Rats!

[Enchanted Sunrise Farms]

i know we have big rats outside, that's a given. But only having problems in one pen. We have a playhouse coop there, which i had wanted to have placed on a foundation of pavers. My shed mover dude insisted it's better to set it on posts, so air circulation can get underneath. Well, guess what else is now underneath?

i have been backfilling rat tunnels almost every morning from under that coop into the pen. Got mad last week and dug down a foot then out a foot. Laid down hardware cloth, covered with heavy rocks, then put the dirt back. All was fine until this morning. Now, another tunnel from an industrious rat that made it under the hardware cloth. i'm pondering throwing rat bait into the tunnel tonight. Although i worry about secondary poisoning, i just don't know what else to do. i don't have the strength to dig down to China to lay a longer length of hardware cloth, although the rats probably do. i just need them dead.

i wish i had listened to myself and insisted on placing that playhouse on a secure foundation. Now, i probably have a ton of rats partying under there.

 

[Daidohead]

It isn't too late, raise the coop, place the pavers, set it down on pt lumber with vent holes covered in hardware cloth. It can be done in a day. I didn't know we had rats around here that would take the time to dig like that. Rats using gopher holes maybe ?

 

[Enchanted Sunrise Farms]

i don't think they are gopher holes. New ones keep appearing and only into that pen. And it doesn't make sense. All they have to do is go out the other side and climb up the pen. i haven't secured the top yet with hardware cloth as i'm still working on the pvc roofing. There is just aviary cloth, and not covering the entire thing.

i don't have the ability to raise the playhouse and lay pavers under. i think the best i could do at this point is to kill the rats then do pavers around the perimeter, maybe cement them in, after the rain lets up.

 

[dsnewark]

We had them bad last year. Chewed thru walls, tunneles poped up everywhere. I tried everything, trapped over twenty, shoot as many as I could, even poision smoke in the tunnels and still could not slow them down. Only way to put a stop to them was poison.

Put up all the food that they have access too. Purchase or make large bait stations, which keep cats and dogs out of it. It may take a week before they find it but with their other food source gone they will clean them out. I do not know about secondary poisioning, but I do not think it is a problem from what I know of the poison. I have never found a dead one laying around so I think they go down in the tunnels and expire.

 

[Enchanted Sunrise Farms]

i wonder if i should just stick a packet of poison down their recent tunnel. i haven't backfilled it in yet. i just put a paver over top of it.

 

[Rosecomb-Ryan]

Do it!!!!!!

 

[Enchanted Sunrise Farms]

Quote:
Or better yet, maybe i could hire you to come and shoot them with your pellet gun when they pop out at night.

 

[lighthawk]

Many years ago I worked as an exterminator. One of our accounts was a mink farm that was so infested with rats that they were running through the rafters of the mink barns during the daytime. They say if you see one in daylight you have a hundred at night we were seeing a hundred during the day. The biggest problem we faced was how incredibly smart these creatures were. We tried every type of poison we could find but found that if one rat ate poison and died the rest of the colony wouldn't touch it again. Finally we resorted to adding poison to the mink food and putting it near or in their burrow. Since that was their main diet they didn't fear it and it worked very well. I would speak to someone at your local feed store and ask what poisons are available to the general public that you might be able to mix with some chicken feed and put that in the burrow and cover it or somehow restrict the chickens access to it. Traps set at night when the chickens are snug in their coop may also work as long as they are removed before you let the chickens out in the morning. They kept hav-a-hart traps along the fences surrounding the barns to trap escaped mink and often in the AM they would find a large number of rats in them. They were also baited with clean mink food. I quit that job when I picked up a bait box up to refresh the poison and a rat ran up my arm to my shoulder just to get away from me.

Good luck

 

[stephhassler]

Quote:
So true! We had a couple rats this year. Killed one with a regular snap type rat trap. After that the second rat wouldn't go near those traps - didn't matter what type of food I put on for bait. We then switched to a different type of trap and he somehow managed to disable that trap twice without any bodily harm to himself. Evil little bugger - my chickens killed him yesterday! Yay girls!

 

[lighthawk]

I have seen articles that claim guinea fowl will kill them as well.