Official BYC Poll: How Do You Keep Rodents Away From Your Coop?

[alichic]

Never ever use poison. Raptors, cats, other predators and even your chickens can eat those dead and dying rodents and the poison can kill or cause serious illness

Cats are the way to go. I adopted a few feral cats which took 3 months to socialize and now sleep in the house during the day and are aggressive hunters at night. They patrol our barn and chicken coop and run - which they can get in and out of. The only downside are almost nightly gifts of live rodents which i have become adept at catching and about 2x/week i have to clean up rodent remains. Not and issue if they live fully in the barn or are mostly feral. My cats are well fed daily and dont rely on rodent dinners. Some pepole believe that you shouldnt feed your barn cats but that is not true. They should also get treated regularly for worms and have tick and flea protection. Barn cats and feral cats are usually available through local adoption services, local farms, word of mouth…Some cats wont and cant live inside = not my preference but putting them to work is better than what will happen to them in a shelter when they dont get adopted.

This is an 80gm wood rat which i took deep into the woods and released (my preference is to release them) and the kitties after a busy night working.

 

[Snooky doodle]

Rodents aren't good to have around your chickens as they carry diseases and can really wreck your coop and your chicken's food and water. Given the opportunity, rodents can wreak havoc on a poultry farm especially when they target the small, vulnerable chicks. They also love stealing chicken eggs and if you find an empty eggshell with a smallish hole on the side, chances are it was a rodent's handiwork. It's best to do your best efforts and your coop and run rodent-free.

So we want to find out: How Do You Keep Rodents Away From Your Coop?

Please place your vote above, and elaborate in a reply below if you chose "Other".

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Further Reading:

• Keeping your Coop Mite and Rodents Free
• How To Protect Your Chickens From Mice
• How To Protect Your Chickens From Rats

(Check out more Official BYC Polls HERE!)

Our homestead is infested with chimpmunks this year! They're attracted to the chicken coops and bird feeders and can haul away a lot of seed in the course of a day! Can't shoot em cause of neighbors, can't poison them cause of the cats, and they've actually figured how to get the bait off my rat traps without tripping them!! I hate being out-smarted by a rodent!!!

 

[MrsPeterTHooper]

We first saw rats when the foxes in our area were wiped out due to mange. We are in a suburban area. The rats made nests all over our property: under our concrete porch, under bushes, even found a small hole into the house . Our chickens already have a coop that is 2 feet off the ground and is quite locked up at night; we never found any evidence of the rats in the coop so we didn't change anything there. We installed 1/4 inch hardware cloth two feet deep around our porch, filled the hole into the house, and dug up the bush with the biggest nest (it wasn't a loss to us anyway). We used a live trap to catch and transport to a nearby drainage ditch area where some hawks had a nest nearby. We began using rodent-proof food and water holders and only fed scraps to the chickens in the morning. All of this worked to get rid of the infestation. After a couple years the foxes have returned and now we feel more secure about the rat problem so we relaxed on the when we feed scraps and we never see any evidence of any rodents, even when some food has been left on the ground accidentally. While foxes will go after chickens, our chickens are kept in the secure pen except when we are with them and we never see them (or evidence of them) during the day anyway.

 

[Bonnieboo]

We didn't want to use poison so after a search, we found a battery-operated trap.
Peanut butter at one end of a tunnel lures them in and they step on electric plates on the floor of the tunnel as they head for the peanut butter, and are instantly electrocuted.
We found this to be a very efficient method and after using it for about 6 months, we haven't caught any. I think there must have been a rat and mouse forum and a unanimous vote was reached, the chook shed was a "no-go" zone!!!

 

[cluckmecoop7]

What kind of feeders do you use? Picture please

 

[Al Gerhart]

And we have a winner! Cluckmecoop. The one solution that always solves a rodent problem and pays for itself in feed savings due to spilled feed and stolen feed.

The caveats are that you must have some full sized birds if you have bantams or silkies, the feeders must be solidly secured to a wall or post, and the treadle MUST always hit the ground for fast training. Don't use with chicks or poults, they will get trapped! Wait till the poults are at least three pounds so they have the reach as well as the weight.

Past that, coop up the birds during training with no other food available including old feed in the litter, and follow the instructions to the very letter. Don't use logic, don't make up your own method of training, don't coddle the birds. A few hours of being hungry will do the trick.

Once you stop feeding the rodents they leave. They start foraging for natural food and the predators pick them off and keep their numbers in check to what the habitat will support.

Any treadle feeder is better than no treadle feeder but when shopping please read the negative reviews carefully because those are usually the customers that had rat problems. A spring loaded door and a counterweight to offset the weight of the treadle and step are needed. The pretty treadle feeders that don't have these features or have plastic parts or overhead doors are not rat proof.

Squirrels are rodents too and a lot harder to stop if there is a bunch of them. One or two, maybe IF you keep the spring set pretty stiff so they cannot push the door open. But it makes a great squirrel trap if four or five squirrels gang up on the feeder. Get the medium feeder with the metal french cleat bracket, lift it off the cleat and go for a drive if the sucker hasn't suffocated already. Rats rarely defeat the feeder and when they do you have dozens of rats big enough to push past the spring and they will pack the feeder and trap themselves and smother. Rarely happens, only in large commercial or free range flocks where they have hundreds of rats already colonizing the area. Even there what happens is they suffocate in one feeder and even after cleaning they will not mess with that feeder again. One large free range flock owner was mad as heck once the first feeder was filled with dozens of rats and we got a blistering email. A few weeks later they wrote back, each feeder in turn was packed with rats one by one, then they either ran out of rats or the rats moved on and we got another email apologizing for the nasty email.

Stop feeding the rats and they will leave!

 

[reddingchicken]

I use live traps outdoors, we have rats, mice and many more skunks, opossum and raccoon.
Only live traps now, since a young hen flew out of the run and sampled the peanut butter in a rat spring trap. The fires every year have driven a lot of creatures out the more rural areas.

 

[PeepOverlord]

Not much helps. We can’t even keep them out of the house here. Even keeping the food outside and locking it into the shed at night they still use the coop for shelter. It’s farm country around here so every time someone mows or plows a field we end up with them in the house and the coop. We also don’t want to risk poisoning any of our animals or the wild animals so we no longer put out poison.
Edit: forgot to say that my chickens are also voracious mouse hunters. I regularly find... remains

I'm surrounded by hundreds of acres of sugar cane, soybeans, corn and sourghum. Soon they will start harvesting - then burning. I absolutely dread the rat/mice/snakes tidal wave that's coming.
This area is overpopulated with feral/unwanted/dumped off cats and dogs who kill small domestic livestock for fun but are useless for controlling any animal capable of fighting back. My hens will happily eat mice (how else am I going to sell mouse eggs? but they can only eat so many. It's the big Norway rats that are going to be the majority of the invading horde.
Electric traps work awesome, but only indoors. How do you deal with the outdoor invasion?
(Poison isn't an option - farm is all organic)

 

[Artichoke Lover]

I'm surrounded by hundreds of acres of sugar cane, soybeans, corn and sourghum. Soon they will start harvesting - then burning. I absolutely dread the rat/mice/snakes tidal wave that's coming.
This area is overpopulated with feral/unwanted/dumped off cats and dogs who kill small domestic livestock for fun but are useless for controlling any animal capable of fighting back. My hens will happily eat mice (how else am I going to sell mouse eggs? but they can only eat so many. It's the big Norway rats that are going to be the majority of the invading horde.
Electric traps work awesome, but only indoors. How do you deal with the outdoor invasion?
(Poison isn't an option - farm is all organic)

I don’t honestly think much can be done. A good outdoor cat or door is cat if they are a known mouser. We’ve had some animals that are great at it and some are useless. We have one cat that will take creatures as big as 5 or 6 pounds. I know a few people on here shoot rats with a pellet gun but I don’t have that kind of patience and I doubt I’d be accurate enough. I think some people also set up bucket traps outside.

 

[Crazy Maizie]

For those of you with cats outside, what's your set up like for them? Would the animal shelter adopt our cats that would be "barn cats" (I don't have a barn). Also, would a cat eat a polish chicken? I have 2 that are about 2 months and they aren't super big compared to my other birds. @Aunt Angus @papajoesfarm