Mice!!

[Vanilla Gorilla]

I went to check on the chickens last night, and when I opened up the door a saw a mouse quickly scurry out of sight. I have a couple of questions - 1. Do mice eat eggs? I have 4 pullets just started laying, and I've been seeing a lot of weird egg issues. I chalked it up to having inexperienced layers, but now I wonder if the mice have been getting to them. 2. What are some of your suggestions to control/prevent mouse infestations around your coops? Any info is greatly appreciated!

 

[RonP]

Posted to another query.
Hope it helps.:

My understanding is that rats/mice are everywhere.
They will congregate and breed where there is available food, water, and shelter.
Look closely around any fast food restaurant and you will see rat bait stations.

They will eventually come, the idea is to prevent them from establishing a colony.
If you see 1, there are probably fifty.
If you see two or more holes, expect dozens.

Keeping a rat trap/bait station baited 24/7 hopefully keeps the population from establishing near your food source. Once established, they are very difficult to eliminate.

Remember, chickens don't attract rats, food does.

That said, I fabricated black 4 inch circular x 18" long drainage plastic pipe as a bait station.
Placed along the outside of my coop, looks like drainage pipe (not unsightly).
I put a t fitting in the center, capped, for easy viewing once a week.
Inside I maintain commercial rat poison.

My run has food scraps 24/7.
My coop has food access 24/7.
Water access 24/7.

11 years, no sign of rats or mice...

Hope this helps.

 

[CntryBoy777]

Mice wouldn't do damage to an uncracked egg and are more interested in any crumbs of feed they can scrounge. We have cats and an elevated coop to aid in combating the problem. Chickens will kill and eat mice too, especially young ones. It is for this reason that poisons wouldn't be a good idea, not only would they peck at the poison, but could and would eat on any dead mouse they see. Using something like Tin Cats or Ketch Alls would be a way to catch and eliminate rodent issues....this does require checking traps regularly and disposing of live rodents caught in the traps....the best way is to submerge the trap in a 5 gal bucket of water and leave it for a couple of minutes to drown them before emptying the trap. They will also catch small snakes, so be sure to follow the directions in checking the trap.

 

[Snoozeys]

1 mice will steal the poultry food but not the eggs ... rats are more likely to steal your eggs
2 remove all food from inside the coop

 

[Howard E]

Mice won't harm eggs or birds, but do represent a major problem. Rats and mice are a preferred food source of larger predators what will harm the birds. Predators like skunks, snakes and weasels that are attracted to the large concentrations of vermin (that is their roll in nature.......to thin the herd). But those larger predators are also opportunistic killers and can easily transition to your birds.

So good idea to get rid of the mice. I too had a problem and I eliminated it by using a rat proof feeder to eliminate the waste feed on the ground the mice were eating. Once I got rid of the waste feed, the mice soon went elsewhere.

 

[Vanilla Gorilla]

Posted to another query.
Hope it helps.:

My understanding is that rats/mice are everywhere.
They will congregate and breed where there is available food, water, and shelter.
Look closely around any fast food restaurant and you will see rat bait stations.

They will eventually come, the idea is to prevent them from establishing a colony.
If you see 1, there are probably fifty.
If you see two or more holes, expect dozens.

Keeping a rat trap/bait station baited 24/7 hopefully keeps the population from establishing near your food source. Once established, they are very difficult to eliminate.

Remember, chickens don't attract rats, food does.

That said, I fabricated black 4 inch circular x 18" long drainage plastic pipe as a bait station.
Placed along the outside of my coop, looks like drainage pipe (not unsightly).
I put a t fitting in the center, capped, for easy viewing once a week.
Inside I maintain commercial rat poison.

My run has food scraps 24/7.
My coop has food access 24/7.
Water access 24/7.

11 years, no sign of rats or mice...

Hope this helps.

Thanks for your reply! I'm interested in this contraption, can you explain it a little more? I'm not quite following how it works. The upright portion is just to check on the bait? The diagram refers to it as a bait reservoir - so do you store bait in here? Do you find rodent corpses all over the place, or do the crawl away and die somewhere else?

 

[aart]

I have been able to keep mice under control with snap traps always set(where the birds can't get at them) and feed stored in a metal can.

 

[Howard E]

update:

Decided it was time to clean out the old litter and restock with new for the winter. So out with the old......



and in with the new.......



Not one single mouse, mouse hole or tunnel was found under the old stuff. The rat proof feeder lurking in the corner appears to be doing the job!

BTW, that is what a fresh layer of old, coarse grass hay litter looks like. Birds will tromp around on top of that, scratching around. Droppings will work their way to the bottom, where they interact with the moist soil and hay to start a cold compost / rot process. Will be garden ready come spring.

 

[Vanilla Gorilla]

update:

Decided it was time to clean out the old litter and restock with new for the winter. So out with the old......

View attachment 1180596

and in with the new.......

View attachment 1180597

Not one single mouse, mouse hole or tunnel was found under the old stuff. The rat proof feeder lurking in the corner appears to be doing the job!

BTW, that is what a fresh layer of old, coarse grass hay litter looks like. Birds will tromp around on top of that, scratching around. Droppings will work their way to the bottom, where they interact with the moist soil and hay to start a cold compost / rot process. Will be garden ready come spring.

So do you use crumble or pellets in your feeder? I would imagine pellets, but I'm still pretty new to keeping chickens. I figure that's what is attracting the mice is all the food the girls scatter all over the ground.

 

[Howard E]

I have used both. Crumbles create more mess and waste......but my birds refuse to eat pellets, so crumbles it is. But that is the nice feature of the rat proof feeder......it eliminates all the wasted feed that attracts the mice.

Before that feeder went in, I had mice living in the litter and yes, they were feasting on all the wasted feed the birds were raking out onto the ground. When I forked the litter around last spring a dozen or so boiled up from below. With this new feeder......none.