Chicken-safe rat poison sought

[Birdinhand]

you can use poison to get an out of control population under control but poison is kind of awful, it only kills a percentage of the rats and then the rest pass on more resistance. then there is the reality of unintended recipients of the poison, any animal that feeds on those rats, like cats, owls, birds of prey etc. if it worked it might be justifiable, but more rats will always take the place of the dead ones. nothing short of cutting off the supply off food is really going to work. you must seal up the coop at night. hardware cloth is the only thing I know of that does the trick, envelope the whole coop and don't leave more than a 1/2" gap to the outside. within a few short days of running out of food, the rats will begin to disperse.

 

[Howard E]

Have been doing some research and this seems to be the best option for a "safe" poison.....and always served up from secure bait stations.

http://www.belllabs.com/bell-labs/product/us/pest-control/terad-sub-3-sub-ag-blox

https://www.domyown.com/terad3-blox-p-1283.html

Be sure to read the comments on the domyown site.

And to be effective, you do need to cut off all sources of other food for rats and mice so they are hungry and go looking for food. Otherwise, they may pass this up.

And once the population has been beaten down, it may help to offer a short term menu of the one bite stuff to pick off those who would not eat the first poison, or who were not affected by it. Goal is to keep going until you get them all. Then monitor.

Do some research and you find that if only one or two get past you, they can repopulate in a hurry, so goal must be 100% eradication, then keep on it from now on. Bait stations always left at the ready. If you live in "rat central", you don't ever let up or quit.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

ANY poison is deadly to any animals, I have no idea what vet would say otherwise , that's crazy

What is it about Katy's post that you don't understand? The chickens can't get to the rat bait to eat it but the rats can gobble it up to their little hearts content and there is no real danger of SECONDARY poisoning because the rats metabolize the active ingredient (bromethalin) then the good lord calls the rats home. By your logic the DDT treated mosquito nets are dangerous to the people sleeping beneath them even though the active ingredient is unable to harm the human users, unless maybe they try to eat the nylon net. Which reminds me, does anyone have a good recipe for nylon mosquito netting? I am still using my mother's old recipe but I am unable to get the nylon netting tender enough to chew.

 

[pamonarch]

you can use poison to get an out of control population under control but poison is kind of awful, it only kills a percentage of the rats and then the rest pass on more resistance. then there is the reality of unintended recipients of the poison, any animal that feeds on those rats, like cats, owls, birds of prey etc. if it worked it might be justifiable, but more rats will always take the place of the dead ones. nothing short of cutting off the supply off food is really going to work. you must seal up the coop at night. hardware cloth is the only thing I know of that does the trick, envelope the whole coop and don't leave more than a 1/2" gap to the outside. within a few short days of running out of food, the rats will begin to disperse.

i wish i would have seen this sooner...i did get a baitbox and loaded it with tomcat poison, but under the suggestion of my husband we put some chunksd behind a few things just outside the coop and those dirty rats hauled peices of this stuff into the coop and put it in the nest box..i have a cam in the coop and saw a few rats coming in and out of a nest box, so i immediately checked very early before chickens got off roosts...except for my red..she was down and came out of nest box, BESIDE the one i found two pieces of poison in..so i cleaned out all the nests boxes to make sure no more stored there..and thank God..none...so then i went and picked up all chunks that were left that i could reach..sigh...i feel like an idiot..anyway.praying the rats eat the stuff and not carry it all over the coop....ughhh

 

[IdyllwildAcres]

Quote:

This is ABSOLUTELY true!!! There is NO such thing as safe poison, nor poison without a HIGH secondary poisoning risk. Any vet who says otherwise should have his/her license revoked. Do your own research online, and you'll find that poisons advertised as "low secondary poisoning risk" products simply have a more concentrated amount of poison in them....the THEORY (not reality) is that since the poison is more concentrated, the rat will need less of the bait in order to die. The problem is that rats don't eat "just one bite", whether it contains enough poison or not. The feeding habits of rats are such that they eat far more than they need to survive (or die, in this case). Also, the poison doesn't act instantly (obviously) and by the time the poison attacks the rat's system, the rat has already eaten plenty of it, increasing the toxin levels in their bodies to WELL above "low risk of secondary poisoning". PLUS, when rats are dying from the poisoning, it is their nature to crawl away, not go back in their nest. This is true of most animals, they go off to die so as to protect their nest (and offspring) from predators...the smell of decaying body would draw predators to the nest and the predator would then kill the nestmates and/or babies---so crawling away to die is an instinct designed to protect the rest of the bloodline. When the rats do die, their bodies are usually very accessible to cats, dogs, and other animals who then eat the dead rat and become fatally poisoned themselves. Knowing how rats and other predators eat is crucial to knowing what is, AND IN THE CASE OF ANY POISON, isn't safe.

So what is your solution for rats? What constructive advice do you have that will help the OP?

Gary

 

[pamonarch]

So what is your solution for rats? What constructive advice do you have that will help the OP?

Gary

LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU GET A SOLUTION..oTHER THAN SITTING OUT THERE AT NIGHT WITH NIGHTVISION GOGGLES AND A GUN? LOL...AND I WILL NOT DO THAT UGHHHH!!

 

[Birdinhand]

LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU GET A SOLUTION..oTHER THAN SITTING OUT THERE AT NIGHT WITH NIGHTVISION GOGGLES AND A GUN? LOL...AND I WILL NOT DO THAT UGHHHH!!

really, we should all start a campaign to discontinue the use of poultry netting and re-appropriate the name to hardware cloth. the best way to deal with rats is to accept that there will be a few here in there out in your yard but that the population problem when it comes to chickens comes from not having a secure coop which leads to open access to feed, leading to continuous breeding.
1) rats reach sexual viability at 6 weeks of age, they have up to 22 babies, they make so many babies because until recently there was so much loss to predation. we have killed off much of what eats rats. when you leave any gaps more than a 1/2" anywhere in your coop you invite them in for a meal. it has been documented that unlimited access to food can cause a population of 2 rats to go to 1,000 in six months.
2) hardware cloth is the only thing I know of that can reasonably easily create an impervious envelope that keeps rats out, if it's installed properly (either all the way under the coop and all the way over and down the sides, or instead of going under some folks have luck just going 2' down into the ground at a 45 degree away from the coop).
3) there are also feed container designs that significantly limit a rats ability to get to the food. there are ones where the chicken steps on a trigger to have the feed open and there are some PVC pipe and bucket designs I've seen that look pretty good. you'll have to search around on BYC for them. they involve putting holes in the side of a covered bucket and fitting PVC pipes that allow the chickens to stick their heads in and get food but are hard for rats to get in and out of. I could see how this kind of approach might work for flocks that are so large or runs that are so large that securing the coop is too expensive.
4) I know of no approach to killing rats that works, keeping them out is the only thing I know of that really works, it takes a big up front investment of time and cash followed typically by many years of worry free pay back. shooting them is a great way to work on developing your zen patience and your aim, but you can only make a drop in the population bucket that way. poison is a short term solution with long term problems, when you get tired of trying to keep the population in check by killing them, try getting super diligent about keeping them out, out of at least a section of the coop where the hens and food can be locked in at night.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

That's weird, we don't have rats and don't use hardware cloth around the run. Odd as it may sound- poison works. How you keep the poison to rodents only is to use chunx style bait and tamper proof bait boxes. We keep a tamper proof box right in the run 24/7 and another in the shed where feed dispensers are stored at night. Bag feed is put in metal can in same shed.

Never had an accidental poisoning. For animals to be poisoned they A) have to be small enough to get into bait box and B) be attracted to the bait. What this results in is mice, rats, chipmunks and squirrels are targeted. Squirrels not so much as they create cache of food stores all over the place then forget where it's buried but the other rodents bring all food back to burrow where it's eaten and they die. I'm 4 to 5 years using this system and have only found one dead chipmunk and on the lawn in all that time. Everything else died in burrows. No accidental non target species was affected.

 

[Birdinhand]

That's weird, we don't have rats and don't use hardware cloth around the run. Odd as it may sound- poison works. How you keep the poison to rodents only is to use chunx style bait and tamper proof bait boxes. We keep a tamper proof box right in the run 24/7 and another in the shed where feed dispensers are stored at night. Bag feed is put in metal can in same shed.

Never had an accidental poisoning. For animals to be poisoned they A) have to be small enough to get into bait box and B) be attracted to the bait. What this results in is mice, rats, chipmunks and squirrels are targeted. Squirrels not so much as they create cache of food stores all over the place then forget where it's buried but the other rodents bring all food back to burrow where it's eaten and they die. I'm 4 to 5 years using this system and have only found one dead chipmunk and on the lawn in all that time. Everything else died in burrows. No accidental non target species was affected.

different strokes for different folks... for me, I would not count it as working if I had to keep putting poison out, if the rats are still getting into the coop, then it's not a decent solution for me. It's been 3+ years with my hardware cloth envelope and only 1 rat has made it into the coop, I found where it got under the HWC and trenched it out and filled it with 5/8th gravel, never again. Now I leave traps set outside the coop to keep the endless supply from the neighbors shed in check, I occasionally bait the traps but mostly use them as snares. I catch a rat every 2-4 weeks. I know there are a few around in the background, I'm not worried about those. overall, it's a pretty cost effective approach without having to deal with poison.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Rat's don't get in my coop. I don't have any around the house, run and large surrounding area. It's effectively a rat free zone as none house up anywhere near. They can make it to bait stations but would die back in last burrow. None ever get to make housing in this area. That's amazingly effective for little cost and minor upkeep of replacing chunx bait. A 4lbs pail last almost two years after the initial extermination of rodents. Most is consumed Spring and Fall during migrations pre/post winter.

It's not realistic to suggest a hardware cloth enclosed run, that's ceiling and floor, for anyone with runs larger than the toy coop/run combo's you see at Tractor Supply.