Rats?

[ChickGirl4Life]

How bad of a threat are rats? Would a young but in the coop chicken kill one? Would a chicken as large as a Cochin kill one?

 

[dadsdeercamp]

we had a rat stealing the eggs right out of the nest box and hiding them under the coop. i've heard they can kill chicks and maybe even adults. get rid of them asap. good luck

 

[dadsdeercamp]

BTW

 

[The Funky Chicken Dunce]

I have never had a rat steal or hurt a chicken, though I may have lost some eggs to them. We have a cat out there now who likes to hang around the chickens now though and so far she has killed three rats! ^_^ That may be an end to at least some of the disappearing eggs

 

[Bi0s]

barn cats rule they will take care of your rat issue

 

[ChickGirl4Life]

I have another question. Will a groundhog hurt them?

 

[Fred's Hens]

Note:

http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/Rodents.html

This is a great article and contains much helpful perspective on chickens, feed and rodents.

 

[Bi0s]

Groundhogs are vegitarians. They eat plants, fruits and veggies

 

[Akane]

Bad. They will steal a lot of chicken feed and make lots more rats with it. They may steal eggs. If you get enough hungry rats they will start killing chickens. Chickens will generally not catch and eat full grown rats and the rats learn to come out at night to avoid chasing and pecking. At night the chickens are vulnerable and will just sit there while the rats attack. I had them kill a dozen chicks in a pen. The chicks huddled up in a corner and the rats just pulled body parts through the bars and gnawed them off. I also lost a sebright hen to them and had a rooster with a toe chewed off. Nasty things. Now that we have rabbits we've lost kits out of the nest boxes too because of the rats and the remaining ones would start screaming if anything disturbed the box. We finally gave up on trapping them a few at a time and just poisoned the whole lot. I hate using poison but after a year of fighting with them using a variety of traps they were gone 2 weeks later and they don't come back so long as I refill monthly.

I've never had a cat that would hunt rats. I've had cats that would hunt moles (actually caught them nearly daily too), squirrels, and full size rabbits but I've never had one that would tangle with rats on more than the odd occasion of grabbing a young one.

 

[Fuzzy Clucker]

So I too have a rat problem now. As fun as it is to go out with my flashlight and bb gun and wait under the tree, it's just too time consuming. One of our 6 chickens finally decided to start laying on eggs, so my wife went and bought some fertilized eggs for her to lay on. She marked them so we'd know which are which while teaching the girls to lay in the next box over, but recently I noticed that we're losing marked eggs under her.

First question, how in the world does a rat even carry one away? I hear a lot of talk about taking eggs, but nobody has explained how they manage to do so. Our setup is your typical low buck farm style setup, so I know there's no way to keep these pests out. I take the chicken feeder inside at night now too. I'll check out the link posted earlier in this thread, but was wondering if anyone here has any solid tips that I can try. Is poison my best bet? Or does this just put my dog in harms way too much? She does roam around our property unsupervised often. I'd sure hate to lose Ginger if she got a dead rat before I did. Thanks in advance.