We did not have a coop, our chickens were on their own. We did have a very large barn, machine shed, a four bin grainery, two wood stave silo's, an ice house and smoke house and some small odd buildings where we used hand cranked tools to remove corn kernels and grind our own corn and wheat.
The...
Roosters really hate rats, we let our flock roam fifty years ago, they pecked through the horse and cattle dung happily. We let them in to our grain bins hallways and they roamed in the barns, the roosters were kept busy tearing any rats to pieces.
We had very few rats and mice. We had about...