Chickens and poisoned mice

[sphillips]

I've been battling a terrible mouse problem in my coop for several months. We moved all potential nesting areas away from the coop, and I was using several different types of traps. I was killing at least 6 mice a night, usually more than that. I had been picking up the chicken feed at night. Nothing was helping, so I decided to use poison as a last resort. My coop has an adjoining barn, so I put the poison in there behind the plywood walls where the chickens couldn't get to it. They don't go in there anyway, but just to be safe. After a week I started finding dead mice everywhere, and an occasional dead one in the coop. I'd pick them up as I found them so that the chickens couldn't eat them. Mouse issue is pretty much under control. Went out this weekend to check on the girls, found a hen dead under the nest boxes. No signs of bleeding, or illness otherwise, she was fine that morning. Not sure if it was that she ate a 'poisoned' mouse, but just assumed so. I have searched high and low to find an answer to this question: How long until I can eat the eggs? I've thrown away all that I had, and have been throwing eggs out everyday as a precaution. The mouse poison was picked up as soon as I found the dead hen this past weekend. Everyone else seems healthy and happy, but I don't know if the eggs are safe to eat, or how long I should wait until we do eat them. I found another dead mouse this morning.

 

[Suzie]

There should be no problem in eating the eggs that your chickens lay....if a chicken eats a dead mouse it will be OK unless it eats the poisoned stomach contents of a dead mouse..undigested food containing warfarin or whatever poison you use to kill them will sometimes remain for some time in the stomach of a rat or mouse.... is highly toxic to chickens.

Enjoy your eggs and hopefully the mouse population in your area will be diminished by now!

 

[margaretanne]

I breed purebred cats. The cat enclosure is next to the chookyard. The only time I ever saw a mouse in the chookyard was when a cat was chasing it, and it ran in with the chickens. It suffered a quick and grisly execution at the beaks of the chickens. A hit squad of chickens were onto it the moment they saw it.
We dont have a mouse problem.
But we are feeding quendas, a species of small bandicoots, a small mammal, which are only found in the south west of western Australia. They are an endangered species, so we are reluctant to move the feed from the patio where they self serve. They are nocturnal, so we only occasionally glimpse one, and they leave droppings next to the chicken food.
Margaret