Help!!! Rat infestation

[nconley11]

I'm guessing you used fiberglass bat insulation? And the rats have gnawed holes in the plywood? If so, you inadvertently created a nearly ideal setup for the rats. Home sweet home!

Just look at the bait stations.....you could put one in the middle (don't....put them along walls which are high travel areas) of the coop and rats will be able to come and go into the bait stations, but chickens can't get in, (baby chicks might, but anything past a 2 to 3 week old chick won't). The reason for bait stations is they contain pins that fix the bait blocks in place, otherwise the rats would drag them out and scatter them around where chickens and other could get to them.

As for pulling down the plywood, if you do, be ready for a bunch of rats to boil out on you. If you don't pull down the plywood, be ready for the stench of death to arrive as they start dying in the walls.

Good point on not taking the plywood down. I've already started pulling some down. They are primarily using walls as alleyways and are dening under the coop

 

[Folly's place]

I also insulated the coop walls, and have been removing it ever since. It's a rat and mouse haven, not good.
Some rats will drown themselves, or go into traps, or whatever, but then the rest LEARN, and avoid those places. Rats are very smart, and only poison will get them.
Use the bait stations, and be careful. Live rats are not good to have out there; they will eat eggs, kill chickens, and spread nasty diseases.
Weighing the alternatives, poison is safer than an infestation.
Mary

 

[Hyroler]

Here you go just cover plastic bottle in peanut butter

 

[Howard E]

I also insulated the coop walls, and have been removing it ever since. It's a rat and mouse haven, not good.
Some rats will drown themselves, or go into traps, or whatever, but then the rest LEARN, and avoid those places. Rats are very smart, and only poison will get them.
Use the bait stations, and be careful. Live rats are not good to have out there; they will eat eggs, kill chickens, and spread nasty diseases.
Weighing the alternatives, poison is safer than an infestation.
Mary

What type of insulation? Fiberglass batts?

 

[Folly's place]

Yes, and a great home for rodents it turned out to be!
Mary

 

[RoseMar]

I've had my coop for about a year-and-a-half now. We converted an old shed that was on the property before we bought it into of the coop. It has a wood floor in and was on cinder blocks originally but it's been so long that it's basically settled to the ground. Long story short we started seeing signs of mice or rats in late fall. I know we have 40 plus running around right now. I need to do something and I need to do something now and fast. I don't want them to end up in our house. What would you do? I've had people tell me if poison and no poison. I have noticed that I'm finding a few of the younger ones dead but they're not messing with them so maybe it would be okay to poison them. I just really don't want to wait my whole flock out. In addition Part of me wants to scrap the whole old Koop and start over. Any advice or tips would be welcome. Thank you!

We had an infestation once. It was horrible as the rats made nests in tunnels in the ground. My husband got 5 gallon buckets with secure lids and drilled a very tiny hole only large enough for a mouse to squeeze through. Inside he put in a bowl that was secured to the bucket so that it could not be moved. He bought the tomcat mouse bait from the local feed supply store. Put pieces of that inside the bowl inside the bucket with the secure lid on it. He then placed the buckets near but safely away from the chicken houses. It drew the mice to it and they ate the bait. We got rid of the mouse problem that way. Chickens will eat mice so you don't want them to get one that has eaten the mouse bait. That was the reason he placed the buckets a safe distance behind the chicken houses and runs. We did not let them free range while we had the buckets out.
The mice can smell the bait and will go to it. We had to do this in the horse barn also. Where ever there is feed they will become a problem. You also want to cut back on having chicken feed out all the time. Choose Specific morning and evening feeding times for a bit until you get things under control.

 

[Howard E]

Good point!

Had a sit down with a professional exterminator a few months back and one of the things he mentioned was to lure the rats away from their current food source by setting up bait feeding stations well away from where they are a problem now. Basically relocating / redirecting them away from the chickens/hogs/feed mill, barn, warehouse, etc. where they have become a problem. This is concurrent with getting control of the waste food etc. where they were being a problem. So their current food source dries up and is replaced by another some distance away.

Then, once the food out yonder is being consumed at a steady rate, it is taken up and replaced with the poison bait blocks. So with nothing else to eat, they will consume and immediately start to succumb to the poison, but do so out at a safe distance from where they were. This is doubly important when the have infested a building and you don't want them dying in your building.

 

[Al Capon]

 

[moniquem]

Rats are smart and have been around for eons and eons. They don't live that long by being dumb.

I had a roof rat problem when I lived in the city. I purchased an electric rat zapper, caught one and only one. The others learned to stay away from it. I then tried the big rat trap, the kind that snap shut? I caught one and only one, again they learned. Finally put out poison......no more roof rats.

 

[thefadedstitch]

I would make a few "stairway to heaven" rat/mouse traps out of 5 gallon buckets.
You can catch lots in a single night. Google it.
I would not use poison.
Start planning your new coop but keep the old one for a quarantine building.
Put the new one somewhere it won't sink into the ground.

We'v had great luck with the water bucket. We noticed them dead in the goat's water pail so we set one up next to a support board near the ground. We caught 8 in one night.