Best rat proof feeder?

[SE_Gardener]

Our rats keep eating my chickens food and even eating the plastic container that the food goes on with the lid. What’s the best rat proof feed container??

Not sure where you live. I'm in TN on Plateau elevation 2000ft. My property in the rear skirts a natural forest and depending on the previous spring and fall, rats, voles and mice can be a real issue for me. I've predator proofed my 10x30ft run with horizontal and vertical 4x4 posts as sills and uprights with 6x10 welded kennel panels inbetween. I have a steel corrogated roof and 1/2in hdwre cloth sealing off large gaps as well as a 2ft apron around the run with same hdwre cloth. I can keep out predators from skunk-possum-badger-raccoon-fox-coyotte-and once even a black bear. Rats, mice, voles can be a real problem sealing off. There is no such thing as a rat-proof feeder - they can get into just about anything. Instead focus on getting rid of the rats. 2024 was a bad year for wildlife here. Flooding rains May into June, June through July storms and HEAT, with drought Aug/Sep little rain and zero rain Oct. There was little foraging. To make things worse new neighbors in next homestead moved in May. By June they were feeding the deer thinking it was picturesque - city folks moving to rural completely ignorant about wildlife. So they've drawn the entire food chain. Their feeding site is approx300-400 from side are (fenced) with coops and run next to that. So when the weather turned cold and they didn't want to tippie toe out to their feeding site, the animals naturally began to forage closer and closer to my property. Decimating my fruit trees and soft wood shrubbery. Animals including rodents will eat anything to survive. At first noticed in Dec out of no where holes started appearing inside the run pens - rat tunnels. I patched up any weak entry points on both coops but soon discovered rats had eaten through a 2x4 and up through the plywood in my main coop to feast on chicken feed. I feed via hanging feeders in my coops - no food outside to attract vermin. But these rats were desperate getting into the coop and eating. So I fortified the area they were entering with galvanized sheet steel screwed to coop floor and then cut away the half eaten 2x4 and replaced with sheet steel screwed to it then replaced outside the bottom of door with another piece of sheet steel screwed to the inside through the sheet steel and 2/4 I had just put in. Next night rats didn't get in but started gnawing on new wood I had just put down. I mixed up pepper infused oil and poured on the wood. Overnight they started gnawing again but not to much avail. I then mixed a pepper/chilli paste and slathered that on the new wood. When I first noticed the rat tunnels I poured pepper water down the tunnels and sprinkled pepper corns in the two heated buckets and because the coop poop doors are open during the day I also sprinkled pepper corns in the feed. No pepper is a deterrent and keeps thinks down to a dull roar but not absolute. Hungry desperate male rats will move heave and earth to find food to bring back to the den and females w/litters. You have to deal with the rat population. I use rat poison but it's not the usual rodentcide. Nearly all rat poisons are blood coagulants or blood thinners DRUGS that do effectively kill rats but will also kill secondary animals that eat dead rats and even tertiary animals that eat those animals. In extreme weather, animals become scavengers of dead animals. I don't use those products, I have two dogs, I don't want the rats dying underground anywhere near my gardens - those drugs will managed to kill all soil bacteria and eventually make it into your vegetables. Rats set up colonies under gardens. There is ONLY ONE rat poison that doesn't result in secondary kill. My neighbor a Blk Angus cattleman told me about TeraD3. It's concentrated Vit D3 at levels toxic to rats. So if an animal eats a dead rat killed with TeraD3 the Vit D3 level would not be high enough to kill the dog or cat. It's US Dept Ag for use in organic and meat production areas. That's why I use it. See photos below that show how I use it. It takes 2-3 days to kill and using it for three years it always kills 1st week of use. I continue to use for 4-6 wks to completely kill any infestation. Even if the rats/mice don't eat it all the product is fine waiting for the next rodent to stop by. I usually keep bait boxes full but when I ran out last Spring I forgot to buy more...kicking myself last month - took two weeks to get some delivered. Here are links for where I but it and the bait stations I use. I don't represent any company and not compensated - this stuff is new and worth telling folks about.

https://www.domyown.com/terad3-blox-p-1283.html
https://www.domyown.com/protecta-sidekick-rat-bait-station-p-1287.html

And if you’re like me, you’ll struggle opening the Sidekick bait stations no matter how long you own them…

How to open SideKick bait station

How to load SideKick bait stations

how to use SideKick bait stations

 

[SE_Gardener]

Cayenne pepper!! Works amazingly well. Birds are immune to the heat it creates, but rodents can't stand it. Mix a little in with the feed. You'll be giving the birds extra nutrition from the pepper, without hurting them, and you will never have a rodent in the feed again. Every time you replenish the feed, mix in more Cayenne pepper powder.

Cayenne pepper works great on mice. Rats are able to tolerate in their gut the impact of cayenne. Cayenne is a deterrent but not completely effective keeping them out of feed. But if that's your only protection you'll find hungry rats soon adapt to the burning stomach to survive.

 

[SE_Gardener]

We have lost count but somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 ratproof feeders sold since our feeder got its start right here on BYC around 2011 or 2012. Trust me, if they didn't work, we wouldn't have sold many.

Where they don't work, the biggest failure is in people not following simple instructions. Feeders not secured to a wall or weighted down, yes Karen, the feeder will tip over when near empty. Or hanging the feeder up high off the ground and expecting an eight pound hen to fly up, land on a narrow perch that immediately drops five to six inches, and by some miracle if the bird remains on the treadle the treadle wobbles back and forth until the hen falls off. Or people refusing to follow simple instructions like removing all other feed. The hen has a choice, this new fangled contraption or eating as they did before. Whatcha think they are gonna do?

But the largest single cause of returns is people refusing to check their spam filter or to read the product information or even the assembly, training, and installation instructions. You reply the day, if not minutes after they email or use the CRM system, then they email back or re-post a CRM claiming you never replied despite the warning in bright red text on the check out forms to watch spam filters for shipping notices and return emails. They have an issue of their own fault, but they are too dumb to check spam, they get frustrated and you have to deal with a charge back. Very rare, three to four times a year, some might just be friendly fraud.

I've never found any of the old wives tales of irritants or whatever sprinkled around a coop to work. If it did the people that build my feeders would be out of work.

And expensive? I had a customer email in today thanking us for the feeder, saying it cut their feed use by 2/3rds. Mainly wild birds stealing the feed. If you go from feeding three sacks a month to one sack per month, that expensive feeder is paid for in two to four months depending on your cost of feed and the size of the feeder.

Plus the disease and pests brought in by vermin. Plus the mess of wild birds or rodents crapping and peeing all over the place.

You are correct about the rodents getting wise to the traps and how valuable a mouser kitty is to a flock of chickens.

Oh, watch out for aluminum. Rats can chew right through it and rats either chew constantly or their teeth grow into their face and skull. No problem for them to spend hours chewing into something made of aluminum or even a concrete wall. Chew or die. Aluminum is NOT a needed trace mineral, it can be toxic at other than minimal levels. Aluminum doesn't "rust" because it "oxidizes" which is the same thing actually. That oxidized coating will be more toxic than the pure aluminum due to its bio-availability

Just curious if your feeders do indeed prevent rats into feed, how do you control their population? They are carriers of many diseases that impact poultry most notably mycoplasma. As you now mycoplasma can be carried by birds surviving the infection and pass through eggs and their meat. If you sell to public you cannot sell infected product. Most flock owners depopulate. So deterrents are one thing eradicating the rat problem is quite another. Also rats eat chicken droppings. Rats trying to survive will hang around chickens unless removed.

 

[Al Gerhart]

Not sure where you live. I'm in TN on Plateau elevation 2000ft. My property in the rear skirts a natural forest and depending on the previous spring and fall, rats, voles and mice can be a real issue for me. I've predator proofed my 10x30ft run with horizontal and vertical 4x4 posts as sills and uprights with 6x10 welded kennel panels inbetween. I have a steel corrogated roof and 1/2in hdwre cloth sealing off large gaps as well as a 2ft apron around the run with same hdwre cloth. I can keep out predators from skunk-possum-badger-raccoon-fox-coyotte-and once even a black bear. Rats, mice, voles can be a real problem sealing off. There is no such thing as a rat-proof feeder - they can get into just about anything. Instead focus on getting rid of the rats. 2024 was a bad year for wildlife here. Flooding rains May into June, June through July storms and HEAT, with drought Aug/Sep little rain and zero rain Oct. There was little foraging. To make things worse new neighbors in next homestead moved in May. By June they were feeding the deer thinking it was picturesque - city folks moving to rural completely ignorant about wildlife. So they've drawn the entire food chain. Their feeding site is approx300-400 from side are (fenced) with coops and run next to that. So when the weather turned cold and they didn't want to tippie toe out to their feeding site, the animals naturally began to forage closer and closer to my property. Decimating my fruit trees and soft wood shrubbery. Animals including rodents will eat anything to survive. At first noticed in Dec out of no where holes started appearing inside the run pens - rat tunnels. I patched up any weak entry points on both coops but soon discovered rats had eaten through a 2x4 and up through the plywood in my main coop to feast on chicken feed. I feed via hanging feeders in my coops - no food outside to attract vermin. But these rats were desperate getting into the coop and eating. So I fortified the area they were entering with galvanized sheet steel screwed to coop floor and then cut away the half eaten 2x4 and replaced with sheet steel screwed to it then replaced outside the bottom of door with another piece of sheet steel screwed to the inside through the sheet steel and 2/4 I had just put in. Next night rats didn't get in but started gnawing on new wood I had just put down. I mixed up pepper infused oil and poured on the wood. Overnight they started gnawing again but not to much avail. I then mixed a pepper/chilli paste and slathered that on the new wood. When I first noticed the rat tunnels I poured pepper water down the tunnels and sprinkled pepper corns in the two heated buckets and because the coop poop doors are open during the day I also sprinkled pepper corns in the feed. No pepper is a deterrent and keeps thinks down to a dull roar but not absolute. Hungry desperate male rats will move heave and earth to find food to bring back to the den and females w/litters. You have to deal with the rat population. I use rat poison but it's not the usual rodentcide. Nearly all rat poisons are blood coagulants or blood thinners DRUGS that do effectively kill rats but will also kill secondary animals that eat dead rats and even tertiary animals that eat those animals. In extreme weather, animals become scavengers of dead animals. I don't use those products, I have two dogs, I don't want the rats dying underground anywhere near my gardens - those drugs will managed to kill all soil bacteria and eventually make it into your vegetables. Rats set up colonies under gardens. There is ONLY ONE rat poison that doesn't result in secondary kill. My neighbor a Blk Angus cattleman told me about TeraD3. It's concentrated Vit D3 at levels toxic to rats. So if an animal eats a dead rat killed with TeraD3 the Vit D3 level would not be high enough to kill the dog or cat. It's US Dept Ag for use in organic and meat production areas. That's why I use it. See photos below that show how I use it. It takes 2-3 days to kill and using it for three years it always kills 1st week of use. I continue to use for 4-6 wks to completely kill any infestation. Even if the rats/mice don't eat it all the product is fine waiting for the next rodent to stop by. I usually keep bait boxes full but when I ran out last Spring I forgot to buy more...kicking myself last month - took two weeks to get some delivered. Here are links for where I but it and the bait stations I use. I don't represent any company and not compensated - this stuff is new and worth telling folks about.

https://www.domyown.com/terad3-blox-p-1283.html
https://www.domyown.com/protecta-sidekick-rat-bait-station-p-1287.html

And if you’re like me, you’ll struggle opening the Sidekick bait stations no matter how long you own them…

How to open SideKick bait station

How to load SideKick bait stations

how to use SideKick bait stations

View attachment 4037062View attachment 4037063View attachment 4037064View attachment 4037065View attachment 4037066View attachment 4037067View attachment 4037068View attachment 4037069

You spent nearly as much on the poison blocks and bait station as it would cost to buy a rat proof feeder. LOL Plus all the work trying to secure the coop.

And a new population of rats will re colonize the space or the surviving rats will breed back a huge colony so you will be back buying more poison.

Kudos for choosing that kind of poison but it is a never ending expense when all you have to do is to stop feeding the rats. Yes, Virgina, there is a ratproof chicken feeder, we have sold thousands of them since 2012.

The secret is a spring loaded door that one to three rats cannot push open and a narrow and distant treadle bar. That is enough to work for 99.9% of our customers. The exceptions are those with a majority of banties or silkies or chicks or poults, those birds are too light or too small to safely use a treadle feeder.

So, no, rats cannot defeat a spring loaded door on a treadle feeder unless there are dozens of them which has happened in one commercial flock but the guy dumped the smothered rats out, chloroxed the feeder and put it back in use. Next morning, another feeder had been overwhelmed. The guy emailed, he was furious, he had bought like twenty feeders. I emailed back asking for pictures, his reply was "Hold on. The rats refused to touch the first feeder after it had smothered a dozen rats. Give it a few days." About a week later he said the rats overran ever feeder he had, one by one, then refused to touch the feeders. A few days later he had zero signs of rats and was one happy customer. That was over ten years ago, the guy still buys springs every once in a while so the feeders are still in use.

Your method of trying to build a fort knox coop will work but it is expensive and as you found out it requires attention and repair if not made with steel that can't be chewed through.

But it is impossible to poison or trap your way out of a rodent infestation and if they don't wise up the new population that moves in will have you ordering more poison.

Just stop feeding the rats. They have to leave to find a habitat that can support their colony and most will die during the migration from natural predators.

 

[SE_Gardener]

You spent nearly as much on the poison blocks and bait station as it would cost to buy a rat proof feeder. LOL Plus all the work trying to secure the coop.

And a new population of rats will re colonize the space or the surviving rats will breed back a huge colony so you will be back buying more poison.

Kudos for choosing that kind of poison but it is a never ending expense when all you have to do is to stop feeding the rats. Yes, Virgina, there is a ratproof chicken feeder, we have sold thousands of them since 2012.

The secret is a spring loaded door that one to three rats cannot push open and a narrow and distant treadle bar. That is enough to work for 99.9% of our customers. The exceptions are those with a majority of banties or silkies or chicks or poults, those birds are too light or too small to safely use a treadle feeder.

So, no, rats cannot defeat a spring loaded door on a treadle feeder unless there are dozens of them which has happened in one commercial flock but the guy dumped the smothered rats out, chloroxed the feeder and put it back in use. Next morning, another feeder had been overwhelmed. The guy emailed, he was furious, he had bought like twenty feeders. I emailed back asking for pictures, his reply was "Hold on. The rats refused to touch the first feeder after it had smothered a dozen rats. Give it a few days." About a week later he said the rats overran ever feeder he had, one by one, then refused to touch the feeders. A few days later he had zero signs of rats and was one happy customer. That was over ten years ago, the guy still buys springs every once in a while so the feeders are still in use.

Your method of trying to build a fort knox coop will work but it is expensive and as you found out it requires attention and repair if not made with steel that can't be chewed through.

But it is impossible to poison or trap your way out of a rodent infestation and if they don't wise up the new population that moves in will have you ordering more poison.

Just stop feeding the rats. They have to leave to find a habitat that can support their colony and most will die during the migration from natural predators.

You are grossly misinformed. Rats can survive on chicken droppings. Preventing rats in storage or feeder is only a part of the solution. Catch up on why you must erradicate the rats. Btw I had you feeder and it did not deter Northern forest rats. Maybe effective on mice but it's not a solution to a rat problem. Understand the disease rats carry as they survive the winter eating your flocks droppings... Also how do you keep them from getting at the eggs? They break an egg and eat it but leave M. gallisepticum or nynovaie on the shell that the chickens eat and get infected.
ALL RATS are carriers of mycoplasma gallisepticum and mycoplasma synovaie. They also carry parasites - Northern mite in my area - and other parasites not to mention a plethora of disease that infect humans. For me getting rid of the rat population and keeping my flocks and their eggs/meat safe is the objective.

 

[Al Gerhart]

Just curious if your feeders do indeed prevent rats into feed, how do you control their population? They are carriers of many diseases that impact poultry most notably mycoplasma. As you now mycoplasma can be carried by birds surviving the infection and pass through eggs and their meat. If you sell to public you cannot sell infected product. Most flock owners depopulate. So deterrents are one thing eradicating the rat problem is quite another. Also rats eat chicken droppings. Rats trying to survive will hang around chickens unless removed.

Your second post was posted as I was replying to your previous post.
Yes, they stop rats for 99.9% of our customers. The original feeder had a single spring and a counterweight that could stop one to three rats, big rats. Or a squirrel. I already told the story of the commercial organic farmer that had hundreds if not thousands of rats that overwhelmed his feeders one by one until the rats were either smothered or left. That is the final 0.1 %. You do have to follow the instructions on mounting and training but if that is done, the rats are easy to stop.

Then around 2016 we went to an adjustable spring, a series of holes drilled into the upper front covers so the spring tension could be adjusted. In fact, we still punch those holes in some of our feeders just in case the customer needs a lighter spring tension, they can move the spring outside of the front cover.

But around 2023 we switched to a dual spring, no counterweight version. At first there were a series of holes drilled into the feed tray up under the front cover to adjust the spring tension. Putting the springs directly on the door instead of on the door crank removed a lot of leverage on the door, making it even harder for a couple of squirrels to push open. Then we came up with a threaded adjuster, infinite spring adjustment, using two wrenches or a wrench and a socket.

Dig around on our website, tons of testimonials, also on our shopping cart and on our Facebook page Feed the Hens Not the Rats.

Controlling the population, well, once the feed is secured, assuming you have your bulk feed safely in metal barrels and don't have another source of feed they are using, the colony will collapse. First you will see the starving rats out during daylight hours desperately looking for food. In a few days they will begin to stagger. At this point the adults will start eating the young ones and within a week the colony will be gone. Natural predators get a lot of them. Some will migrate or try to and likely get eaten by predators on the way.

For commercial flocks we do recommend that they set out poison or traps even if they have not worked previously. Once starving the traps and bait will work. It shortens the time needed to collapse the colony.

Then once eradicated, and while will survive on chicken poop for a few days, the poop will not support a large population and the rats will move on in search of better food. Natural sources of food are scarce, without humans feeding them a rat colony isn't going to form.

If you raise a crop of meat birds each year you will have a period where you can't use a treadle feeder. But, that is a few weeks, the broilers will grow out big enough and be able to use a treadle feeder and it is unlikely that the rats will find the broiler feed in a few weeks. If the rats are sustained by natural food sources they have to hustle day and night just to survive and once the learn the buffet is no longer in the coop they aren't likely to come back in the few weeks meat birds are too small to use the treadle feeder.

Look up Howard E. here on this forum. He did a great series of posts on rodent control and even a review of our feeder sometimes back around 2015 or 2016. His mantra was sanitation (treadle feeders and cleaning), exclusion (Ft Knox coops), then elimination (poison and traps) as a last resort.

 

[Al Gerhart]

You are grossly misinformed. Rats can survive on chicken droppings. Preventing rats in storage or feeder is only a part of the solution. Catch up on why you must erradicate the rats. Btw I had you feeder and it did not deter Northern forest rats. Maybe effective on mice but it's not a solution to a rat problem. Understand the disease rats carry as they survive the winter eating your flocks droppings... Also how do you keep them from getting at the eggs? They break an egg and eat it but leave M. gallisepticum or nynovaie on the shell that the chickens eat and get infected.
ALL RATS are carriers of mycoplasma gallisepticum and mycoplasma synovaie. They also carry parasites - Northern mite in my area - and other parasites not to mention a plethora of disease that infect humans. For me getting rid of the rat population and keeping my flocks and their eggs/meat safe is the objective.

No, no way a rat colony is surviving on chicken poop other than during starvation after being excluded from the feed.

If you had one of our feeders, post a picture or private message your address or an email and I can easily look up the order. You didn't of course or you wouldn't be posting this poo.

Yes, you are 100% correct on the dangers of mice and rats but you still haven't eradicated the rodents, you are just controlling them with poison and they will be back.

The only way to stop rats completely is a Fort Knox coop or to stop feeding them.

 

[SE_Gardener]

No, no way a rat colony is surviving on chicken poop other than during starvation after being excluded from the feed.

If you had one of our feeders, post a picture or private message your address or an email and I can easily look up the order. You didn't of course or you wouldn't be posting this poo.

Yes, you are 100% correct on the dangers of mice and rats but you still haven't eradicated the rodents, you are just controlling them with poison and they will be back.

The only way to stop rats completely is a Fort Knox coop or to stop feeding them.

Rats can survive on chicken droppings...don't your chickens crap all over your pens? Look you're selling an overpriced galvanized treadle feeder. If someone wants to spend $120-$190 have at it. It won't prevent rats from hanging around your chickens. It won't prevent rats from getting into the coop or the nest box. Thank you for the commercial in your post, but please don't respond to this. It's tiring and painfully obvious you think keeping rats out of the feeder is the solution to a rat problem. No one apparently is able to convince your that your feeder only protects feed - nothing else.

 

[Al Gerhart]

Rats can survive on chicken droppings...don't your chickens crap all over your pens? Look you're selling an overpriced galvanized treadle feeder. If someone wants to spend $120-$190 have at it. It won't prevent rats from hanging around your chickens. It won't prevent rats from getting into the coop or the nest box. Thank you for the commercial in your post, but please don't respond to this. It's tiring and painfully obvious you think keeping rats out of the feeder is the solution to a rat problem. No one apparently is able to convince your that your feeder only protects feed - nothing else.

Hold up there pal. I am calling B.S. here.

First you ask if our feeder works in a post. Then you claim you had one but so far have not provided a picture or a private message with enough info that I can look up the order. Now you want to run away after trashing me?

You've been here a couple of years, sixty some odd posts. The feeder got its start right here on this forum back in 2011 I believe it was and has solved rodent problems for thousands and thousands of customers.

And it is pure ignorance saying that rats can survive on chicken poop. Chickens are one of the most efficient feed users around, about all that is left is NPK, fertilizer. For plants......

Can rats eat the poop? Yes, the eat their own poop, but there simply is not enough nutrients in chicken poop for a mammal to survive on. Now a ruminant can use the nitrogen locked up in chicken litter, a cow, a goat, a sheep. But not rodent. You cannot feed plant fertilizer to mammals.

If one tenth of what you claim about rats surviving on chicken poop was true every single flock owner here would be dealing with rats.

BTW, you seem to like to exaggerate things. Feeders start at $36, the most popular feeders are $85 and $110.00, 95% of our sales are those two feeders, very few of the extra large 63 pound capacity feeders sell and they are only $181.25.

 

[SE_Gardener]

UPDATE ON RAT CONTROL 2/9/2025

It's now been two full weeks since initial bait traps put out. After only 6 days, the rats had consumed 16 blocks of TeraD3. Bait traps were refilled and after 8 days were almost completely consumed est. 15-1/2 blocks of TeraD3. Bait traps refilled. Today 2/9/2025 approx 75% of bait blocks have been consumed - est. 12 blocks TeraD3 - however the remaining 4 blocks had been chewed on down to approx 70% left on spindles. On Wed 2/5 I found a very bloated rat in one of the nest boxes, really lethargic. I was able to pick up with gloved hand and threw out on road - landed pretty hard. Carcass remained there for a day and then was gone. I suspect a skunk or other predator ate the dead rat. TeraD3 is not a secondary poison but as stated is nothing but Vit D3 composed of toxic levels to kill rats. The kill mechanism is a calcification (mineralization) of major organs causing bloating, lethargy and death within 3 days or so. It's very safe and is authorized around organic farms/cattle/poultry operations. I have two flocks - layer and meatbird breeders. Each are fed in closed secure coops at dusk with enough ration for morning feed. No feed is available outside the coops. I've placed pepper corns in their waterers to deter rats from drinking. There are no tunnels or signs of any kind of the rats. I've sprinkled flour at coop doors and there are no tracks over night. So I believe the rat problem has been resolved after approx 43 bait blocks of TeraD3. I'll continue to leave bait traps out throughout summer. I raise chicks early spring and then raise meat birds through midsummer. Both the chicks and the meatbird droppings attract rats - they will eat both. I thought folks would benefit from sharing my experiences with TeraD3 and recommend it as I've demonstrated. Hope it helps someone looking for solutions to rats moving into their chicken operations.