We had rats in the neighborhood because we live close to a freeway and it's lined with trees and shrubs to shelter rat populations. As a neighborhood we cleaned out our sheds, garages, wood piles, thick brush, and chopped down all our old and dying trees. None of my bordering 5 neighbor yards have a tree left standing. It cut down on tree hopping from yard to yard by the local squirrels, raccoons, possums, stray cats, rats, aerial predators, etc. Because of our pet chickens we couldn't chance using poison and rats are too clever at avoiding snap traps. We resorted to large glue traps and we caught 1 sparrow (my DH let him free), 3 rats, and 2 mice, and our Leghorn found a baby rat nest and chewed them up all over the yard! We leave the patio night light on beside the coop and no night critters have visited our backyard in the past two years - the light seems to deter them. The rats couldn't get into our coop but they were chewing through my veggie garden bed netting and were destroying my neat garden. I was so glad to get rid of the rodents and wouldn't hesitate to spend the money to get more large glue traps again if I need to. We had a cat for 17 years that brought us only one rat and one mouse in all that time - usually she brought us birds and lizards so we never replaced her with another cat when she was gone. The glue traps work best for us for rodents (the glue catches a lot of spiders and insects too).
Nice roomy setup. Do your chickens free-range the yard? Not only do we have an Adirondack cedar rocker in the yard as a perch, but we have set up 3 planks on cinderblocks around the yard, a pop-up canopy, 2 large doghouses, an old wheelbarrow, and some stickery rose bushes for our girls to hide/snooze under during the day. We plan to add a curved Japanese decorative bridge as another structure for them to snooze/hide under. When the Cooper's Hawk pays a visit our hens all dive for the nearest cover without having to run clear across the yard to get to the coop.We built our original coop space in March. basically walls with a human door and a chicken door. As the chicks grewup we added nesting boxes(storage totes turned sideways) and roosts, opened up one wall making it into a "southern sleeping porch style coop". Over the summer we have been battling the problem of the girls roosting in the nesting boxes...errrr......we were spending alot of time cleaning out nesting boxes and washing poopy eggs! With the weather getting colder we spent a weekend working on the coop. We covered "the porch window" with plastic leaving a tiny gap on the top next to the roof for ventilation. We tore out the roosts and redesigned the nesting box frame. For the new roost we recycled an old wooden ladder, when its time to clean we fold it up out of the way.We layed a tarp on the floor under the ladder then scatter pine shavings on the floor, after moving the ladder we just sweep everything from the floor onto the tarp and drag it out to dump it on the compost heap! Soooo much easier! With the nesting box frame redesigned we were able to use a staple gun and cover the whole thing in curtian material. Tonight we noticed when we went to lock up the coop, all the girls were on the ladder and no one was roosting in the boxes, but we did find some CLEAN eggs in the nests! WooHoo!!
The Old design (Summer Porch) The New Design (winterized)
The View from the outside
The white wall is actually the wall with the human door to the enclosed part of the coop. The "summer porch window" opens out into the covered porch to the left of the white wall. The covered porch is where their feeding bucket hangs and their waterer is sitting. they have a fully wire covered run which is about twice the size of their coop. My daughter left a white lawn chair in there one day while she was "training" her chickens, and well......they have taken over that chair as their outdoor roost! The next planned upgrade will hopefully be coverting my kids old trampoline into a brooder cage , with a brooder box built onto the side. We're planning on dragging the trampoline over beside the chicken run this winter so the girls can get used to it being there and it won't be too traumatic when we add the brooder box and chicken wire and of course baby chicks!
Yep! When its nice outside we let them free range, our back yard is not quite an acre and is mostly woods. They've started getting cheeky and jump the fence and head down the hill to the neighbors, I guess the worms are bigger ! lol Luckily she was raised around chickens so she chases them back, we pay her off in eggs!
I think I would be tempted to go get a pair of cheap C clamps and two 2x4's to add to your ladder roost set up. clamp the 2x4's flat side down to the steps of the ladder and you would have more upper roost space towards the top.
