Nevadans?

[americanvalkyrie]

Here is a link to the new page https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/nevada-thread-members-and-friends The mods will edit it soon to reflect the link to the new list.

Wow, I need to earn myself a tagline! All the cool people have one.

 

[aubreynoramarie]

I'll ditto Sunny's remarks on this one about the potential for rodents. I found out the hard way years back in the goat barn that just 2 straw bales made a nifty home for about 13 rats. Not much fun when I turned it over....well, maybe for whoever might've seen my reaction.

Okay I really dont wanna see rats though! I could just see Elvis bringing one of them into the house!

I used to have pet rats. Three of them. Mcsqueeb, McSquid, and Lady Deathstrike. I made them little pockets inside of my coats and we used to walk around downtown together. They rarely relieved themselves on me and i liked them a whole lot. I had them for about a year, then for some reason they all ate eachother....

I was a little bit weirder before I met Mark, I guess!

 

[aubreynoramarie]

Wow, I need to earn myself a tagline! All the cool people have one.

We made up our own! Yours has to have something to do with your glorious gardening and canning!

 

[americanvalkyrie]

Ill try not to, haha. We are going to pile the bales on the outside of the coop so we dont lose any space on the inside (even though I have somehow managed to keep my chicken count to about 10 birds UNDER the limit! can you believe that?!?!) And if mice wanna hang out in them its fine with me. So long as they arent in the coop and arent in my house. my cats are amazing hunters and like to leave me their spoils

That's one thing I don't have around here is a good mouser. Neighbors on both sides have cats that camp out just outside the fence, waiting for mice. But Tater won't let them in the yard. With this Depression Era house, the mice move in for the winter. They're trying to move in now, even with all the food and comfy conditions outside!!! Yesterday we spent $100 at Green's Feed for 3 different rodent solutions... An enter-only trap for inside the coop and in the dog's area, a pine-scented repellant for the massage office and the living room, and a super duper mouse-killing pellet. The pellets are the exact size and shape as the dog food that everyone here but the kids seem to go nuts oer, so that's only going in the crawl space under the house. We really want a rat zapper, but they were all out. And we'd need at least 4 of them, and they're $50 each. But I'm sure we'll be investing in the future. I've heard those things just work too well to not get one.

 

[aubreynoramarie]

That's one thing I don't have around here is a good mouser. Neighbors on both sides have cats that camp out just outside the fence, waiting for mice. But Tater won't let them in the yard. With this Depression Era house, the mice move in for the winter. They're trying to move in now, even with all the food and comfy conditions outside!!! Yesterday we spent $100 at Green's Feed for 3 different rodent solutions... An enter-only trap for inside the coop and in the dog's area, a pine-scented repellant for the massage office and the living room, and a super duper mouse-killing pellet. The pellets are the exact size and shape as the dog food that everyone here but the kids seem to go nuts oer, so that's only going in the crawl space under the house. We really want a rat zapper, but they were all out. And we'd need at least 4 of them, and they're $50 each. But I'm sure we'll be investing in the future. I've heard those things just work too well to not get one.

And honestly I know another pet seems like a far fetched idea but having the cats around here they really do pull their weight. They spend hlf their time outside and half their time inside and I have only ever seen a mouse in here once, and that was in the garage. I let the cat in the garage and she stayed there for almost a full day until the deed was done. Doesnt get much better than that!

 

[americanvalkyrie]

We made up our own! Yours has to have something to do with your glorious gardening and canning!

Hmmm, I'll have to think on that, then. Maybe I'll ask Sahara to come up with one.

 

[Peep_Show]

Rat solution:

After the above-mentioned shrieky rat scatter, I told my tale to a friend who came up with the best solution ever. They came over for a visit and saw that my barn was pretty escape-proof when the doors were closed (it was a huge BarnMaster with sliding doors...when locked down the only escape would be through the roof eaves vents). We ferried the goats into a separate stall for the night, opened all the other stall doors and feed room and let loose -- I kid you not -- a mongoose. The next morning we opened the barn door, scooped up the slinky critter and found a huge pile of dead rats in the corner. Wow! Better yet, the dead rats were bagged and sent off to be food for other caged critters my friend had. If it weren't for the fact that weasels and chickens do not mix, I'd recommend this as a solution! (It pays to have friends who keep exotics....) I have no idea if ferrets would work the same rodent-catching magic.

I wish I could say it was a permanent solution, but a barn with feed is like a co-op condo for rodents... Soon as one vacates, there's more lined up waiting to get in. The best solution is not to provide them a ready place to hide.

 

[americanvalkyrie]

So where do you get a mongoose outside of a Rudyard Kipling environment?

 

[aubreynoramarie]

I'm gonna go ahead and risk it for the sake of muffling the roosters in the morning. Since the hay bales will be outside then them nesting in the hay would be a deth sentence with all the cats around here.

 

[aubreynoramarie]

I also assume that come winter I am going to have to tarp them to keep them dry and prevent mold, right?