Daytime rats eating chicken feed. Not allowed to use rodenticide in my area due to owls, Hawks, coyotes and domestic dogs of course.

[RoyalChick]

No one will ever accuse me of overselling my feeders. LOL I do lot in the product copy trying to offend the OCD types just to manage expectations. And I watch for red flags, if someone acts entitled in their emails, wants to argue or complain before I sell them anything, or just acts like a jerk I'll refuse to sell or even cancel their order and refund their money. End of year profit margin is usually around $5.00 per feeder, tis no trouble worth such a small amount of money.

There there is the majority of my customers, patient, forgiving, just wanting to stop the rats. Those type I'll bend over backwards for. Once in a while something goes horribly wrong and the customer is so laid back I feel horrible for what happened. Maybe a broken axle every couple of year, crushed feeder during shipping.... shipping lady messes up while I am on a trip. Things that keep me up at night worrying. LOL

Mamma hens... no stopping that probably but we are gonna try.

I sent you a PM as I am still figuring out the possibilities and am only part way through the info on your website but I know I will have questions and didn’t want to clog this thread.
Hope that is OK.

 

[Al Gerhart]

Of course. I love it when people go through the info on the website and ask questions. The ones that scare me are the ones that don't read the website. You can answer their questions but you never know what they didn't learn and don't know to ask questions about.

 

[Al Gerhart]

Yes, I learned that the hard way (almost the VERY hard way) when they were about 2 weeks old. Came home from work and one of them had its leg caught in the door, had been laying there who knows how long in a rainstorm. Fortunately it was in shock but recovered with some time in the incubator. They are about 8 weeks old now, so I let them out in the run when I'm not around. They can't work the treadle feeders on their own, but they are a good height to where it seems safe when they reach in to snatch a bit of food when a bigger chicken opens the door because they are tall enough that they can pull out of the door when it starts to close.

Yes, that is one of the dangers of a treadle feeder with too small birds. They get up into the feeder, door closes, in in the case of the guillotine style lids like the Grandpa Xi feeder, a chicken steps down onto the lid and the lid comes down and crushes them. Once they hit a couple of pounds it is a lot safer for them to learn to snatch food when they can.

As we say in Oklahoma, farm animals are never 10% safe around moving machinery and Oklahoma State Senators.

 

[McChooky]

No one will ever accuse me of overselling my feeders. LOL I do lot in the product copy trying to offend the OCD types just to manage expectations. And I watch for red flags, if someone acts entitled in their emails, wants to argue or complain before I sell them anything, or just acts like a jerk I'll refuse to sell or even cancel their order and refund their money. End of year profit margin is usually around $5.00 per feeder, tis no trouble worth such a small amount of money.

There there is the majority of my customers, patient, forgiving, just wanting to stop the rats. Those type I'll bend over backwards for. Once in a while something goes horribly wrong and the customer is so laid back I feel horrible for what happened. Maybe a broken axle every couple of year, crushed feeder during shipping.... shipping lady messes up while I am on a trip. Things that keep me up at night worrying. LOL

Mamma hens... no stopping that probably but we are gonna try.

I knew a girl years ago who raised rats and sold them for pets. For the life of me I don't know why anyone would want a pet rat

 

[McChooky]

So I found some post but most of them in fact nearly all of them are talking about the rats coming at night.

These critters (rats) are feeding in the day. We're not allowed to use rodenticides in my area due to the family of hawks, owls and even coyotes that live nearby. Also too, there's always the worry about a neighbor's backyard dog getting hold of a poisoned rat so I totally get that. Not to mention when you do use rodenticides, the rodent doesn't die right away they leave their poison impregnated droppings all over whatever area they're walking in whether that be the chicken run or elsewhere. So it's probably just as well we're not allowed to use them.

So I've tried treadle feeders, I even tried that feeder that if any weight is pulled on it it covers the feeding slot. Seemed like a good idea but the problem was that it would jam too easily with pellets and I even tried crumbles and the stupid thing would jam. So I tried that kind of feeder also.

I've tried traps, I've tried those electrocute boxes for rats, even paid for a couple hundred dollar Plus rat killer device that when they reached up for the food it would slug them in the head with a hard metal rod. They didn't go near it ever. Thankfully it was within the return window so I returned that.

I have a feeder bucket with a deer feeder attached to the bottom of it and around that is a heavy metal mesh secondary covering that prevents the rats from getting anywhere near the bucket if they somehow managed to hop that high. There's a tray underneath the bucket maybe not know a few feet below it. So with the deer feeders you just set the amount of time that you wanted to spin out some food, in seconds and at what time you want it to happen. There's a baffle around the heavy metal enclosure that surrounds the feeding bucket which directs the feed below into the feeding tray which is elevated.
The nice thing about the arrangement is if the chickens see the rats they chase them especially the rooster. But when they're on some other side of the run where the feeder isn't that's where the rats hop in and grab a bite.
I know a couple of owls have grabbed some rats at night , they live nearby. I know the Hawks during the day grab one every now and then. By the way my chickens are in a covered run so the Hawks can't get to them. Of course that also means that the Hawks can't get to the rat running inside the chicken run.

I think I've exhausted all the ideas I can think of. I have the feeder mechanism set though so that it dispenses an amount of food that is already finished by the time the chickens head off to bed to roost. Zero problems in the chicken coop itself and that's simply because there's no food or water in the coop.

Well there it is - if any of you can come up with a great idea that would be terrific. I think over the years of battling these creatures I've tried just about everything I could reasonably think of.

In severe cases its simpler to build a new rat proof coop in a new location

 

[LaFleche]

Spraying natural lemon oil around the outside of the coops and covered runs as well as feeding my birds twice a day instead of leaving feeders out all day long discourages rats and mice.

Some people claim that mixing red pepper flakes with the feed can help to keep the rodents away.

 

[Folly's place]

Domestic rats make great pets, way better than the other 'pocket pets' more people buy.
Wild rats, not so much, and definitely not welcome here! As we have bantams and standard sized birds, the treadle feeders aren't useful for us.
One episode with rats in our coop was one too many!
Mary

 

[rural mouse]

If you can find their tunnel entrances, close them off except 1 and fill it with dry ice. It will sink into the tunnels and kill them, without the toxicity of raticides

 

[Anon112]

I knew a girl years ago who raised rats and sold them for pets. For the life of me I don't know why anyone would want a pet rat

Rats are very smart, cool animals.

 

[Al Gerhart]

Spraying natural lemon oil around the outside of the coops and covered runs as well as feeding my birds twice a day instead of leaving feeders out all day long discourages rats and mice.

Some people claim that mixing red pepper flakes with the feed can help to keep the rodents away.

It isn't the lemon oil, it is hand feeding twice a day that made the rodents leave. But you are depriving your chickens of needed nutrition, slowing growth for broiler birds and limiting egg production for layers.

There have been studies on lemon oil and other aromatic oils on rodents but they tend to test if the rat prefers to stay in one nest box over another if one of the nest boxes is treated with the essential oil. They measured the feed consumption in each nest box and a small percentage, five percent at most, preferred the untreated nest box. That said, the rodents would have eaten the feed even if both nest boxes were treated with the oil so what the studies showed is that rodents PREFER not to be around some sorts of essential oil. The rats will still eat your car's wiring if there is no other food around, at best spraying an engine's wiring with oils might send the rats to the neighbor's car.

Does it harm the rats? No, according to this study it helps them learn. https://nsj.org.sa/content/nsj/15/4/292.full.pdf So you have a real problem claiming lemon oil is a repellent when they can dose rats with it for weeks on end with no harm.

The red pepper in the feed myth has long been discredited. I've posted the studies many times, the studies show a temporary preference for untreated feed for about three weeks then the hot pepper treated feed intake INCREASES after the rodents become acclimated to the capsaicin in the feed.

Then you have to look at the cost of treating a coop with 20% eucalyptus oil every day, around $4 per ounce.... you would pay for a treadle feeder in a few months or a rodent proof coop in a few years.

And we did the math on treating chicken feed with the required level of capsaicin, it doubles the cost to $40 per bag.

People, please take the time to Google these old wives tales before posting. Well meaning, I get that, but spreading misinformation pushes people down rabbit trails instead of following solid advice on dealing with rodents. More rats in backyard flocks means more restrictions on keeping chickens from local governments.