Mice eating feed and getting into coops

[Debbie292d]

I'll look into making those! Do you happen to know if those smells will bother the chickens/doves?

Nope, but I don't put them where they can get them. We have them up in the rafters and some nailed to walls out of their reach. They are non-toxic but I wouldn't want them eating that, and highly doubt they would touch it.

 

[Debbie292d]

I set up a snap trap near a mouse nest in a wall cavity in the coop that cannot be accessed by the chickens. The trap catches rodents regularly. I got a mouse today, in fact. I check it daily and reset with chicken feed as the bait.

I'd need to buy stock in the mouse-trap company, lol. The only way we can beat them is just to keep them out in the first place.

 

[Debbie292d]

Yes, I put the feed away at night. I do want to get a cat at some point

When the time comes, check with your local Humane Society as they have free barn cats. We got Stella as a barn cat, and she's my little lover cat, but she is quite the hunter, too. When we first got her, I got her on camera following a skunk past our parrot aviary. You just need to keep them in the house for the first two weeks so they will be more apt to stick around. She wound up an inside/outside cat.

 

[StinkyAcres]

I'd need to buy stock in the mouse-trap company, lol. The only way we can beat them is just to keep them out in the first place.

Surprisingly, having just one snap trap makes a noticeable difference in my coop. I guess it also helps that we have lots of wildlife here that eat rodents.

 

[Debbie292d]

Surprisingly, having just one snap trap makes a noticeable difference in my coop. I guess it also helps that we have lots of wildlife here that eat rodents.

The lady farmer across the road told me that the fox coming up through the woods past our breeding pens and crossing the road was going to her barn to kill rats. I never knew a fox would eat a rat, so we put up with the fox traveling to her place via ours for a while. Then rerouted it by playing a radio over there.

 

[StinkyAcres]

The lady farmer across the road told me that the fox coming up through the woods past our breeding pens and crossing the road was going to her barn to kill rats. I never knew a fox would eat a rat, so we put up with the fox traveling to her place via ours for a while. Then rerouted it by playing a radio over there.

Yup, foxes are very beneficial. Rodents seem to be the primary food of the foxes here. This year we had one (I assume a vixen with kits) regularly hunting in our overgrown pasture. I saw it leave with a mouthful of voles.

 

[Reave]

A bit of a random aside, but if you don't want to use poison / are afraid of secondary poisoning, you can make bait balls with peanut butter (or whatever food your mice are very excited about; bait balls made with poultry food mush and a binder work well if that's what they are already looking for) and baking soda. Rodents can't burp or vomit, much like rabbits and horses, so the Co2 will build up in their systems and kill them relatively quickly. Other animals, like dogs or other wildlife that decide to sample the bait or the dead mice will be unaffected.

Some will learn to associate the smell with "poison", but that is true of any bait block (and seems to be less likely with Co2 vs "regular" warfarin and other baits, but that's anecdotal)

It's not as clean of a death as cervical location by any means, but if someone is going to be using poison anyway that's probably not a huge concern for them. I try to share that alternative when poisoning comes up, 'cause while I agree it still sucks for the mouse, it sucks a lot less if a pet gets ahold of the trap or dead mice.

 

[Al Gerhart]

A bit of a random aside, but if you don't want to use poison / are afraid of secondary poisoning, you can make bait balls with peanut butter (or whatever food your mice are very excited about; bait balls made with poultry food mush and a binder work well if that's what they are already looking for) and baking soda. Rodents can't burp or vomit, much like rabbits and horses, so the Co2 will build up in their systems and kill them relatively quickly. Other animals, like dogs or other wildlife that decide to sample the bait or the dead mice will be unaffected.

Some will learn to associate the smell with "poison", but that is true of any bait block (and seems to be less likely with Co2 vs "regular" warfarin and other baits, but that's anecdotal)

It's not as clean of a death as cervical location by any means, but if someone is going to be using poison anyway that's probably not a huge concern for them. I try to share that alternative when poisoning comes up, 'cause while I agree it still sucks for the mouse, it sucks a lot less if a pet gets ahold of the trap or dead mice.

This has been the subject of several studies. It takes 20% of body weight for baking soda to kill a mouse. Imagine a 200 pound man eating 40 pounds of baking soda. Baking soda is actually given to rats during poison studies, called lavage, to stop the poisoning at a specific level or time.

None of these old wives tales have passed scientific studies. Potato flakes, baking soda, plaster of paris, hot peppers, all is useless.

Do a forum search or rats or mice and chickens on this site. Find Howard E.'s rat control 101 and the rest of his posts on rodents. There have been hundreds of threads but it boils down to three methods of control with levels of cost and efficiency. Sanitation, cheapest and most effective. Build a fort knox coop, effective but ten times more expensive than the sanitation method. Or trapping/poison which is short term and rarely effective and never ending if it was.

 

[StinkyAcres]

Just caught another mouse in the snap trap and one in the bucket trap. That's five in the last few days. The amount of mouse droppings in the chicken feed and their other frequented areas is significantly less. No poison used so I can leave the dead mice out for the owls and other wildlife to eat.

 

[Debbie292d]

This has been the subject of several studies. It takes 20% of body weight for baking soda to kill a mouse. Imagine a 200 pound man eating 40 pounds of baking soda. Baking soda is actually given to rats during poison studies, called lavage, to stop the poisoning at a specific level or time.

None of these old wives tales have passed scientific studies. Potato flakes, baking soda, plaster of paris, hot peppers, all is useless.

Do a forum search or rats or mice and chickens on this site. Find Howard E.'s rat control 101 and the rest of his posts on rodents. There have been hundreds of threads but it boils down to three methods of control with levels of cost and efficiency. Sanitation, cheapest and most effective. Build a fort knox coop, effective but ten times more expensive than the sanitation method. Or trapping/poison which is short term and rarely effective and never ending if it was.

I actually saw this work once though. The farmer across the road from us have rats, we don't. They had taken over her barn where she doesn't keep anything but alfalfa and straw. She said she did the box of Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix and baking soda and left a big pile in the barn. We wound up with five dead rats in our front yard all within about two minutes of each other. They made it that far before dying. One was gigantic. Hubby used a shovel to pick them up, and that one, he said, weighed around 5#. After she saw what happened, she said she'd find another method.