Opinions on mouse control

[Thanera]

So for the last year I've been using a 5 gallon bucket feeder for my chickens and noticed in the last couple months that a few mice have shown up in the run, especially at night to hop into the access holes on the bucket and eat the chicken food. I know they are not good for the chickens to have around so I decided to just use a trough and only put in enough food that the chickens will eat during the day. However now because of that my chickens don't eat until I wake up a few hours after they are let out by the automatic door. They have access to their Chicken run/water where they can pick up little bits of plants and whatnot still but are they okay going for a few hours without being fed their food? Would it be better to go back to my old system? Should I try to lay out a few mouse traps and get rid of the mice? Though I guess they would probably just come back with the 5 gallon bucket feeder. I have small bantams and a treadle feeder is a bit out of my budget right now.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

They're fine if you take food out during the night.

 

[addctd2plnts]

Don't use poison if you have dogs or cats around. Had two dogs get less than a Tablespoon total and cost me 3K to save their lives. Since then I use sticky traps in places other animals can't get into. Mice can quickly go from a few to hundreds and they tend to move outwards from one place to the next. I don't want them in the house.

 

[GC-Raptor]

Warning; photo of mouse on sticky trap.
I use sticky traps too.
I like the CatchMaster glue boards. They are very sticky. I get them from my local Stop & Shop.
I tried another brand from TSC and I've found fur on surface, but no mouse, doesn't seem as sticky.

My coops are rodent proof when pop door is closed at night, but mice and chipmunks come around during the day.
I don't get many mice in coops as my chickens will eat them. I only caught two in coops this year.
When I see rodent droppings I put out a glue board.
I put inside coop in storage area (blocked nest box) that I keep large coffee cans of feed and scratch and up high above windows in my bought coop.
If you have a wire dog kennel (broody breaker) put that inside coop overnight with a couple of glue boards inside and Scratch Grains or feed in between.
I check boards every time I visit coops.
If I find a mouse alive I step on it.
I found droppings in my car earlier this week and put a couple of glue boards inside and caught this.

GC

 

[Thanera]

Oh man, no disrespect to people who use glue boards, but I don't think I could bring myself to use those. I know mice are pests but that method seems to just be prolonged suffering for the thing. I've also found too many other animals trapped in them before like Gardner snakes etc. I appreciate everyone's opinion though, thank you

 

[Vacman]

Whatever you decide on, don't use poison. Too many possible problems with other animals. I have looked for signs of mice coming into my coop shelter at night but haven't found any. At this point, if there were some mice coming in, I wouldn't be concerned unless there was some damage cause by them. The sticky traps do work though. You can now buy some plastic mouse traps on Amazon and they work well, better than the old style mouse traps.

 

[rosemarythyme]

You should both be trapping mice and getting the population under control, and removing feed at night to give them less reason to be coming into your run.

The chickens will be fine without food overnight and into the next morning (mine need to wait until I get up to get fed), especially if there's water available all day long as that's a more crucial need.

 

[Thanera]

Whatever you decide on, don't use poison. Too many possible problems with other animals. I have looked for signs of mice coming into my coop shelter at night but haven't found any. At this point, if there were some mice coming in, I wouldn't be concerned unless there was some damage cause by them. The sticky traps do work though. You can now buy some plastic mouse traps on Amazon and they work well, better than the old style mouse traps.

You should both be trapping mice and getting the population under control, and removing feed at night to give them less reason to be coming into your run.

The chickens will be fine without food overnight and into the next morning (mine need to wait until I get up to get fed), especially if there's water available all day long as that's a more crucial need.

Thanks! Good to know they'll be okay to wait a few hours in the morning to be fed when I get up. I'll set up a few traps to control the population.

 

[Hopeful homesteader]

Snap traps with peanut butter has always worked well for me. Have a jar that expired last year that I store in the cabinet above the stove so I don't accidentally contaminate the good jar and wrote mouse trap all over it so no one eats it. One evening they were snapping the traps faster than I could set them when the neighbors were moving, after a week I wasn't catching anything anymore and haven't seen any since.

 

[Katanahamon]

Oh man, no disrespect to people who use glue boards, but I don't think I could bring myself to use those. I know mice are pests but that method seems to just be prolonged suffering for the thing. I've also found too many other animals trapped in them before like Gardner snakes etc. I appreciate everyone's opinion though, thank you

I use them occasionally inside the house as an early warning, but, I dispatch the poor things in a bucket with CO2 from a brewing tank so they don’t suffer for long..