Safe way to kill the rats who are eating my chicks

[CaGoatLady]

I found a chick, who is inside a 4-story wire cage with 5 others, with his insides...out and pretty hollow inside. I checked around the cage and under on corner, it looks like a place that something could've gotten in and walked up the ramps that lead to one of the top floors that the chicks live on. I thought I had sectioned off only the first top floors for the chicks, but I guess rats are determined enough to get through my barriers. Today, until I figure something else out, I stuffed the ramp below the chicks with a rolled up feed bag and then put a flattened cardboard box on top of that.
My question is...is there a rat poison that I can safely put down or around that won't hurt the chickens? I'm guessing not. What happened a few months ago was that the cat who used to live outside and kill all the rats, got taken away by an over zealous cat shelter person, so now the property is over-run with rats it seems. This isn't my property, or I'd get another cat; I've taken over my dead neighbor's chickens and I just got through having about a dozen chicks hatch over the past month, so I've moved some of the older ones back down to her coop.

 

[heatherindeskies]

Can you try some kind of traps set along the wall, but under something heavy that the chickens CANNOT get to?
Can you get another cat and claim it is a stray and take care of it so it sticks around, or will the person come and remove it? How did this person find out the first cat was around?

 

[CaGoatLady]

It's a long story, but my dead neighbor had a cat. We live on a dirt road, on a hill in the foothills of the Sierras, so he was sort of all of ours. My neighbor had a friend, who works at a low cost spay and neuter place and I suspect now that she is also a PETA person, not that I'm against that, but the son of the dead neighbor and I had an agreement as far as the welfare of the cat, who had access to the inside of the house, plus I fed him every day and he visited my house also. Well, this friend and her husband came up and took the cat one day, without consulting the son or myself, and she took him to a shelter that adopts out cats. I spent 3 days looking for that cat and was very upset and feeling that it was my fault that he was gone until I found out the truth.

Anyway, just recently, the rat population at the property has begun to catch up with the lack of having a cat to control it, so I now have a rat problem down there. Geez, we have all sorts of other predators here, why can't they eat the rats?

 

[Slotred]

Try this: Get a piece of PVC pipe--at least 4-inches in diameter and about 3-feet long. Cap both ends, one permanent and the other end removable. drill a hole in the side of the pipe big enough for a rat to get into. Put D-con or other rat bait in the container and cap both ends. Place the trap in a place where rats frequent. The pipe will prevent kids or animals from getting to the bait, but the rats love to crawl into tight places, and they will find it, eat it, and crawl off to die. Replace bait as needed.

 

[cafarmgirl]

The problem with stuff like D-Con, Just One Bite and other's is that they will indeed kill secondary consumers who find the dead or dying rat or mouse. It takes 4 to 5 days for them to die so they are in the environment a long time. The poison does not become ineffective until the body is decomposed. So if your chickens or other pets find a dead or half dead rodent and eat it they can be poisoned as well.

There was another thread here somewhere, don't remember who it was, in which the person mixed equal parts peanut butter and plaster of paris with enough vegetable oil to hold it all together. Make little balls of it and put in a place your chickens or other animals cannot get to. The rodents eat it and are killed by the plaster of paris when it hardens. Even if another animal finds the body the plaster is already hardened and would pass thru if eaten again.

Good luck. Once the population has exploded it can take a while to get it under control!