Rats

[youtubeminer]

My friend chickens are nice and one night I was locking them inside their coop and notice something pass next to my foot. ( I was right next to the door.) I looked and saw a rat I throw the rat out of the coop. How do you deal with this the feed is 1 foot high so is the water is there a way to get the rat out of my friends chicken coop? Or my friend is going to solve it with a bullet.

 

[KittyKat3756]

Rats can have a go at the chickens if there's no easier food available. Best thing to do is make sure there are no holes anywhere and don't let the rat in. Otherwise, set a trap for it to catch it, but if there's any way to the food, rats will be back.

 

[azygous]

Absolutely, rats are a threat to chickens. Rats need to be trapped and killed. Along with trapping rats, good housekeeping will discourage them. Rats depend on a steady food source from spilled grains, accumulated feathers for their nests, and if they can access the coop and run, shelter. Rats have been known to chew body parts off chickens as the chickens sleep on their perches at night.

Your friend needs to plug all accesses with steel wool. Then clean all the spilled food out of coop and run. Then buy some rat traps. Care needs to be taken not to place these where the chickens can get to them, however, as rat traps can break a chicken's neck as they go to eat the bait.

How is your friend fixed for funds? I like those electric rat traps. They're easy to use, no messy mangled dead bodies to deal with, and they're much safer around chickens. But they're expensive.

Just don't use poison. It's too easy for it to find its way back to the chickens and kill them.

 

[Folly's place]

Carefully done, poison is the best solution for rat infestations. Traps may get some, but never the whole colony, because the rats are too smart. Having a coop that is rat proof, no feed left outside, and poison if necessary; I've used it twice in 26 years here! Mary

 

[youtubeminer]

Absolutely, rats are a threat to chickens. Rats need to be trapped and killed. Along with trapping rats, good housekeeping will discourage them. Rats depend on a steady food source from spilled grains, accumulated feathers for their nests, and if they can access the coop and run, shelter. Rats have been known to chew body parts off chickens as the chickens sleep on their perches at night.

Your friend needs to plug all accesses with steel wool. Then clean all the spilled food out of coop and run. Then buy some rat traps. Care needs to be taken not to place these where the chickens can get to them, however, as rat traps can break a chicken's neck as they go to eat the bait.

How is your friend fixed for funds? I like those electric rat traps. They're easy to use, no messy mangled dead bodies to deal with, and they're much safer around chickens. But they're expensive.

Just don't use poison. It's too easy for it to find its way back to the chickens and kill them.

Why do you need to plug it with steel wool??

 

[azygous]

Steel wool is a material that rodents find unpleasant to unacceptable to chew through and it also has the advantages of being cheap and flexible to being stuffed into tiny crevices and holes that are otherwise hard to seal up.

 

[youtubeminer]

Thank all of you but today when I checked on them the rat was dead by the chickens so they ganged on the rat and pecked it to death

 

[KittyKat3756]

Probably best outcome in the long term! Just make sure there's no way for the rats to get in in the future.

 

[azygous]

Hah! Those are chickens that earn their keep, for sure!

 

[bobbi-j]

You still want to figure out how to block access for them. If you see one rat, you can bet there are more.