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Morledzep

Morledzep

Hatching
Oct 4, 2015
5
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7
I'm Catherine. I have 22 chickens.. down from 28 chicks in July. I lost 5 the first week, and lost one to the neighborhood rats a couple weeks ago.

My son and I have covered the rest of the pen with netting to keep the rats out, but I'm probably going to have to upgrade to hardware cloth. My girls are not laying yet, and someone missed the sexing, and I got a rooster in the bunch. He's not crowing yet, so I'll keep him as long as animal control doesn't come knocking. I have some black australorpes, some americaunas, a buff orpington, two white chickens that I'm assuming right now are leghorns, I think some may be gold laced wyandottes too. I bought an assortment but they did not identify which breeds were included. my rooster is a black australorpe.

ok.. that's us.. and 5 dogs, a couple snakes and a herd of mice.
 
Hi Catherine, welcome to BYC!

I'm sorry for your losses, hardware cloth is an excellent way to protect your birds. Good luck with your flock.

Thanks for joining us!
 
Thanks. They said to expect to lose some, but 5 in less than 5 days was starting to scare me. lol

We have plans for the rats too, my son found spike strips, he's going to line the fences behind the pen with the spike strips. He put rat traps along the fence but we only got one, and the rats figured out how to break them, they pulled the staples out of the wood after they tripped the traps. Hav-a-heart traps don't work either, and I can't risk poison around the dogs and chickens.
 
I hope the spike strips work for you, we've never tried them. We've had our best luck with the few we've had (or seen evidence of anyway) with just the old fashioned rat traps baited with peanut butter...those traps have a strong spring mechanism on them and the traps were pretty inexpensive (about $3 each).

Keeping feed in metal trash cans with tight-fitting lids helps and no food in the coop. I suppose with cooler weather coming on, more pests like mice and rats will be trying to come in so we try make the coop an unwelcome place for them.
 
Welcome to the BYC flock! We are glad you joined us!

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Rats can dig, climb, chew through almost anything if they have the time- maybe you could borrow someone's Jack Russell terriers - they live to hunt & kill rats.
 
There is hardware cloth under the pen, and at least so far, the netting on the chainlink is working. I know I'm not keeping the rats out completely but I believe I'm giving them enough obstacles that they are looking for easier food to get. like the fodder in the trays on the back porch that I forget to bring in at night.. lol

And I have a pit bull and a poodle that are very good at alerting me when the rat is out there. lol
 
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