Is pet rat poop okay for the chicken run?

[JadeFarms]

That's not how disease works. If her rats are healthy it's irrelevant. People have a very misconstrued idea of rats as being disease ridden animals - they aren't. Especially domestic rats. Chances are good her chicks poop has WAY more dangerous bacteria and parasites and protozoa in it than rat bedding would, and if you use deep litter that just sits there too, until - like the rat poop would - it gets stirred in.

OP - Do some real research into how composting animal poop works and go from there. Please don't fall for fear mongering. But DO deal with your feral rat problem - feral rats are a draw for predators and they themselves will gladly chew up chickens if they're desperate.

I had rats I believe they’re cleaner than dogs and cats... when their poop sits it brings disease though. That’s from my personal experience. It also draws feral rats. It’s not the rats poop that brought the disease it’s the bugs that like rat poop is what brought the disease. Same with chicken poop, if it sits then it will cause respiratory disease from the dust of it.

 

[Aapomp831]

I had rats I believe they’re cleaner than dogs and cats... when their poop sits it brings disease though. That’s from my personal experience. It also draws feral rats. It’s not the rats poop that brought the disease it’s the bugs that like rat poop is what brought the disease. Same with chicken poop, if it sits then it will cause respiratory disease from the dust of it.

Chicken poop doesn’t have dust in it.

 

[aart]

Chicken poop doesn’t have dust in it.

It can turn to dust tho.

 

[JadeFarms]

Chicken poop doesn’t have dust in it.

When it sits it turns to dust like all poop does over time.

 

[Aapomp831]

It can turn to dust tho.

If you never clean your coop!

 

[JadeFarms]

If you never clean your coop!

In dry areas it turns to dust fast.

 

[aart]

If you never clean your coop!

Yep, I use dry bedding in coop, change it out twice a year.
Have poop boards too tho.
Everyone does things differently.

 

[rosemarythyme]

This doesn't directly answer your question, but if you want to reduce the amount of bedding you're using for the rats, well, they can learn to use a litter box (a tiny one) if one is made available to them. For the pee just line the cage with fleece or some other absorbent fabric. It does need to be cleaned out and replaced frequently (I'd launder the fleece and put in a clean one every 3 days) but it uses up significantly less bedding and because the rats mostly poop in the box, the floor actually stays relatively clean of poop.

You can see the litter box on the bottom right corner with paper bedding, and blue fleece across the bottom.

 

[thepick4uchicks]

Hello fellow chicken-owners! We recently acquired some pet rats. We use bedding for them that is 100% recycled brown paper. I'm wondering if it would be okay to dump the used bedding (with rat poop and pee) in our chicken run. This seems like it would be much more environmentally friendly than bagging it up in plastic and putting it in the trash every week.

My husband is concerned that the rat poop isn't okay in the chicken run, but I know there's a colony of feral rats that live in our backyard, so presumably there's feral rat poop in the run already...

Thoughts?

I guess my question is just why? Why would you want to put poop and paper into the chickens run so that they would want to peck it and eat it? I’m just that way. I wouldn’t want my chicks eating the feral rats if I could keep them from doing it because they don’t have to risk getting diseases. I feed them quality food and want to keep mine healthy and disease free so why risk them getting sick on a bunch of sickly rats when I feed them. That’s just all I have on those lines of thought because mine don’t free range for lots of reasons. Staying well to be free of disease is one of them.

 

[Broken Fox]

Would you put soiled sheets on your bed?

I admire your efforts in attempting to save the environment or what have you.

Instead of putting it in a plastic bag you could always bury it or invest in paper bags to place it in. Cardboard box would work as well.