Rats burrowing under coop

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Mikep7719

In the Brooder
Dec 21, 2019
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Long Island,ny
i have caught several rats on camera coming into the chickens run and there are several holes around the chicken coop. I've tried live traps, bucket traps, snap traps but no luck. I obviously can't use poison because of the chickens so I'm not sure what to do. If I make a concrete trench around the coop will that solve the problem? Any tips are appreciated!
 
There are only two ways to control rats; exclusion, and poison bait. No trap, cat, or dog will ever get them all. They eat eggs, feed, and kill small chickens, and spread nasty diseases.
Poison bait stations outside of the chicken's area work, and most of the rats will go down into their tunnels and die there. Sometimes you just have to do things that aren't so nice...
Concrete foundations and a concrete floor are good, and lots of hardware cloth.
We had to rip out our insulated coop walls when rats moved into them, and use bait stations.
Mary
 
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Oh what fun. Grandpa use to connect a hose from the tractor exhaust and run it to the holes under the concrete slab where the rats were. Us grandkids were given clubs and told to play "wack-a-mole" Good times. But poison in chicken proof locations does great.
 
Mikep7719 said:
i have caught several rats on camera coming into the chickens run and there are several holes around the chicken coop. I've tried live traps, bucket traps, snap traps but no luck. I obviously can't use poison because of the chickens so I'm not sure what to do. If I make a concrete trench around the coop will that solve the problem? Any tips are appreciated!
Click to expand...
I too have a rat problem, they are burrowing under the coop and have even chewed away the concrete floor in places. I have used poison sachets which I push down into the holes they have made then use a large slab to cover them so the chickens cannot get to them, I also used to leave a dish of grain out for the chickens overnight so they had food first thing in the morning but have stopped that now. The other day I left a large seed block for the girls in the run to keep them busy in the morning, the whole thing disappeared overnight. I never had a problem until my neighbour put 3 large water containers built up on blocks directly the otherside of my run by the fence, nit sure if its coincidence but the rats are a real pain and chew everything.
 
Why does this come up all the time and no one is considering a cat to solve these problems? Out here you would be hard pressed to find a person with any kind of animal feed that didn't have barn cats or consider having them. They have been used for at least 5000 years for these same problems.

We have a black female cat that is 10 years old. My wife hates mice and we haven't had one in the house since we have had this cat. She asks me "What are we going to do when Raven (Our cat) dies?" My answer "Get a female kitten pretty quickly!!"

We also used to add these to the barn. It catches even the smart one that avoid the cats
 
Folly's place said:
The right cat will really help with the mouse situation, but very few cats will do adult rats, and because rats are so very smart, predation alone won't eliminate them.
Mary
Click to expand...
This makes me think of one of my favorite books as a kid:
The Abandoned by Paul Gallico
 

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