Rats!

[mossyroo]

We moved our chicks (1 week old) inside on Sunday. 2 had just disappeared. We suspect rats as the culprits. Found 1 dead in brooder this morning so down to 13 from original 16. How old do you think they would need to be before they are reasonably safe from rats?

 

[ChicKat]

Why not trap the rats -- and protect your chickens?

There are a lot of ingenious homemade rat traps you can find how to make on the internet, in addition to the classic victor traps:

 

[Anuthatch]

It depends on how big the rats are. We lost 6 week old chicks to rats last year. I ended up locking the chicks in a dog crate at night until we could move them to the rat proof coop. The secret to that is hardware cloth even on the floor under the sand.

I also bought a case of rat traps from Amazon. Rats are smart and hard to trap is what I learned. I hated to do it but I resorted to poison and that solved the problem.

Best of luck to you. I hope to never have a rat problem again so appreciate your pain.