Rats & Mice, How do i get rid of them

[gema]

Hello People, We have a rat / mice problem because most of them are eating our chicken feed and our pita breads which I've dried them for the ducks. and We have a room in our coop which We keep 2 hens that incubate the eggs One is currently sitting on the eggs for 2 weeks now and the other has not and Most of the eggs are just randomly at different places in her coop. I fear that she might've gotten scared of a mice while incubating and Yesterday When I went to the coop, I've seen that one of the egg was eaten in the coop by a rat probably?? I'm pretty much pissed at this and I do not want to poison and put food inside the room because If rats/mice ate the food and then went to drink water or eat more food of the hens in their coops, The food/water for hens might get poisoned too. I need to get rid of these annoying rodents please

 

[ksbkeys]

Hello People, We have a rat / mice problem because most of them are eating our chicken feed and our pita breads which I've dried them for the ducks. and We have a room in our coop which We keep 2 hens that incubate the eggs One is currently sitting on the eggs for 2 weeks now and the other has not and Most of the eggs are just randomly at different places in her coop. I fear that she might've gotten scared of a mice while incubating and Yesterday When I went to the coop, I've seen that one of the egg was eaten in the coop by a rat probably?? I'm pretty much pissed at this and I do not want to poison and put food inside the room because If rats/mice ate the food and then went to drink water or eat more food of the hens in their coops, The food/water for hens might get poisoned too. I need to get rid of these annoying rodents please

I had a problem with chipmunks marching right past my chickens, right on up the ramp into the coop, stuffing their cheeks with pellets. This went on all day every day and was taking a toll on my pellets. Finally I put a Havahart trap with peanut butter in beside the ramp. Worked like a charm. I caught 35 chipmunks! One or two a day. As an aside, using an artist paintbrush, I put a red dot of fingernail polish on the back of their heads before I released them a half mile into the woods. I did this because people kept saying they would come back. Well, they didn't and it solved the problem. Of course, you can do what you wish with any you catch. You do need to choose the appropriate size trap so the bars are small enough to prevent escape. You may need to purchase two...one rat sized and one mouse sized.

 

[gema]

Havahart traps are pretty much expensive here, Isn't there a different method like a really cheap or a free one?

 

[Folly's place]

The original Victor wood and metal snap traps work very well for mice, and need to be boxed so the birds can't get to them. Any trap will catch few or no rats, because survivors are smart and learn to avoid them.
Mice are annoying and can carry diseases, while rats eat eggs, kill chickens, and do carry nasty diseases.
I have no idea what type of traps or poisons you have available. Chickens will kill rodents during the day, but not at night. Having really predator proof coops at least at night will keep rodents out then, most helpful.
Managing poison is tricky, look carefully at what's available, and how toxic it is, especially if dead poisoned critters will poison animals eating them.
Mary

 

[saysfaa]

Rats and mice both need water, food, and shelter. It you can take any of these away, they will not stay. This works better than trapping or poison because others will not move in.

Shelter is nesting areas - for sleeping as well as rearing young. Shelter is also hiding places while they move between nesting areas, water, and food.

The more bare you can get the area in and around the coop, the less attractive it is for the rats and mice. Better, is bare around the outside of the coop and have no places they can get into the coop.

Do you have what we call hardware cloth? It is wires about a half a mm in diameter welded together about 12 mm apart to make a flat mesh then galvanized. It is called other things in other parts of the world.

Or metal lath? It looks like the picture and is usually used as a base for stucco. The holes are about 12mm in the largest direction.

Either hardware cloth or metal lath can block access into the coop - cover windows, ventilation openings, openings between the rafters, drains if there are any, and so on. Also anyplace they have chewed through walls or floors. Rats will tunnel under wall and come up through the floors. Since mesh on the floor is not good for chickens, it is better to stop the rats on the outside - at least after they are gone. Burying works if it goes deep enough but it is much easier to lay it flat on the ground. Attach it to the building and let it lay out at least 2/3 of a meter. Burying it a few cm helps and looks better.

Rats will dig, not be able to get past the mesh, try a different spot or several different spots. But they will nearly always try next to the coop wall and move along the wall rather than move further out from the wall.

 

[gema]

The original Victor wood and metal snap traps work very well for mice, and need to be boxed so the birds can't get to them. Any trap will catch few or no rats, because survivors are smart and learn to avoid them.
Mice are annoying and can carry diseases, while rats eat eggs, kill chickens, and do carry nasty diseases.
I have no idea what type of traps or poisons you have available. Chickens will kill rodents during the day, but not at night. Having really predator proof coops at least at night will keep rodents out then, most helpful.
Managing poison is tricky, look carefully at what's available, and how toxic it is, especially if dead poisoned critters will poison animals eating them.
Mary

Honestly, I've planned on adding mouse poison but I'm just scared the mice/rats would just eat that and then start eating the food for hens in the coop and maybe poison the hens too you know? I've put up a basic rat trap machine and I pray I catch atleast one mice or a rat tommorow morning

 

[gema]

Rats and mice both need water, food, and shelter. It you can take any of these away, they will not stay. This works better than trapping or poison because others will not move in.

Shelter is nesting areas - for sleeping as well as rearing young. Shelter is also hiding places while they move between nesting areas, water, and food.

The more bare you can get the area in and around the coop, the less attractive it is for the rats and mice. Better, is bare around the outside of the coop and have no places they can get into the coop.

Do you have what we call hardware cloth? It is wires about a half a mm in diameter welded together about 12 mm apart to make a flat mesh then galvanized. It is called other things in other parts of the world.

Or metal lath? It looks like the picture and is usually used as a base for stucco. The holes are about 12mm in the largest direction.

Either hardware cloth or metal lath can block access into the coop - cover windows, ventilation openings, openings between the rafters, drains if there are any, and so on. Also anyplace they have chewed through walls or floors. Rats will tunnel under wall and come up through the floors. Since mesh on the floor is not good for chickens, it is better to stop the rats on the outside - at least after they are gone. Burying works if it goes deep enough but it is much easier to lay it flat on the ground. Attach it to the building and let it lay out at least 2/3 of a meter. Burying it a few cm helps and looks better.

Rats will dig, not be able to get past the mesh, try a different spot or several different spots. But they will nearly always try next to the coop wall and move along the wall rather than move further out from the wall.

I can't really take the food and water away from the coops or It'd be hard to feed the hens and After I put the food and water for hens, I just leave the food and water there in their own cages in the room for them but somehow, Rats just dug up from somewhere and eats the food from there and We have put on some metal lath but the rats somehow still are able to get to the food, I think its probably somewhere underground or the sides. I'll check up tbh because I've put a mouse trap today and I pray it works

 

[rosemarythyme]

I always have a snap trap rigged at the base of the coop, even if I don't see a rodent problem. It's under a board and behind a bunch of bricks so the chickens can't touch it. I check it regularly and every once in a while, a rat will just stumble into it while walking around the base of the coop. Because I don't bait it and I don't touch it, it doesn't smell like human, so they don't avoid it.

As far as food, I only put food outside in the morning. There's food in the coop for the rest of the day, but I always remove the feeder at night. Food is the top attractant, so if you cannot remove it, even if you kill the mice and rats in the area you will eventually attract more.

We also have a type of rat "poison" that's supposed to only work on rats and mice, but from what I've seen, the rats are too smart to eat it, so while the idea is good, if they won't eat it then it doesn't help.

 

[orelsi]

Sticky glue traps for the mice, metal snap ones for the rats. Works like a charm. There was some time since the last infestation, got 7 mice in one sticky trap this week, new tenants tried to get in.

 

[Happy hen lover]

Sticky traps are great baited with 1 piece of dog food in very middle.