OH RATS! - no eggs...for weeks!!

[Feath3rDust3r]

so I may have been a bit slow in seeing this problem...I have 3 coops and one of my coops had been empty for a while. It's a big shed with a side run...pretty old. we replaced the floor a couple of years ago and fixed some wall issues but it would have to be burned down and rebuilt to rodent proof it. A couple of months ago I bought 15 layers...the lady assured me they were all laying and they are in beautiful condition and only about 18 months old. Well...the first day or two I only got one egg...weird, but I figured they were just settling in. The next day there were 3 eggs...one on the floor, one out in front of the next box and one in the nest box with a hole in it! I was so mad at myself for buying EGG EATING Chickens!! --- still didn't think about rodents --- anyway I wasn't having any luck getting eggs, there were either none, or broken eggs...I saw that the hens had started molting so I figured that once the moult was over I'd start to reap my 15 eggs a day (I know, probably 8 or 10 realistically) but still...better than none!

Last week I wanted to move my 8 week old pullets into one of my coops so I took the 3 laying hens from that and moved them into the coop with the "Non layers". I went from getting 3 eggs a day from those chickens to NONE!!

That's when it hit me that I had a sneaky pest stealing my eggs! I bought a game camera and set it up...and ...you guessed ...RATS!! from 5pm at night to 4am in the morning RATS everywhere!!!

I dropped some of those green poison blocks into the hole in the back of the wall where they are coming in...I don't know if that's enough but I can't set traps because I don't want to catch my chickens or kids!

Here's where I'm confused...I didn't catch any images of rats collecting my eggs during the day...so is there some point where the rats will scare off the chickens from laying at all? I didn't see any chickens laying eggs...I may have to move the camera so I can see down into the nest boxes but from where it is at the moment it didn't look like there were rats in there during the day.

The rats can't get my food because I have those treadle feeders....they're supposed to be rodent proof. Once I've stopped seeing rats in my shed I'll move my camera outside and focus it on the feeders just to be sure!

 

[ackie]

I had a possum eating eggs. I caught him in the middle of it apparently because there was just a broken egg - I was worried it was my hen too. I put a live trap over the egg bits and he was mine in the morning muhahahah. she never did restart laying though and within a couple weeks something ate her head off. but I digress.

Stress can make a hen not lay, regardless of the cause.

If you put out rat poison, be ready to remove a bunch of icky dead rats. Its very effective but ew. If you're worried about catching something else in a typical rat trap, maybe a small live trap. you could also put it somewhere a rat can go but not a hen. and too small and harmless to hurt your children. I regularly catch our own cats in the coyote trap and they are royally unhappy but unharmed.

Stress can make hens stop laying regardless of what causes the stress, so I'd say yes. If they feel there isnt a safe place to put a nest, they might stop trying to build one. + winter is coming.

 

[Feath3rDust3r]

Well hopefully if I can remove as many of the rats as possible the stress will be gone...I have about 20 hens in there now and I do usually get some eggs in the winter...admittedly not so many...but usually a few a day.

 

[B-Goock]

Collect all the eggs before the evening and block that hole with anything. Nail anything you have over the hole. Even tin snip a can to cover the hole. Stick a brick in front of it.
Go full on infantry and sit outside with a pellet gun. I'd rather do that than have a poisoned rat be picked off by an owl and kill them both.

I got mice one time that between box traps, evening pellet gun sniping, locating their hiding spots, removing all feed each evening, and a couple evenings I put a cat in there eliminated the mice.

 

[cmom]

The green baits didn't work for me either. Our barn is behind the coops. I bought some rat bait stations and bought some different bait from the feed store down the road. The Rats loved it. The bait station has a little window above the bait so it can be checked daily and replaced as needed. I did not find dead rats laying around but did notice the decline. Eventually the baits weren't being touched and I didn't see any rats. I did notice some tunnels around the coops that I assumed the rats had made and the reason I hadn't found any dead ones was because they went into their tunnels and died. Nothing can get to the bait except the rats. Good luck...

 

[Feath3rDust3r]

To update on this post...

I set some sticky traps in a nest box and sealed it off and left a little hole. I caught a bunch of MICE...not rats! Granted they were big but definitely mice.

I couldn't believe that mice could carry off eggs ...so finally we decided to fix the coop. We tore the walls out and found that there was a hole, they were rolling eggs into a hole and dropping them down onto an enormous pile of feathers.

We also found that one corner of the shed was rotten and my DH decided to fix it properly...so YAY...we moved the shed, and we'll be pouring a concrete floor...then we'll repair the walls and re side the shed with tin! I'm soooooo happy!!

 

[Sally PB]

Thanks for the update. Glad you could fix it.

 

[Allsfairinloveandbugs]

Yes glad u solved the problem/found a solution!

 

[cmom]

I changed the siding on a couple of my coops to metal. So far so good.