HELP!!! Rats!!

[blueoval1]

My freind lives in a neighborhood and has just recently got a few chickens. They have seen a huge rat in the chicken coop. Are the chickens causing the rats, if they are what are some ways to prevent the rats from coming back. They have dogs so I dont think posion will work thanks.

 

[aaronzclark]

put some of them sticky rat traps down or get a real rat trap out of site for dogs or put out some moth balls

 

[artsyrobin]

moth balls? how would you place them? we have rats around the property....

 

[Zahboo]

We use mothballs, but wanted our dogs and cats to be safe.

We took a mason jar, poked holes in the lid and put some moth balls in it. We put them under the coop and it has worked great.

 

[jjthink]

Best long term solution with no down sides (poison and sticky traps can harm unintended victims and I would never use them) is to use hardware cloth to block all possible rat entry way points. Leave the door open in the daytime and the rat will soon leave because it needs stuff outdoors but will not be able to get back in at night when the coop is closed up. It takes some work but it works and it lasts forever.
JJ

Edited to add that I forgot to say I did have a rat problem in a former coop. After rat-proofing with hardware cloth, the problem was solved. Never had one in there again. It took some effort but was sooooo worth it.

 

[jhm47]

You will need a combination of all these methods, including poison. Modern poisons are very safe, except for the rats. I have used poisons for decades, and have never found a dead rat that might have put my pets and chickens at risk. We live several blocks from a huge grain elevator, and they have poison out all the time. I let my dog go over there quite often, and he's never had a problem. The rats eat the poison, and go into their burrows and die.

The hardware cloth is also a good idea, as are the glue traps, and I'd also suggest getting a cat. Don't know about the moth balls, but I do know that the vapors they give off can be toxic.

 

[jjthink]

Poisons can't be stated to be safe without many caveats including extremely careful clever use. Rats are known to move their food, or their poison as in this case, to other locations. This is when other beings can partake, and pay. One has to really know what they're doing.
JJ

 

[jhm47]

Whatever.

 

[Black Feather]

Rats are really, REALLY hard to get rid of. They are smart and adapt quickly to the different methods you may try to eradicate them with. If you see one, your can be darn sure there are more hanging around and the last thing you want is for them to establish a colony.

When I had them in my coop I tried a bunch of different methods to get rid of them. Sticky traps, rat traps, preventative measures suck as wiring up access points. The more interesting method was sending my dog after them...she loved to kill rats. In the end though I had to use poison. I threw it directly into their tunnels and filled the tunnels in with dirt. Of course they would dig the tunnels out again. When the tunnels finally stopped opening up I had killed all of them.

Overall, I believe I was able to kill 50-60% with traps etc, the rest had to be done with poison. I'm not in favor of using poison, but I'm a lot less in favor of having rats in my coop, in my feed and damaging my buildings.

UC

 

[haycroft]

we also found a big fat rat in my chicken run..luckily i had my whippets with...just put one of the dogs in and she done want needed tobe done..very quick..havent seen one since...but unfortually the day after, while my hens were out in the garden my whippet killed one of them..maybe she thought it was a feathered rat

i hate rats..a good rat is a dead rat

using poison does this put the birds of prey at risk if they eat a dead rat which has been poison...