Are rats dangerous to chickens?

[Crickett]

Rats and the fleas that infest them were the cause of the Black Plague. They are also the main cause of several other diseases that infect not only your other animals, but humans as well. Get rid of them now! There are a number of "humane" type traps if you are against killing them, but for the sake of your health, and that of your chickens, dogs, and cats, get rid of them!

edited because I can't spell worth a toot!

 

[rizq]

Yes the fleas! Oh my word have we had trouble with them this year. Advantage helps, but our poor dogs still have fleas. For awhile, when the rats were at their worst, we had fleas biting us in the house because we would carry them in from outside!

Thank goodness we are getting it under control. Learn from our mistake and get rid of those boogers before they really cause trouble, lol

 

[EweSheep]

Tell it to the rats "THIS MEANS WAR!!!!!!!" and watch them DIE!

Funny the rats we got around here are not the ordinary grey colored sewer rats, we have been finding dead rats of ALL colors, even piebalds, albinos, and banded rats, those same ones I see in the pet stores.

Not sure why of all those assorted colors, could it be folks releasing them out in the wild????

Some are goreous and even one female, she has the color of a golden palomino!

 

[rizq]

Quote:
That's not fair! Ours are just plain, ugly grey ... and FAT ... actually obese. You can tell they are well fed when you can see them jiggle when they run! We have had to try to modify our feeding to reduce spillage and left overs. We just wish the poison worked faster. Ours are just so numerous that it is taking forever (and an unholy amount of poison) to get them under control. The chickens will probably appreciate being free fed again once the rodents are under control ... poor babies are on a diet because of the obese rats

 

[jjthink]

Zoo, to the extent you can be sure any feed is tightly covered and completely unaccessible at night this will help some as food may be what drew them to the area. If you can make the coop inaccessible too (hardware cloth at any possible entry points) this will further help.

JJ

 

[EweSheep]

Our poison bait works very well and within 24 hours we had dead rats left and right and the smell of death was all over the place. Not sure how many under the coop and platform are dead but we found four on outside in yard. I know there are more!

They were not starved but had to let the feeders run out at night or put up the feeders if still full so the rats dont dine on it.

I use metal feed cans, not the plastic because they chewed right thru them.

 

[rizq]

What kind of poison did you use EweSheep? We sometimes smell them (even though the poison claims they will not stink), but have yet to see a dead one that we did not shoot. I would think that with as many as we have, we would see some dead ones. Of course, there is ample hiding here right now as well and we hope they are just dying in their hiding places. We are seeing fewer, but it would be nice to get rid of them faster!

 

[Emzyyy]

LOL I don't have major issues with rats my brother shoots them with a pellet gun which I wish he wouldn't do. When I was little I used to name them there was a tail-less rat that I named Eddy until my dad shot him

 

[babyspice35]

How interesting, I was wondering the exact same thing. My cat usually kills all rats mice and small birds

[not chickens] in the yard. I had seen the CUTEST mouse in their coop/run the other day that somehow isn't dead yet from my cat. I named him Todd and he eats the extra chicken feed. He's cute but I'm concerned.

You should get a cat to kill your rats.

I would assume that they carry disease... Anyone else?

 

[rizq]

We have a few feral cats, but I can't have cats anymore because I am very allergic to them and our problem is way beyond what a cat can fix at this point.. I think the OP mentioned she already had cats?