Pied Rats?

[Redcatcher]

I have been trying to get rid of these buggers for years. The are smallish, do not have the typical rat shaped head and have fancy white markings. I think they are feral but I still want them gone. I found two babies drowned in a SMALL water bucket. Although wild rats sometimes drown in buckets too, these do not seem to be as "smart" as wild rats. Not saying that domesticated rats are stupid, they just have not had to survive in the wild for thousands of years.

 

[Miss Lydia]

We had an unusual rat visit our feed dish a couple of years ago in broad daylight while all the ducks were just laying around, didn't have chickens at the time. Light brown in color, I looked it up it was a wood rat, I'd never seen one before and haven't seen it since.

 

[treldib]

A few years back we caught a White Rat in a trap

It wasn't albino...it had black eyes...

 

[D'Angelo N Va.]

Oh my, is this because someone nearby had let their rats/mice go free and they had multiplied or is it common in the wild?

 

[aprophet]

Quote:
this is normally how I deal with them google bucket rat trap they can be made with 5 gallon buckets or 55 gallon barrels ( mostly for farmers) they all work well

 

[PepsNick]

Interesting. The cats handle our rodents for us.

 

[Redcatcher]

I think, I hope, I have shut the boogers out of there tonight. It really irked me when I checked on the chickens late last night and saw all the rats. I have an old chicken house and the old man who owned the house before was not doing any repairs. Instead of replacing panes of glass, he would just board up the whole window. I have been fixing it up a little at a time. Anyway, the plywood overlapped the window and gave the rats a nice little inner wall to nest in. The were coming and going out of the window. There must have been a dozen of them in the wall and they all started bailing out the window when they saw me. Most it seemed were babies. Lately, it seemed as if my chickens were eating twice their normal amount and I found a bag of layer pellets torn open. So, today, I stapled chicken wire to the window (for now), ripped the plywood out of there and then stapled heavy plastic up. I put all of the feed into the plastic trash barrel and have been thinking about sprinkling cayenne pepper on the layer pellets. Birds seem to like it and the rats should have one hot tamale.