DIY Rat extermination around the coop

[chicknmania]

Add some thermal shooting and you will really give them the what for! I have drastically cut down my population with the ratinator, jiffy mix, poison(where the chickens don't go) and my nightly battle maneuvers with the thermal and a suppressed 22. Keep it up!! Sounds like you are getting it done.

Or you could stop feeding the rats and they would leave.

Really, it is that simple.

Lots of good ideas here but stopping feeding the rats doesn't work. They can find food anywhere and they won't leave a good shelter, especially with winter coming. We had rats living in our barn years before we ever had chickens, and there was no animal food out there for them to eat back then. One even lived under our house in a groundhog burrow once! Weirdly, that was just one rat.

 

[speedy2020]

Best time to trap them is in the winter. You can use DIY pvc trap that small enough that they can't turn around inside the pvc.

 

[Al Gerhart]

Lots of good ideas here but stopping feeding the rats doesn't work. They can find food anywhere and they won't leave a good shelter, especially with winter coming. We had rats living in our barn years before we ever had chickens, and there was no animal food out there for them to eat back then. One even lived under our house in a groundhog burrow once! Weirdly, that was just one rat.

The natural carrying capacity of most territories is quite small. Yes, some rats will stick around, huge colonies caused by poor chicken feeders will not be able to stick around. They will leave or starve and if they can't get to the chicken feed they won't be wildly reproducing and hungry enough to take bait and poisons. Watch out for your car or tractor wiring, they love that plastic insulation.

 

[Sundown Feathers]

What do you recommend as an alternate feeder?

Some follow ups to your great points:

The grandpa’s feeder is borrowed from a friend; we have other feeders as well but tried this to see if it worked. We found it works for smaller rodents but not for the very large rats that we see on our game cam which will post up 2-4 at a time on the lever to open the lid. Smart. These are the same smart rats that have learned to steal bait from the ratinator and escape. Since we didn’t buy it, I can’t return it other than to our friend who let us try it out.

We have not seen the rats during the day at all, other than when gassing their holes and some run out. And it’s been over a year.

Correct I am not one to tell a well established neighbor (our best neighbor, at that) to do anything different about her operation. The barn is over an embankment and it did take a year for the rats to find us from her place. I’m going to instead focus on eradicating and hardware clothing to remove their access to the food. Our lawn is cut short but your point did give me the idea to work on removing some nearby blackberries they most definitely live in. We got goats to take care of them but they’re not working fast enough, so we’ll bush hog them this weekend and I expect that to help!

We have rat predators, it’s just not enough. I even have 4 barn cats but we have electric netting around the entire chicken area so I’m afraid the cats aren’t able to really get to the rats as readily. Other predators just aren’t making enough of an impact, sadly.

Thanks for the long response and feedback!

 

[Zmajor]

It’s been a minute but thought I’d follow up here:

We hardware clothed the entire floor and that didn’t help; the rats started chewing through the parts of the walls made of wood, and even worked on the 1/4” hardware cloth in a few spots until they were able to work their way through it.

We bought a feeder that auto closed at night like our coop door but the rats just learned to come earlier (dusk) to eat, so now I go out and close it every day to avoid losing feed to the rats.

We got this new form of rat birth control to curtail their population but it’s a long game play, and we’re ready to be over and done with the rat issue.

Next steps:
1. Cementing the floor of our coop and run
2. Reinforcing wood walls with hardware cloth
3. Rat poison
4. Flooding all holes we can find to make sure we get them all
5. Fire (jk, maybe)

 

[Al Gerhart]

It’s been a minute but thought I’d follow up here:

We hardware clothed the entire floor and that didn’t help; the rats started chewing through the parts of the walls made of wood, and even worked on the 1/4” hardware cloth in a few spots until they were able to work their way through it.

We bought a feeder that auto closed at night like our coop door but the rats just learned to come earlier (dusk) to eat, so now I go out and close it every day to avoid losing feed to the rats.

We got this new form of rat birth control to curtail their population but it’s a long game play, and we’re ready to be over and done with the rat issue.

Next steps:
1. Cementing the floor of our coop and run
2. Reinforcing wood walls with hardware cloth
3. Rat poison
4. Flooding all holes we can find to make sure we get them all
5. Fire (jk, maybe)

6. Stop feeding the rats.

It really is that simple.

 

[FarmerOtto]

One of my more successful ways of killing rats is to fill a five gallon bucket 1/3 full of water and add about 3 cups of black-oil sunflower seeds (with float). the rats see a solid surface and drop in, only to be submerged and drown.

It doesn't work ever night, but it is part of the battle for us.

I will try dusting the poison (bicarb - not the arsenic stuff) with chocolate or powders sugar... I should have thought of that!

 

[mcdze]

no 1 method ever gets them all .. the result is a few 'super rats' that become your nemesis .. usually takes a more 'manual' approach to finally get them - cornered and whacked with a shovel etc ..

 

[User635240]

Please do get back with us.

My preferred rat killer would be a rat terrier or may a Jack Russell. Once had a Shiba In-u that killed rodents, but not like a terrier.

I actually just rehomed a rat terrier who was more interested in killing chickens than rats. My Carolina Dog (a wild American dingo) kills 1-2 rats a night and leaves them by the door of the coop for me. I highly recommend a dog in the coop to protect the chickens from rats at night (and minks during the day).

 

[123RedBeard]

What do you recommend as an alternate feeder?

https://ratproofchickenfeeder.net/

Or you could stop feeding the rats and they would leave.

Really, it is that simple.

I'm guessing that Al can't recommend his own design, as he is not a sponsor on this site ... But he knows how to build a chicken feeder!

If you have any questions or problems, I know he has in the past bent over backwards to make sure it is adjusted right.

And, while a concrete floor is nice, it won't stop rats .. they will chew through that!