Rats are taking over!

[The Moonshiner]

Yeah she did! Apparently she learned it in Hawaii and became very skilled at it.

We never managed to find a way to kill them that could keep up with their reproductive rate. We had to remove their nest, disturb their greasy little trails and put the feed in every night.

Ya I've found its almost impossible to rid them quicker then they reformulated. Anything that works they soon get wise to so.....
I guess before I go to shoveling rats I should hit the arcade and brush up on my Whack A Mole skills.

 

[JPadronMiami]

Ya I've found its almost impossible to rid them quicker then they reformulated. Anything that works they soon get wise to so.....
I guess before I go to shoveling rats I should hit the arcade and brush up on my Whack A Mole skills.

 

[Growley Monster]

A galvanized garbage can makes a great storage place for the feeder. Feed morning and evening, all they can eat in 20 minutes, then put the feeder away. Feeder on a smooth floor that can be swept will help to deal with the birdies flinging feed all over the place for the rats and mice. During the day I hand feed my free rangers. Currently I only give them food by hand when they let me pick them up. It has really helped to tame these skittish Brown Leghorns. About half of the free rangers I can now coax into being picked up and all the rest will eagerly take flight and alight on my arms, hand, or shoulders for a handout. Before, those guys would all run from me like I was Colonel Sanders. But the whole idea of free ranging is to have them forage for most or much of their nourishment. I have a couple of acres of mowed property that they can patrol for bugs and seeds.

 

[Growley Monster]

Another idea... if you live where you can't shoot varmints with a firearm, maybe you can use a pellet gun? Might be worth looking into.

 

[JPadronMiami]

Another idea... if you live where you can't shoot varmints with a firearm, maybe you can use a pellet gun? Might be worth looking into.

I had been thinking to get a pellet gun, however when i started changing how I fed not leaving feed in the bins after the chickens had their rations i see less and less rats now, however they are still around, my son is getting better at target practice with his bow and arrow since these rats will come around even when we're in the runs! bold little rodents.

 

[MichaelDJ]

That is a great idea where it’s legal. I couldn’t discharge a firearm in suburbia. My neighbor would live trap them and his wife would be ready with a shovel when he opened the trap

It's a pellet gun.

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

It's a pellet gun.

You must be a good shot!

 

[MichaelDJ]

You must be a good shot!

Pretty much.
It's a scoped .22 cal break barrel. Very accurate. Nailed one yesterday at just about 10 yards.

 

[Al Gerhart]

How does everyone who free ranges their chickens deal with the rats?! I have since raised this feeder up but the song birds, squirrels, and rats all have figured out how to use it. My chickens normally eat from here in the morning and then free range until the evening and eat some before bed. I don’t really see them come back to the feeder during the day. I also make a mash with their food and offer that a few times during the day. Food and water go away at night. I have also tried RatX, snap traps, electric traps, bucket traps, live traps, and the ratinator. These rats do not fall for any of it. I literally don’t know what to do anymore. I am literally feeding wildlife and not my actual chickens with this feeder at this point. Because they free range I don’t have a way to secure it from wildlife and not the chickens. I’ve seen treadle feeders but I can only assume rats would also figure that out. I’m just at a loss. Any ideas? Do I take it away fully?

Most of the old wives tales of rodent control like strong scents, ultrasonic, cornmeal and plaster or the like will fail miserably most of the time.

The feeder in your pic, is that a bucket feeder with one of those triggers that drop feed on the ground when the trigger is hit? Those generally fail when the critters learn to jump and hit the trigger from watching the hens.

Poison, traps, shooting, all are forms of the third methods of Howard E.'s much respected rodent control advice. Ineffective, as Moonshiner pointed out, you can't outrun their reproductive capacity, and IF you did as soon as they were gone a new batch would move into the now open territory. The method is also quite costly in the long run and never ending.

The second method of Howard E.'s three methods is building a Fort Knox coop, impossible for a free range flock. It is very expensive but it can be very effective IF you keep the holes patched but useless for a free range flock.

What does work is the first method and the least expensive; sanitation. Bulk feed in metal drums with tight fitting lids, a rea treadle feeder, and cleaning up the pathways the rodents use to travel from their den to the food source. The point being to expose the rats to their natural predators to help keep the numbers from exploding.

Will rats learn to use a treadle feeder? They can in two cases; a piss poor designed feeder is one, and a mob of rats is the second.

The first case, poorly designed feeders.

Most companies design to appeal to the customer, not the function of the product. Not a lot of black and dark brown sheets sold, people, meaning the ladies, want to see the brown streak on hubby's side of the bed before she smells it. With feeders, pretty sells, wide treadle foot plates sell, slick marketing and pretty pictures sell. Gentle training methods where the hens never miss a meal sells. Cheap price sells. But none of it actually helps do the one thing people spend their money on trying to fix; to stop the rats.

What does work. Inward swinging door so the hens are less terrified of the new contraption foisted upon them and in the way of their next meal. Narrow and distant treadle step, not a wide plate, a narrow perch that can be grasped by their claw like a roost pole or branch, that stretches the hen out so she has to focus on balance and pinning down the treadle, a little uncomfortable so she eats and doesn't spend hours raking feed out onto the ground searching for goodies in the feed. There has to be room for the hen to stand on one leg while holding the treadle down with the other leg. So many videos of the wide treadle feeders shows a hen standing off to the side because it is the only way she can use the feeder. Standing flat footed on an angled treadle plate isn't very safe.

The door HAS to be spring loaded so that there is some initial push back from the door as it opens. That eliminates 95% of the treadle feeders out there. Most springs or compression-able cylinders are weak at the beginning of travel and grow stronger with distance traveled. Think a cheap spring scale for weighing fish or packages, the further that spring is stretched or compressed the harder it is to stretch or compress and the more weight it can bear. Now, there has to be a balance between the initial resistance needed to force the door open by pushing on it directly, like a rat or squirrel pushing on the door, and the amount of force needed on the treadle to open the door.

Example, on my feeder, it takes around 10 pounds of force on the door axle itself, being pulled down by the wire link that connects to the treadle frame, to provide five pounds of weight/force needed to drop the treadle and open the door. That gives only about a pound to a pound and a half or less of force needed to just push the door open. When the treadle weight is set at four to five pounds, only a half pound of resistance is left at the door. Luckily that can be enough to stop a half dozen rats or a couple of squirrels.

What would help is to change the leverage. A shorter door with less travel. Leverage trades distance traveled for the amount of mechanical advantage. The treadle can only drop an inch or two but the door needs to move back twice that. But a shorter door means the hen is hunched over or has her head and neck buried up in a cavity like on the Feed o Matic treadle feeder.

Or you go with the guillotine style doors like the Chinese made Grandpa feeder or the many Chinese made clones with a super light lid, no springs at all, so the lid is delicately balanced to avoid killing enough hens to piss off too many customers. That is a delicate balance too, safety versus cost to produce and effectiveness. Which is why if you look at the Amazon reviews and the many Youtube videos on the Grandpa feeder you will learn it doesn't stop rats or even tiny ground squirrels.

Remember, to be "rat proof" you need as wide of a gap between both the weight difference between rat and hen and the "reach" between a rat and a hen. Your target customer needs to have mostly full size hens, five to six pounds, adult hens, so they have enough reach to get to the feed, no chicks or one pound poults in the flock for safety reasons, you have to convince the customers that the instructions are there for a reason and that they are not buying a chicken feeder, they are buying a ratproof chicken feeder. It will not be all things to all chickens.

The second case; mobs of rats or squirrels.

This is tougher, the rats and squirrels have collectively enough weight and if they cooperate they have the reach. This is where the inward swinging door works its magic. Either dozens of rats swarm the feeder and get the door open enough to crawl inside the feeder or they learn to take turns holding the treadle down. The later breaks down quickly, the rats learn to be first at eating or don't eat. The door gets opened, they all rush forward, trapping five or six or more behind the door that they squirmed their way past.

They will smother quickly and if left there for a few hours they will not revive once they are removed. Or do what Moonshiner recommended with the trap, use a barrel of water. The feeder is designed so it can be lifted off the french cleat mounting bracket and the feed dumped into a bag, box, or feed barrel without the rats being able to escape. Some feed might be trapped under the rats but not much. Now, this smothering has only occurred on a few commercial organic flocks we had sold to, dozens of feeders, with each feeder in turn being overwhelmed, killing a hopper full of rats, being sanitized with bleach and returned to use. With not one single feeder being overwhelmed a second time. The stench of death doesn't fade even with bleach. In two cases either the rats were all smothered or they gave up and moved away.

Same thing with squirrels. If you purchase a real ratproof/squirrel proof feeder there will be some smothered squirrels or some very pissed off squirrels trapped in the feeder. Either take them for a swim or if your state allows it, a long car ride. When you first install a feeder for a squirrel problem you have to check it a few times a day until either the squirrels move on or you have them killed off. A feeder with a squirrel behind the door is a feeder that won't open.

Lastly, you get to pick your poison. Deal with the cost of feed theft, skyrocketing feed bills, and deal with the disease and pests brought in by rodents and wild birds, you keep your money to buy more feed and replace diseased hens, or you spend between $100 and $150 to purchase and ship in a real treadle feeder. Yes, there is cheaper shipping on Amazon, even "free" shipping, but no well made ratproof feeder will be sold on Amazon because the returns are huge and the seller gives away 35% or more in fees and positional shipping costs. Meaning you have to have huge markups to cover the costs so that $100 feeder needs to be produced in China for a wholesale cost of under $25.00. Can't be done, no one has copied our feeder because it is too costly to produce, cannot be mass sold with the idea that you will lose 20% of sales to product returns and still return a healthy profit, and the seller will have to deal with 5% of the customer base that is either too arrogant to follow directions or is more enamored with complaining and victim-hood to truly want to solve the problem. No matter the product there will be a certain percentage that you simply cannot help.

But, good customer service can take 80% of that 5% of the problem customer base and coax them into following the instructions and save the sale. That is expensive both in your time and the costs of returns; a return from one of these folks wipes out the profit in the next ten to fifteen feeders. You learn to carefully read what they wrote in the complaint, most people choose their words carefully. Some you spend an hour over the next few days helping them, your time will save the sale and fix their problem. Some you apologize and send them a return label, they are too clueless to put the feeder together much less follow training instructions. Some you tell them to return the product in the original box at their cost and you will refund their money, those are the *ssholes that magnify the tiniest imperfection to complain about the product so they can get the credit card company to claw their money back and not return the feeder. AKA friendly fraud.....

So, rant over. Yes, a treadle feeder can solve the problems IF you have mostly full size hens, a few bantams will learn to eat when they can, and if you keep the chicks away from the feeder. If this doesn't work for you, you will need to abandon the free range or switch to hand feeding twice a day.

Good luck.

 

[chooki]

I literally don’t know what to do anymore. I am literally feeding wildlife and not my actual chickens with this feeder at this point. Because they free range I don’t have a way to secure it from wildlife and not the chickens.

I am in the same situation, we have rats, pigeons, cockatoos & a few other animals that don't steal as much chicken feed. So we usually only feed our free range chickens a couple of times a day, while we are nearby to deter the advances of wildlife. Each feeding sessions only last about 5 - 20 minutes (sometimes with multiple feed stations, until all chickens are full).

Eventually you will train your chickens to come around whenever they see you, as they know that you are likely to bring them food.

Edit: very often when no wildlife is in sight, I will just leave the feeder out, and collect it after 20 - 30 minutes, sometimes I check in between because once the feral pigeons find out the feeder, 20-30 of them will swamp around the feeder and scare off my small flock of chickens.