Keeping a barn cat in the chicken coop?

[Dutchess]

Quote:
That's where the rat terrier got its name! Jack Russel's can be trained to kill rats too. They both have docked tails so when they go into a rodent hole, you can grab their tail and pull them out. I know, it sounds barbaric, but it doesn't hurt them.

 

[ChickieBooBoo]

My cats live with the chicks, no issues at all. They even clean up the spilt feed

 

[Royalclutch]

We had cat on the farm called mi mi seko, and were having a family get together when She caught a monster rat and jumped up to through the window with the rat in her mouth and had it in the kitchen when are beagle atacked her and she dropped the rat and the rat bit the dog in the face.The dog jumped back scared and the cat jumped the rat and killed it.We ended up moving into a Village type setting and brought the cat with us,she was always killing squirrels and I saw her dragging a full size cottontail rabbit through the yard that was so big she would have to rest after dragging it so far.The story really has nothing to do with chickens but I thought I would share

 

[lcammack]

I think it just comes down to the individual personality of the cat. They are all soooo different. Our cat was caught as a feral kitten with her mom at about 5 weeks of age. We have a program in our area where the feral moms are caught, their kittens adopted out, then the mom is spayed and released back to where she was found. We adopted her at eight weeks, and she was an indoor only cat for about 8 months, but she had such a desire to be an indoor outdoor cat that we caved. She has had so much fun being able to come and go. She has taught herself to be quite the hunter even though she has access to grain free top of the line cat food. Like another poster mentioned, she just doesn't eat them. Leaves them laying around. She acted very predatory to our chickens at first. Until one of the hens turned around and showed her who is really in charge. Now she just messes with them. Stalks them, jumps out at them, etc. but the funny thing is that the chickens are not afraid of her, they just stand their ground, and sometimes chase her off. It is quite a sight to see a cat, 8 chickens and a giant chocolate lab hangin in the yard. Anythings possible, so I say go for it, natural predation is much better then traps or poison in my opinion. Just keep an eye on everyone in the begining and I am sure your chickens will put the cat in its proper place soon enough!

 

[thesweetone]

We had a rat problem develop in my dad's chicken coop. The coop was a portion of the main barn. He closed one of our indoor-outdoor cats into the coop for a night. In the morning there were two dozen rats all lined up and one exhausted cat. He - Hoskins - was always well fed (along with all the others) and was a happy healthy guy. I never saw him play with prey, bring home presents or any of the typical hunter actions so never would have considered him a hunter. He seemed the pampered house cat.

In this case, he seemed to know what was expected of him and did it.

I agree that it may depend on the cat but also agree that it's worth a try especially given the need to avoid poisons. From what I've seen, most chickens are pretty adept at defending themselves with cats if the one you get gets out of line.

 

[silkiechicken]

Depends on the cat... that said, perhaps you have a feral cat rescue in your area. Here they will capture ferals, fix them, ear clip them (so they are not trapped again) and release them to you in small colonies. All you need to do is provide a shelter to show them home, and give out some food as handouts to keep them around. Works great for us. These cats hunted for a living and are good at it. The one cat that "feeds" the rest of the colony is the only one who goes after large rats though.... the rest are kind of lazy or I just don't see it. Recently though...I've had to start to trap with a live trap and shoot them when that female disappeared.

They are big ones here... the small hunting female I had would drag these things by the neck with her head held up high and the tails would drag.

 

[piccolini]

Thank you everyone for your great replies! I am probably going to go ahead and get one of the feral cats. I have four cats that were all feral as kittens and ended up with only one hunter. The rest are happy to laze around the house. I figure that at least if this cat isn't the best hunter it would still be feral enough that it wouldn't want to come in the house... Besides, the web sight said they will take them back so if it begins terrorizing my flock i will just have to return it
The chicken coop is a stall in our barn so I am hoping that if they live in the barn they will have enough access that the rats won't want to come around

Thanks again!

 

[Nicole01]

I'd put down a few live traps and remove the food when doing so. Cats can not be trusted, nor can any dog. Good luck.

Maybe you can put the food outside or bring it in at night while catching the pesky rats.

 

[ChickInDelight]

My tiny little female cats are vicious killers of all animals - even some larger than themselves. Squirrels in the attic are a no-no here. I have seem some pretty large snakes become snack. The mommy cat was abandoned with babies in the woods of WV. Her baby is pictured here.

I took time to acclimate all my cats and dogs with the chickens and ducks. The cats are fascinated by the chickens and often spend hours napping and watching them.

Honestly, I don't know how anyone could keep poulty, fowl, and livestock without the help of cats. The advantage of shelter adoption is that if you at first choose a cat that is not suitable, you can return it and try another. I am sure if you have a good plan for acclimation, you can make about any cat work. Even one of your housecats would deter mice and rats if not actually kill them.

Honestly, my chickens could learn some manners from Jetta shown here - the kitten raised in the wild for the first 4 months of her life:

 

[BarefootMom]

you mean like this:

I have since lost this little kitty- don't know what happened to her she just disappeared. Would love to have another one. She always went to bed with the chickens and watched over them much like a rooster would.