Rats & Sweet potatoes

[Howard E]

To my knowledge, this is the "official" list of rodenticides that that are used in commercial rat poisons.....

http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/rodenticides.pdf
None of them list water imbalance.....either in excess or shortage......as the cause of death. (That includes the corn gluten meal in RatX). None of them take advantage of the rat's inability to burp or vomit......except for the fact that once ingested, it stays with them.....they can't chuck it up. If a safe product existed that killed rats that couldn't burp or vomit truly worked, wouldn't somebody market that instead? They would own the market if they did.

The ones that come closest to the holy grail of actually killing rats, with minimal risk of secondary poisoning to non-targets are the Vitamin D3 products......Terad 3 from Bell Labs, and some others. But there is a risk to anything if they get to the raw bait......so bait stations are a must. ALWAYS use bait stations.

But if you want to avoid use of baits in general, the single best method is exclusion......no food, no water and no shelter. If you can pull that off with 100% success, rats will move on or starve to death.

 

[Al Gerhart]

Howard E. always nails the answers on this issue because I know of no one including myself that has done as much research and thinking about this problem. People love to chase rainbows and urban myths rather than do the work needed to clean up the sanitation problems in a coop. Some will sit up at night for hours trying to shoot rats, get up early and set out the food and bring it in at night without thinking that the rats will simply adjust to the new food availability schedule.

Hanging a feeder or a "one foot landing" feeder, good luck with that. Might impale a few chickens and earn a new nickname of Vlad the chicken impaler. Rats can jump, they can climb down ropes and chains, they will be there to clean up any feed that hits the floor. And no chicken is going to want to perch on one leg, I would guess that a chicken couldn't balance on one leg and eat at the same time.

This problem has been solved long ago with treadle feeders and better feeders have came on the market. Find a feeder with at least a 90% five star rating, if it is failing more than 10% of the time, well there might be 10% of the population too stubborn or too ignorant to follow the product instructions but there won't be more than that.

The fundamentals are simple, spring loaded door, heavy counterweight, distant and narrow treadle. And you will ask why so many manufactures don't follow those simple fundamentals? Because the majority of consumers are consumed with human logic, wanting to feed lightweight birds that are lighter than the heavier rats and squirrels, or easily fooled by marketing and fake reviews. Do a search on fake Amazon review and you will find out just how much a manufacturer is willing to pay or give away in return for a positive review. That buy box is worth a lot of money and Amazon will protect the sellers that are using Prime and filling their coffers. All you have to do is produce a cheap charley product so you can give Amazon half of the retail price.

You want to get rid of rats? It is easy. Clean up the old litter if your birds have been wasting feed. Get a good treadle feeder that actually works. Store your bulk feed in metal cans with lids. Don't have an unprotected compost heap. On the feeder the reviews ought to be so good they are unbelievable which is why I leave up the crazy people's reviews. Buy from the seller, not Amazon. The delivered price is going to be less even if they offer "free" shipping. Avoid the places that give you a link and admit that they are an affiliate seller like the chicken chick lady. Our shopping cart has that feature but I decided it was not a good idea to go down that road.

Once you do that have some traps or poison set out although I do not myself approve of poison because it also poisons the predators of these vermin. But, at least starving rats will take the bait. Or just be patient, the rats will starve out in a few days, a week at the most.