MICE!!!!

[CJkid]

I looking for some ideas on how to clear my coop of the mouse invasion

they have obviously been living under the coop for some time now and have been loving the warm and well fed conditions through the winter.
recently i picked up one of those noise things that is supposed to drive rodents away from the sound it makes.... but it doesn't seem to be having any affect on them.

I have been reluctant to put poison down because i don't want the chickens to get into it and there have been a few times that i have found the open corpse of a mouse in the beak of a hen (or 2 or 3 fighting over it)

any ideas... if poison is the only option how do i keep the hens from being poisoned?

 

[Spikes Chooks]

You might be better to use a trap, placed away from where the chickens can get to it. That way, you ensure the poisoned mouse doesn't move into where a chicken can grab it.

 

[Spikes Chooks]

Or get a Spike (he's my avatar). He loves mice. Yum, yum!

 

[Reformed]

You could just get a normal mouse trap

 

[mandelyn]

I take shoe boxes and cut a small mouse sized hole in two sides, then place two baited traps in there. Baited with peanut butter. I had 2 boxes, 4 traps total, and over the course of several weeks, averaged 3 caught mice a night. For a grand total of 32. No poison, and the boxes keep the traps hidden from the chickens. I keep one box out now with 2 traps set, for any stragglers. Haven't caught one in a while, and the feed bowl is still full in the morning.

 

[appps]

I've tried that trick with the traps and caught nothing. Did you have to remove any other food first? Only reason I can think why it's not working.

 

[mandelyn]

I left the food out, thinking peanut butter would smell better to them anyways. But since I haven't caught any in awhile, I was giving thought to removing the feed to see if that changed anything.

 

[shmccarthy]

Have you tried the bucket trap yet?

 

[CJkid]

I take shoe boxes and cut a small mouse sized hole in two sides, then place two baited traps in there. Baited with peanut butter. I had 2 boxes, 4 traps total, and over the course of several weeks, averaged 3 caught mice a night. For a grand total of 32. No poison, and the boxes keep the traps hidden from the chickens. I keep one box out now with 2 traps set, for any stragglers. Haven't caught one in a while, and the feed bowl is still full in the morning.

Hmm... interesting. this is a good idea esp no poison

 

[CJkid]

Have you tried the bucket trap yet?

we accidently discovered the bucket trap
we changed some plumbing down in our crawl space so my dad left a bucket under one of the connections to make sure it didn't leak
time went by... and we started to smell something.... the smell got worse and worse
one day dad went to put that bucket away and found 5 or 6 dead mice... hence the smell
and come to find out that is a well know trap haha
i haven't tried it out by the chicken coop but i can say that it does work