Rats

[xx Georgina xx]

Thanks
We got rid of them for sure
We got the spade, when my dad was close to the rat it ran out.
They have not returned ever since.
Thanks for the solutions when I have troubles with them again I will use those methods

 

[gcmitchell7]

I had read about mint plants so I bought some. The rats ate the plants ;(

 

[Messipaw]

I'm dealing with the same unfortunate issue. I'm trying Dr Brooners peppermint castile shampoo now. I'm going to mix it with water and try to flush them out. My next step is to use DE and Severn dust everywhere. I'm freaked out. I hope they will not harm my chickens. And can these voles be stealing eggs?

 

[Bioshark]

Galvanised hardware cloth on the bottom of coop, than cover it with sand and or dirt. I just did my coop because I had same problem. Also went to smaller chicken wire so they cant crawl in from any sidewall either. Its the only reasonable answer. Material should last 15 years. I stitched my seems with galvanised wire, cheap from lowes hardware.

 

[cphinney]

We got pretty infested and I don't think poison did much (they actually made a bed in one of the black poison boxes). I took out the hanging feeder and toss some scratch/feed in at morning and night in a area of the run, did that 3-4 nights before doing the next step. Then at night I lock the chickens in the coop so they can't get in the run. Then I set some spring traps out with peanut butter in them where I have been tossing the feed. I have been killing a steady amount that way. I still have plenty of work to do but this has been the most effective method I have found.

 

[napahunter]

Traps, and pellet guns at night work for me

 

[jools2014]

I had read about mint plants so I bought some. The rats ate the plants ;(

Lol, reminds me of when we had a rat problem. I had heard the mint thing so I bought a pack of extra strong mints and I threw them all around the pen (about 4 packets) one evening. The very next day there was not one mint left. I don't know for sure what ate them (chickens were all shut up and other pets were inside and couldn't get into pen), but I found it pretty funny if it was the rats.

We used to have a HUGE rat problem, I think I even made some posts on here about it-so much so I even fell out with my brother over it-he was stressing about the rats even though they were nowhere near the house and hadn't even caused me or the chickens any problems. I know rats are not a good thing to have and made me feel horrible that we had such a problem, BUT my brother had a massive go about it one day and told me to get rid of my chickens (in very colourful language!). I had tried different things but nothing was good enough for him, setting humane traps only caught a couple, same with snap traps and we had lots and lots constantly running in and out in broad daylight...not good. I had resorted to buying poison but thankfully didn't end up having to use it...I had got a few chickens to bring some joy into my life, not to have dead and dying rats everywhere!

So, all I did in the end was remove the food source...put all of your food in metal dustbins where the rats can't get to them. I did this and also bought a metal feeder (only chickens can use it as they have to put their foot on it to open it-too heavy for a rat or wild bird to operate) voila problem solved! It was fairly expensive at £50-but best money I ever spent! Not one pellet ends up on the floor now and I have not seen any rats at all for months ever since i started using it as there is just no food about for them. It's brill. I never knew it could be that easy (I assumed they would still come in for shelter etc.) but it was!

 

[poorfarm]

I HATE rats. I REALLY hate rats!!! I had a fairly large farm; 2 houses down the street from me the guy wouldn't pay for trash pickup, and for all the years he lived there, he just threw his garbage sack into his detached garage, stacked clear up into the rafters. I saw rats bigger than my barn cats sunning themselves in his driveway in broad daylight. The guy across the road had horses and just stacked his feed sacks on the dirt floor of his barn. When the young rats hit puberty, they go on the overland trail to find new territory, and more than once I saw rats crossing the road toward my place in the middle of the day. These are serious rat infestations.

Rats are a very big problem. Ask any health inspector. I caught one in a rat trap in a bedroom at that farm that was so big only the head fit under the wire, it was nose to jawbone from the center bait to the wire that broke it's neck. They carry diseases that can make you, your birds, and your animals sick, even die. I've seen a horse barn so polluted with rats that it looked like the move Willard if you went in there after dark with a flashlight, and they were eating the horses' hoofs while they stood in the stalls at night. They urinate on everything as they travel along, spreading diseases like leptospirosis which can cause permanent liver damage . They can chew through brick and mortar, and they do this by urinating on it then chewing on it until they get through. They will bite toes or worse off chicken sleeping at night. They will start on you for dinner at night when you are asleep if your house is infested, and while they are doing it they'll give you rat-bite fever.

You have to take several approaches, starting with denying them the food and shelter they came for. Never store your feed in sacks or on the floor, put it in metal cans, or if you have a lot, old freezers work well. Plastic garbage cans are a waste of money, rats chew right in. If you compost, make sure you are really composting, as in, it's getting hot in there, and turn it over regularly to keep it hot until it's done, and don't put meat scraps in there. Clean up any junk and debris laying on the ground that they can tunnel run entrances and nest under. Dogs that will attack rats are good; most cats have trouble killing a large rat by themselves but some can do it. Mine actually had to team up 2 together and corner the rat somewhere and then it was my job to kill it for them. After that, in a serious infestation, poison is the only thing that is going to work.

The people objecting to poison are correct, it's a huge danger to wild predators, and also to your own dogs and cats if any of them catch and eat a rat that is sick on it, which is what made it easy to catch in the first place. Rats, especially in cities, have developed immunity to the most common and cheap poisons containing warfarin; research around and find out what is effective in your area, and know that this might be the most expensive. Use the kind that comes in solid pieces rather than "grain", it won't get scattered where other animals can eat it. I've had success with Just One Bite bars.

If you put out poison, you have to put it where none of your animals or wild animals can find it and eat it. This means putting it somewhere like under the floor of your coop or barn, or under a heavy bait box other animals can't tip over, where only the rodents can reach it. Pushing it deep down rat holes with a stick works. Once you put out poison you have to patrol your area daily looking for any dead or sick rodents who made it above ground looking for water, and you'll have to kill any that are still alive. If you aren't diligent about finding and disposing of any bodies, your chickens will cheerfully eat them and poison themselves, likewise your pets, and your wildlife, so you have to be very conscientious, and for a very long time. It's a lot easier to keep them out in the first place. Did I mention that I HATE RATS!

 

[jools2014]

I think it depends where you live as there are different rat species. I never had a problem with them myself and it had gotten pretty out of control just seeing them everywhere. I did get some dead chicks and disappearing hatching eggs at one time but I never found out if that was the rats or not. Occasionally eaten eggs too but again could've been something else like one of the chickens or wild birds getting in.

I think the experience you had is worst case scenario. We all know rats aren't good news but I think scaring people when they are already stressing about it and trying all they can to sort the problem out doesn't help. None of my chickens got sick, you could say humans carry diseases, it doesn't mean we all do and I doubt every single rat poses a risk or is the aggressive "bites chickens feet off" sort. And they start eating humans at night?! If i had read this post before getting chickens I think I would've thought better of it and not bothered. Why keep chickens-if it's just for a few eggs and as pets to risk getting these nasty problems with rats. I live right next to countryside so killing them all isn't going to work as more would just turn up.

I had previously thought they came in for shelter and water but I have not seen one rat in months so it was just the food-I would see them running in and out, i think they were taking each pellet back to the nest. What first attracted them was corn so make sure you absolutely don't have corn where rats can get to. Never had a problem for two years until we put corn down there (had kept it in the garage but then saw a rat in there so had to move it). They were never attracted to the layers pellets to start with but once we moved the corn they stuck around for the pellets.

 

[poorfarm]

Warning--some graphic unpleasant stuff. Once you get the population knocked down, the food in rat proof containers, and no debris for shelter, you won't have large numbers building up again. My situation was to move into an old farmhouse with those neighbors feeding and sheltering the rats for who knows how many years. There are indeed a lot of different kinds of rats, in my experience the big problems are the Norway rats which can get very, very large and are not exactly afraid of humans. Norway rats are probably the most common kind that people see, they survive very well in human habitat. When I was a health inspector in a former life, rat bites of sleeping children and infants was a real problem in some areas (this was not in a big city). Rat bites are very characteristic, most emergency room doctors learn to identify them; they are deep scooped out gouges, so yes the rats are intent on eating the sleeping person they bite rather than defending themselves from a human threatening them.

Oddly enough, the tamest, 'least likely to bite a child owner' rodent you can get as a pet is the common strain of white lab rat. Much less likely to bite a kid handling them than a hamster or gerbil.