My chicken complex is right near drainage/storm ditches, so I get a huge number of mice in my chicken houses as a result.
I didn't realize how many I had until I went in the main henhouse one night last week, and it was just covered over with mice -- several hundred of them in a 13 foot by 7 and 1/2 foot area. I was so disgusted...
Anyway, I went on the war path after that.
Come to find out,
coca-cola is an effective mouse killer!
You see, mice love the taste of coca-cola. Its sweet, and smells great to them. But the thing is, mice cannot burp or belch. So if they drink all that carbonation, it ferments further in their bellies, but they have no way to belch that excess gas out the way that you and I can.
So the gas collects in their bellies until it kills them!
It isn't an instant death, but on the other hand, it won't endanger your chooks.
For four nights now, I have removed all food from the henhouse after the kids go to sleep. I bought plastic "cookie tins" at
WalMart in the after Christmas sales, so I took the plastic lids for some of these "cookie tins" to use for my mouse killing project.
Here's what I did:
1, I put a wire dog cage in the house, so that I could set up a special killing zone that the mice would have free access to, but my chickens would not.
2, I got a bunch of those glue traps -- both rat traps (even though I don't have any rats -- just mice) and mouse traps. I put two of the larger rat traps inside the wire dog cage so that the chickens could not get near them. Then I put several large bowl lids in the cage, and filled them up with freshly opened, fully carbonated coca-cola. I made sure the cage was locked up, so there was no way the chickens could get to this.
3, I emptied their feeding troughs completely, so that there was nothing for the mice to eat except that wonderful smelling, sinfully enticing, carbonated coca-cola to eat/drink. I refilled the bowl lids with coca-cola several times during the night, because they would drink the stuff up.
4, The mice went into the wire killing cage in droves. Some drank some of the coca-cola and then left when full. I had to refill the bowl lids several times during the night, because the mice would empty them. Other mice would end up walking onto one of the glue traps. If they did that, they were stuck -- literally -- because glue mouse traps really will catch mice. Those rat glue traps were large enough that on the first night, each one caught about 15 mice each.
5, Ten minutes before the lights come back on in the morning, I get out there with a garbage bag and get all the glue traps out of there, and remove the bowl lids so that they can be cleaned before they return to duty at sunset. I make sure to close the wire dog pen door to keep the chickens out of the killing cage during the day.
6, Then I fill the chickens feeding trough with food. The lights come on about that time, and for the most part, the mice will stay hidden during the time the lights are on.
The first night that henhouse was completely covered over with mice after lights out. But after 4 nights of doing this, I am noticing that I'm not seeing very many mice anymore. Nor am I capturing anywhere near as many with the glue traps. Some glue traps don't even have a single mouse on them now. Best I can tell, after four nights of doing this thus far, I have significantly cut the number of mice in the henhouse.
I don't think there is any way of ever making the henhouse completely mouse free, because of how close it is to that drainage ditch.
But I'm determined to keep the rodent ranks as thin as possible for now on, and coca-cola is definitely the way to go with that...