Rats in chicken pen!!!

[Egghead_Jr]

A rodent control plan should be talked about in every chicken 101 book but sadly it is not. Many get overrun by the time it is apparent they are even present. But that just the thing- they are always present and we merely provide the feed for population explosions. If drowning stations and traps are set up from the start there is a chance one can keep mice, rats, chipmunk and squirrels at bay but even then there are years they get out of control.

Once your overrun there is really only one option and that's poison. Once I was finally coerced by the rodent residence to use poison I've never looked back. So simple and if done right is extremely safe to use. I use chunx bait and tamper proof bait boxes. I keep one right in the corner of the run or corner of coop stilts next to the hanging feeder. In three years I've only found one dead rodent (chipmunk) on the lawn in morning when going to let the chickens out. 99.9% of the time they die in the holes in ground. With the chunx bait rodents need to chew it off so there is no pellets strewn about from falling out of their mouths. The boxes come with key so completely tamper proof, don't use with chicks in run. Simply put I love this system and know how I lived without it- lived with rats and other rodents that would get into the house come fall. Now I don't. You'll go through a lot of bait chunx initially until the population is eradicated then the boxes only need baiting every few months and that's just to keep fresh bait in there. I run only two chunx per box now and it's just old and barely chewed when replaced every three months or season.

This is an example of what I use:

 

[Kuntry Klucker]

I went out this morning and let the girls out and noticed that none of the dirt was disturbed.
I was intending to get a picture for you all to see, but nothing was visible.

I am hoping that by my intervention methods that whatever it was has wondered off.
After figuring out that I do not plan to feed it I guess it started looking else where.

I will keep a sharp eye and post any pics of pen disturbance if I happen to find any.

 

[elmo]

You might want to rethink putting out rat poison. Your chickens can't get to the bait, but if a rat eats the poison and then dies someplace inside the coop or run, your chickens could eat the rat and get poisoned that way.

The poisoned rat could also go elsewhere to die and be consumed by a pet dog or cat, poisoning that animal, too. This happened to a the dog belonging to a friend of ours; it cost him over a thousand dollars vet bills to save his pet. And he was lucky: some of the newer rat poisons have no effective antidote.

Rat poison is only a temporary solution to the problem, too. Kill some rats, new ones move in later. It's an endless cycle. The only real solution is exclusion. I have welded wire on my pens with openings between the wires of 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch. Six years: no rats or mice in pens. I know they are around, outside the pens, because I sometimes notice them trying to get into my composter. But they can't get inside my pens.

 

[deb3627]

Please put something out to KILL those rats.. They can and WILL kill and consume young foul..They took out about 12 of our 10 week old babies chicks.. Make sure feed is kept in closed containers and keep out rat bait where the rats can get to it, but the other animals cant.. Keep weeds mowed down so they have less nesting area..any old wood and boxes laying around, keep picked up, they like to hide and burrow..I still find the Decon Rat Pellets the most effective. Good luck.. We keep rat bait out most ALL the time..You almost have too.. along with putting 1/2" x 1/2" rabbit wire surrounding your pens.. that REALLY Helps .. don't forget that rats can dig under as well.. so might want to bury that wire down some.

 

[MCCAIGALLEN]

For every rat that you see, there are many, many more. Rats are clever, resourceful, determined and deadly to baby chicks. One evening as I was closing the chicken house door, a baby tumbled out and I instantly dove to grab it, but when I picked it up, it was already headless. A rat had dashed out that quickly from hiding and bitten the baby's head off.

Bait containers with the correct poison, warfarin, are the most effective. Warfarin is simply coumadin. It's the same thing that humans with heart problems take to prevent clotting. An overdose causes internal bleeding and the rat dies.The amount that will kill a rat will not normally kill a dog because they are so much bigger than the rat. Warfarin (coumadin) is easily reversible with vitamin K. Talk to your vet about it. Cats will not usually eat an animal that is already dead or even just unresponsive. Animal behaviorists believe that cats "play" with prey to determine that it is healthy and safe to eat. I rarely find a dead rat above ground. I do check the ground before I release anyone. If you should find one, bag it in an old plastic bag and throw it in the trash.

You must find an avian vet. We gladly drive an hour to ours. We have learned so much from that man and he has informed and reassured us when we were concerned about getting diseases from our birds or the rats. Buy a good filter mask from the home improvement store. Get one with the filters that can be screwed off and replaced from time to time as needed. Use it when you clean the chicken house - and rubber gloves, of course. There are other things that are harder to treat than Bubonic plague. Antibiotics can handle that nowadays, but fungi that settle in the lungs can be real stinkers to treat.

My husband and I have taken in unwanted farm birds for 10 years now and we have learned a lot. We now have five flocks with five chicken houses. One year I enclosed an entire 8' X 8' X 15' stall with 1/2" hardware cloth. The rats chewed through a 10" support post - right through the middle! THAT"S why I now rely on the warfarin. You would need a bank vault to keep the rats out! We don't feed inside any of the houses, either.

 

[Free Spirit]

You might want to rethink putting out rat poison. Your chickens can't get to the bait, but if a rat eats the poison and then dies someplace inside the coop or run, your chickens could eat the rat and get poisoned that way.

The poisoned rat could also go elsewhere to die and be consumed by a pet dog or cat, poisoning that animal, too. This happened to a the dog belonging to a friend of ours; it cost him over a thousand dollars vet bills to save his pet. And he was lucky: some of the newer rat poisons have no effective antidote.

Rat poison is only a temporary solution to the problem, too. Kill some rats, new ones move in later. It's an endless cycle. The only real solution is exclusion. I have welded wire on my pens with openings between the wires of 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch. Six years: no rats or mice in pens. I know they are around, outside the pens, because I sometimes notice them trying to get into my composter. But they can't get inside my pens.

I have to agree with this. I lost a cat that ate a poisoned rodent. Unfortunately she died before I could get her to the vet.

I live next door to commercial chicken houses, currently no longer producing today, but when they were in operation they would put poison all around the outside of the houses. My cat was an avid hunter and caught and ate the mouse that must of recently ate the bait. Unfortunately for me it was the weekend and I was not getting through to the vet clinic to get her seen in time. She died bloated and in much pain.

 

[RonP]

Posted to another query.
Hope it helps.:

My understanding is that rats/mice are everywhere.
They will congregate and breed where there is available food, water, and shelter.
Look closely around any fast food restaurant and you will see rat bait stations.

They will eventually come, the idea is to prevent them from establishing a colony.
If you see 1, there are probably fifty.
If you see two or more holes, expect dozens.

Keeping a rat trap/bait station baited 24/7 hopefully keeps the population from establishing near your food source. Once established, they are very difficult to eliminate.

Remember, chickens don't attract rats, food does.

That said, I fabricated black 4 inch circular x 18" long drainage plastic pipe as a bait station.
Placed along the outside of my coop, looks like drainage pipe (not unsightly).
I put a t fitting in the center, capped, for easy viewing once a week.
Inside I maintain commercial rat poison.

My run has food scraps 24/7.
My coop has food access 24/7.
Water access 24/7.

5 years, no sign of rats or mice...

Hope this helps.

 

[Mamaganoush]

I'll bet most of us have rats or other rodents around the chicken coop. Just about everyone with chickens in my neighborhood has rats under the coop. They only rarely get into my coop however because I have hardware cloth under the entire coop and up one foot all around -- that is how we originally built the coop. On occasion one will get in either through the door when the girls are out scratching in the backyard (I leave the door open for them as we have rather bold red tail hawks and owls in the area) or if they work open a space in the chicken wire. We have had raccoons and opossums get in too!

The raccoons were smart enough to get back out. The opossum was not...my goodness, that was a trial!

In any case, as the others have said, find the entrance and close it up. The entrance can be a lot smaller than you would expect. If you can keep calm and scare the rodent then step back, watch to see how it gets out, or at least the general area it escapes from. Otherwise you will be spending a loooooong time inspecting the coop!

The real problem for us with the rats under the coop is that yellow jackets will sometimes use rodent holes and tunnels for nests.

 

[Alspal]

My coop is raised off the groung by about fifteen inches. No food in it. door locked each night. Any sign of rats,stoats,weasels, skunks or racoons and put down a plate of coca cola mixed with fly bait. any creature drinking it is dead within minutes.

 

[SeaKay]

Peppermint and spearmint deter rats and mice - but it must be the real stuff. Mix 3 teaspoons essential oil with 1 teaspoon milk to emulsify it, then mix in 1 liter of water and spray in the coop. Repeat every week.
Or grow mint around the coop, so long as the birds don't eat it all up, it will work just as well!