mice

[bvill01]

I'm starting to notice mice in the coop what's the best way to get rid of them ? Not sure if used poison it would hurt my chickens

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Tamper proof bait boxes with chunx bait. Don't use pellet poison, it can get strewn about and be eaten by your birds. I keep a bait box right in the run at all times. Tractor Supply sells the tamper proof boxes and has 4 lbs pails of chunx style poison. It lasts a long time. You'll go through half a pail getting rid of the population you currently have grown around you but after that you barely use any except spring and fall when rodents are on the move. Basically you check the box and hardly any is used for months on end then bang! It's empty. That's what happens spring and fall.

 

[aldarita]

I have been very successful using victor electric mice traps. It takes 4 batteries that last a long time. I place the trap in the run at night after the chickens go to roost and take it out in the morning before they come out. I have gotten more than one mouse in the same trap.

 

[aart]

I just keep a couple snap traps set, easy in my coop/shed because coop and shed are separated by HC wire wall.

Keeping your feed in a metal garbage can really help too...
.....and my feeder is a no spill so no feed on floor.

 

[EggSighted4Life]

Hi, welcome to BYC!
I put up my feed every night but can still see all those tiny feet prints around my feeder area. The mamas, babies, and other hens make droppings when they shake their beaks that I can see the the FF chunks flying.

I have used snap traps in the past but it just isn't safe for my other animals now.

Vector control and abatement at our last house in the city did use bait stations. And they said that even if your chickens or a cat consumed a whole dead mouse/rat they would not have any ill effects.

I live in the woods (essentially) and cannot allow this to continue. I already caught a mama and 2 juveniles by accident in an FF bucket I was collecting rain water in... which I chopped in half with shovel and let the chickens eat.

The "chunks" *might* be my solution!

 

[EggSighted4Life]

I have been very successful using victor electric mice traps. It takes 4 batteries that last a long time. I place the trap in the run at night after the chickens go to roost and take it out in the morning before they come out. I have gotten more than one mouse in the same trap.

I had to look these up... wow, they are pricey. But they got really good reviews! Will consider them in the future. I wonder if they work for rats as well.

Thanks for sharing, I didn't even know these existed!

 

[Howard E]

A month or so ago I began to notice signs of mice inside the house. Then one day I turned over a bale of hay I leave in there and about a dozen of them boiled up out of the ground. The chickens got some of them (which lead to the biggest fight I've ever seen.....made the squabbles on the roost at night look like a love fest)......but the rest escaped and despite my efforts to make life rough on them, continued to hang around. Having rats and mice inside your coop is bad for a host of reasons, most of them obvious, but some more subtle.

I am convinced that a lot of our predator troubles with snakes and weasels and some others like cats and skunks starts with a high population of vermin in our houses. State game agencies say that weasels live almost exclusively on rats, mice, gophers, moles, etc. Ground based vermin. As such, they are a highly valued predator......at least as seen through the eyes of the state game folks. The same might be said of many snakes. So the deal is these predators probably sense the rats and mice living in and under the coop and arrive to go after them, but then discover the chickens and make the easy transition to killing those too. So in general, allowing rats and mice to live in and under the house is a bad idea. In days of old about the only predator mentioned in most of the poultry husbandry books were rats and hawks. They went to a lot of trouble keeping rats out.

So how to get rid of them? You starve them out. The only reason they might be there is for the easy meal they get by eating the chicken feed. So you can move the feeders outside, but that just moves the rats and mice outside too if feed is being spilt on the ground. I leave my feeder inside the house as that way I can leave the birds inside the house if I plan to be gone for a few days. That way they can still eat.

So what you need then, is a feeder that limits or eliminates spillage and/or access to the feed. There are a lot of feeder designs that limit spillage, but not many that also limit access to vermin, but that the birds can still have free choice access to whenever they want.

So what I've installed is a rat proof treadle feeder. It took a while to get it installed right, and it took a bit for the birds to learn to use it, but now that they have, my feed loss is down to practically nothing and the mice are gone. Since the birds are not dragging half the feed out onto the ground, that feed is no longer being lost, so their feed consumption is half of what it had been. They eat the same amount, but waste almost none of it now.

When and IF our host site gets the kinks worked out so it is easier to post photographs, I plan to write a review on the feeder I purchased.

http://ratproofchickenfeeder.com/Medium-Ratproof-Chicken-Feeder_p_1.html

 

[EggSighted4Life]

Tamper proof bait boxes with chunx bait. Don't use pellet poison, it can get strewn about and be eaten by your birds. I keep a bait box right in the run at all times. Tractor Supply sells the tamper proof boxes and has 4 lbs pails of chunx style poison. It lasts a long time. You'll go through half a pail getting rid of the population you currently have grown around you but after that you barely use any except spring and fall when rodents are on the move. Basically you check the box and hardly any is used for months on end then bang! It's empty. That's what happens spring and fall.

I have been very successful using victor electric mice traps. It takes 4 batteries that last a long time. I place the trap in the run at night after the chickens go to roost and take it out in the morning before they come out. I have gotten more than one mouse in the same trap.

Do you know if either of these is good enough to keep chicks from entering? Thanks

 

[Egghead_Jr]

I have a grow out pen. We do not keep a bait box in there until the chicks are 5+ weeks old.

 

[aldarita]

Do you know if either of these is good enough to keep chicks from entering? Thanks

The Victor electric trap is not safe for chicks, they can easily get in there and get shocked. I have only used them in my big yard where I have only adult birds and even there I placed it in the run at night when everyone is cooped and take it out early before they come out.