I have a rat problem. Yesterday, I put out one of those hunting cameras so you can get pictures of motion in your yard, and I got a lot of different pictures. I'll try to post them later. My Dad suggests putting carbon mionoxide in their hole, but idk... About a week ago, I put a bunch of different spices in their hole, chili peppers, pepper, and every other spice you can think of. It didn't work. I have tried everything, traps, putting rocks down the hole, flooding the hole, and just filling it with dirt. I can't put poison out, the hole is directly next to my coop, and my girls free range a lot. Please help me. I live in the suburbs, and if my neighbors find out there are rats near, they will blame the chickens and have them sent away. (btw, the rats were in my other neighbors yard before I had chickens. He has a compost pit right in his yard, and that's what them here in the first place) Thanks for any answers!
I have a rat problem too. They hang out in the trees right next to the coop and used to go inside of the run to eat the chicken feed. I told my dad and one night, he went outside with me to put the chickens away for the night and there was a rat in the run and he shot it with a bb gun in the eye. Now the rats don't come to the coop anymore. We also used traps and put raw meat in them as bait . We caught a few rats. Try doing the trap again with raw bacon in it right in front of the rat hole.
Rats have bad eyesight and tend to follow the edges of the coop/run. Set your traps along the edge once the chickens are closed up inside or use a live trap. I don't use spring traps anywhere that my girls can get to. I use live traps in the run at night and take them out in the morning, the girls will just spring them during the day.
Rats are also wary of new objects. I leave the bait on the trap without setting the trap for a couple of days. Then, once they are used to coming there for a treat - that's when you set the trap.
thanks for all the advise. I called my brother to see if he could shoot a few rats, but he only shot 2, but they were really small. We also tried a live trap, 4 times, and everytime, the food was gone, but no rat I'll try again tonight.
I had a lot of empty live traps. That's why I had to go to the spring traps. I would set them at night after I had locked the girls inside the coop. Real pain picking them up each morning without tripping them and getting my finger in the traps.
I also had a rat problem, I used rat poison pellets in the poison box around the coops. It worked great until raccoons started eating it and you find the boxes like 10-20 feet from where I put them.. I even put a huge log like 40-50 lbs and put it top of the box and they still took the box away 10-20 feet.. I still have rats hanging around but these rats thank god haven't killed and chickens (yet). The older generation of rat that I got ride of last spring were meat eaters and were bad..
I have dealt with rats for years and use poison bait in the bar form. You just need to put them where only rats can get them and rats are pretty good at taking the bars into their holes and I have yet to lose a bird. You can also pen your birds for a couple weeks and wipe out the rats with a heavy bait program.
I would not feed them raw meat of any kind you are teaching them that meat is good to eat and they will be after your chicks next. peanutbutter works well and moth balls down the hole will run them out but they will just dig another hole.
If the rats are coming from your neighbor's compost heap, they'll just keep multiplying and you'll be killing/trapping forever. I have found an excellent deterrent is to plant peppermint all around the coop. Rats and mice don't like it. And they won't even tunnel through the roots. Since you live in the suburbs a nice planting of mint around the coop won't look a bit out of place. And you won't need too many plants either. Mint spreads very easily. Actually, it grows rampant and can get out of hand if you don't keep an eye on it. But it's the best deterrent I've found for rats, mice and other critters. It's also a natural air freshener for those days when you didn't get a chance to clean the coop. It will always smell minty fresh in your yard. And of course there's also the benefit of fresh mint for youry own use, teas, cooking, etc. Good luck.
