she moves so fast you don't even see it happening and next second she's beside you with a dead rat in her mouth. And she's one of the gentler ones too, she doesn't have a huge killer instinct compared with other JRs I've seen.

 

[Gypsy07]

LOL! Censorship! That was supposed to be JR b**ch as in 'non-pejorative term for female dog' but I see it's appeared as 'grump' instead. Automatic editing, haha. That's just too darn funny.

 

[Freckle Face Farm]

Try peanut butter on your traps rats and mice love peanutbutter.... Also cats are great....