Solutions for Rats?

[HenriettaPizzaNolan]

Mouser cats have been the solution for me. Traps weren't doing the job and I refuse to use poison.

Any old cat won't do. Most will kill rodents occasionally, but certain ones are more skilled. Semi-feral cats are great for this because they have a better instinct for it than most cats raised indoors.

I was seeing rats and mice almost daily and now I never see them unless my cat is bringing them to me (which is less lately, because I don't think there are many around). I swear even just their presence deters the rodents. But also make sure you cut off any food sources rats like, such as spilled chicken feed and food scraps in compost, although it seems you are doing that. It could be your neighbors leave out a food source and unfortunately you can't do much about it.

 

[KGandE]

There are literally hundreds of posts on rodent control and for the life of me I do not understand why anyone would make another post when there are so many posts that have discussed the topic and provided solutions.

But you came here looking for answers so search the forums for Howard E.'s posts on rodent control. You will find there are three methods, sanitation, exclusion, and elimination.

Sanitation is locking the feed up in steel barrels with tight lids, buying a proper treadle feeder with a spring loaded door and hopefully an inward swinging lid so the darned thing doesn't have to be left open for weeks for training, and cleaning up the avenues and paths used by the rodents to get to and from the chicken feed. This lets the natural predators do their job and control the numbers of the vermin. You need most of your hens to be full size as the tiny hens won't be able to operate a treadle feeder that is set stiff enough to stop the rats.

Exclusion is build a Fort Knox chicken coop. $$$$$$ and no free range is possible.

Elimination is trapping, hunting, and poison. A never ending trouble and expense. And they wise up quickly so usually it doesn't work.

And forgive me for being blunt, but if you have think you have 20 rats you have three to five times that many and YOU ARE FEEDING THEM or the colony wouldn't be that large. Doesn't matter that you take the feed in at night or pick up every scrap when they can gorge all day.

Number of laying hens or broilers x .25 pound per day gives a rough estimate of feed your CHICKENS will eat in one day. Figure out how long a bag of feed is lasting and you will realize how much feed is going to the rats. Yes,sanitation has a cost but you are already paying that cost and not getting the benefit of stopping the feed theft.

The week you stop feeding the rats they will die or leave. It is that simple.

Now please, humor me and do a forum search using the key words rats, mice, chickens and you will have days of reading ahead of you but add Howard E. to those key words and save yourself a bunch of time of people repeating the old wives tales of peppermint, mashed potatoes, and sonic repellers.

Stop
Feeding
Them

This is not a very friendly post - I was on this thread because it was helpful to me and I think that's why others are here too.

 

[mcdze]

i had a few really insanely destructive roof rats hanging around my coop, getting into the garage to, chewing on literally everything .... get a good pcp airgun and an infrared scope, its not cheap but you can control predators also ... a benjamin marauder.25 and an atn4kpro is a good combo and extremly effective .. if you can set up in a window overlooking the coop on a tripod like a bog-deathgrip, you can monitor the scope wirelessly on your cell ... anyway yeah i cleaned everything out hanging around my coop in several weeks, i look forward to something showing up now lol ... but yeah cats dont work for chickens if you raise pullets, theyre just another predator ..

 

[Debbie292d]

... but yeah cats dont work for chickens if you raise pullets, theyre just another predator ..

Some maybe, just like some dogs. We have three cats and two dogs, all of which keep varments out of our yard and protect the chickens. But, stick a baby chick in front of our cats, and two wouldn't touch it. The other, I don't trust, but I equate that to handing an ice cream cone to a two-year-old and telling them they can't have it.

Our four-legged animals do the job out here to keep the chickens safe and varment-free. It's my job to keep the baby chicks safe.

 

[Ponypoor]

Update on my rat problem - the blighter walking right in front of me in the barn aisle way last night! Time to put out the same trap again. Constant battle….

I had to haul up a whole bunch of brick pavers in the barn as they had tunnelled under the bricks.

I reset the bricks and cement grouted any space between the bricks bigger than 1/4”. Hopefully I entombed a bunch of the beasties. I also have been removing all food and water for over night- make it very hostile for rats and mice!

 

[Ponypoor]

This is not a very friendly post - I was on this thread because it was helpful to me and I think that's why others are here too.

It’s ok, best to just ignore; pest control is a huge issue with any livestock, I had a huge issue with mice in the barn with a load of hay I had.

They were running out from under the hay bales when I would lift them up. I had to use poison as there were literally 1000 of them took me all winter to get them under control, I only had a few chooks then, but I was very worried using poison.

Now I have a barn full of chooks so poison is not an option.

 

[skeeeter]

I don't get brown rats here.. just roof rats and packrats. These don't make underground holes, they think they are nocturnal squirrels!! Climbing all around. For those rat holes, I'd like to suggest something like "gofer gasser" its sulfur based i think. for the roofrats outside cats, owls and snakes work well. Inside I use either poison(which I hate) or spring trap(which sometimes works well). We don't leave anything out for them to eat. The neighbors allow them to breed there. I HAVE SEEN RATS COME JUMPING THROUGH THE GRASS, CROSSING THE FIELD FROM MY FILTY NEIGHBOR'S HOUSE. I truly feel your agony.

 

[Klutch]

Simple simon, bait bait.