Help!!!! I am at the end of my rope!

[Al Gerhart]

You are feeding the rats and they will not go away until you stop feeding them. They are smart and will not eat poison once they figure out it is killing them, unless they are starving, then they will eat the poison.

All you have to do is do a forum search on Rats and Chickens and you will see this is an old problem that has been beat to death on the forum and solved many times over. Hundreds of threads posted over nearly a decade. And luckily for me it isn't going to stop happening because I have three Filipino families that are able to make a living by working at my small factory.

Tons of advice on poisons, traps, rube goldberg contraptions and schemes but it boils down to two things; feed security and sanitation.

Store your bulk feed in metal trash cans or barrels. Not plastic, metal.

Get a good treadle feeder or be willing to take the feed out and watch the chickens eat and live with slower growth and fewer eggs due to the lack of constant feed. A hen's limit on laying eggs is how much protein she can process, free choice feed means more eggs and happier chickens.

A good treadle feeder will be made out of all metal for feed bin to prevent rats chewing, preferably not aluminum. No plastic....

It will have a spring loaded door and a heavy counterweight to provide mass and leverage to prevent rats and mice from just pushing the door open or lifting the lid if it is a guillotine style feeder like the Grandpa feeder or one of the many clones. The majority of the treadle feeder on Amazon or Ebay are easily pushed open by rats and mice and wild birds.

An effective feeder MUST have a narrow and distant treadle so that if the treadle gets overwhelmed by rats or wild birds they cannot reach the feed and must cooperate and take turns, not something that most wild animals are good at.

The best type door is a inward swinging door on a heavy steel axle, wire axles work great for seldom opened lids, not so good on a constantly swinging door. The chickens are less afraid of a door that swings back instead of over its head. Soft close doors make training quicker due to less noise.

You need a big difference in reach and weight in order to keep the rats, mice, and wild birds out of a treadle feeder. A lighter action door and a wide treadle step is safer for the birds and easier to teach the birds but far, far, far less rat proof. That means full size birds, bantams and silkies have to learn to eat when they can while another bird is eating and since that other bird can hop off I recommend that you get a feeder with a soft close door.

Do your research on both the shopping carts and independent websites. Watch out for the slick sites that earn money from affiliate links like the Chicken Chick, if they aren't making a buck on the feeder they are not recommending a feeder. One of the best sites is one called chicken feeder review.

And one caveat, many flock owners never deal with a pest problem so many times even a poorly designed feeder is going to work and get good reviews on the shopping cart. The reviews you are looking for are the negative reviews, those are the people with a rat or wild bird problem that they need fixed. There will be some folks that you couldn't make happy, ,can't assemble things, won't follow instructions, or are OCD, but if the negative reviews are over 5% look out! That might be a chicken feeder but it won't be rat proof.

And do a forum search for Howard E and rat or rodent and you will find a review of our feeder and a long post called something like rodents or rats 101 that is packed with great info on rodents and dealing with them.

Unless you want a hobby you are gonna have to purchase a treadle feeder. Some folks love trying to outwit rodents and playing with traps and poisons. The problem with poison is that the poisoned rats kill off the natural predators that should be keeping the rodents under control. And many times these predators are drawn to a coop by the rats and then will kill chickens or steal eggs once they realize there is an steady supply of easily caught food. Things like raptors, snakes, coyotes, and foxes eat rodents as their main diet. Get rid of the rodents and make these predators earn the living finding wild rodents.

 

[The Brick Coop]

You all need to hear this. Years ago I used 1 poison block down 3 rat holes in the horse-stall-coop ONCE in the FALL when the rats moved in. The next day my trio of Salmon Faverolles died that were in a big dog crate in the barn. The rat had peed in their food after being poisoned. We saw no more rats. I forgot about the poison. We live in a wet area. It rained the FOLLOWING SPRING a lot. It flooded the holes along the outside of the barn. The chickens drank the fresh-looking rain water puddles when I let them out. I went off to work. 30+ chickens were dead & cold by 4pm when I got home. Some had apparently kicked off their plastic leg bands from the pain. I was in shock. The 3 broodies up in their nests and caged (exhibition) trios were the only survivors. We pulled up the rubber horse stall mats and dug out and discarded the dirt where the rats had been. That is my poison story. Get a pellet gun of sufficient FPS (ft/sec) or else shoot exactly in rat eye which slows your shooting. Ours is 1000 fps; a previous 750 fps was not sufficient. Hubby killed a killer fox in the fabric-topped (hardware cloth) coop with the new one (shot in the eye). Get live traps. The green ones from China do ok for a few months but then need maintenance. Better quality galvanized ones last much longer therefore catch more. When we had a dog, we did not have any rodents or groundhogs on our property or any neighbors' properties. He (an Aussie) was rewarded for it so patrolled constantly. Dogs are the the best (if they do not steal eggs or birds). My mentor exhibitor has two good patrolling dogs and partially free-ranges over a hundred show birds in the woods and still has predator problems once a year. Don't put poison down holes if your barn is not on a hill with good drainage. Don't use it anywhere near your chickens' eating areas because of rat defecating poison in your chicken feed, & leaching into the rain water. Don't put it within 200 feet of a well! If your barn has a loft, then under its edge try the plate-of-leftovers-hanging-over-the-barrel-of-water trap. This is where you drill a hole in the middle of a plate and hang it on a string over the half-full barrel of water with a ramp to it. My friend says her barrel killed all her rats. There is a new Ratinator multiple rat trap. Try these and report your results here. I'll watch for your post. Write a rodent plan map; keep it with your flock record binder.

 

[The Brick Coop]

Al's post is excellent. I have one of those good treadle feeders with my turkey hens which like it. Tom doesn't. It closes noisily but it works.

 

[Al Gerhart]

Al's post is excellent. I have one of those good treadle feeders with my turkey hens which like it. Tom doesn't. It closes noisily but it works.

You can order a soft close kit for that feeder you know! Watch our video on installing one before you try installing it, you have to set it just right so that you get the maximum control over the speed of the door.