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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[MountainWoman73]

My preferred method is a good barn cat, as well as using a hanging feeder and storing food in a lidded mouse-proof container.

If you have some money to throw at the problem, I hear good things about the Grandpa's chicken feeders. I don't have one myself.

 

[3KillerBs]

I drove at least 2 miles away and release them into a sort of wild park green space.

Releasing vermin on land that you do not own or, at least have specific permission from the owner, is unethical and, in many places, illegal.

Wrapping your run in hardware cloth is better than passing your vermin problem to someone else.

 

[Sueby]

We have a big mouse problem around here because the neighbors feed the birds all year round. They actually chewed a hole in my cars gas tank! They destroy everything.

We use a combination of snap traps, ketch all traps & bucket traps. We have had the most success with the ketch all wind up traps, & though it is a live trap, we drown them once caught. No mercy on those little &^$(#@ - game on when they started destroying my stuff!

(I would LOVE a barn cat but outdoor cats don't survive around here long, unfortunately)

 

[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.

 

[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

 

[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.