Swarming of the RATS!

[RustysProvider]

I'm starting this thread to hear home remedies and methods to rid the rats, save the feed and the peeps! So I'm open to suggestions. Help BYC!

 

[DianaMallory]

where in Ohio are you? First you need to secure your flock and feed! How many rats are you talking about?

 

[RustysProvider]

Im from Wayne county. We're talking probably thirty or forty rats. I mean fresh dirt every morning along with holes in feed bags. At first it was just the old coop for the laying flock but now they are under other buildings and other coops.

 

[DianaMallory]

Poison and traps! Makes for some good target practice with a 22 too~! I have a friend that got something for our raccoon problem that drops them right after they eat it. I don't know what it was but made it safer for other animals that might eat the poisoned raccoon. He would just go out scoop them up and bury them. Where is Wayne county? Give me a town name!

 

[DianaMallory]

Never mind I found it you are close to Wooster! Poison and traps but start by stop feeding them. But your feed in metal containers.

 

[RustysProvider]

Thats definitely a start. I think we should do away with our old hen house due to rat/ predator damage, lack of roosting area, poor construction and bedding/waste build up. Which we have started to do.

 

[Greyfox Farm]

Try a drowning trap. Fill a 5-gallon bucket half way full with water and sprinkle in enough sunflower seeds to cover the water (they float). Put a couple of boards from the ground up to the top of the bucket. A little peanut butter on the board "ramp", and some seed scattered around entice the rats to feed, they go up the board for the peanut butter, and when they see a half-filled bucket of sunflower seeds they jump down to feed.....only the bucket isn't filled with seed, it's filled with water. They can jump out, and eventually drown. It's a zero-cost options that doesn't introduce poisons to you area and is very effective. Good luck.

 

[RustysProvider]

Wow I like the drowning trap idea. Poison would be a last resort due to the fact we don't want unintended targets to ingest. So I will definitely be putting this to test ASAP. Thank you everyone. I'll keep everyone updated with which methods are effective and which are ineffective.

 

[lclough1998]

Any luck with the bucket?

 

[MeatKing]

We've caught a few in live traps, they love timbits.. Then we drown them

We've done the bucket thing, never got anything in it..

We've also done old fashion mouse traps things, but big ones, never got any in that with that either, though one did knock himself out and fall down the stairs to get away from it..

We've also got many babies on those big sticky trap things, never any adults.. Although you could see where something got stuck then got off :9

Good luck! I hate Rats, when we first moved into this house it was infested We finally dog what my Grandma said, every year, new poisin in the attic.. No problems since then. I understand about not wanting to poisn though..

If you look up the dieases they can carry, that may help you mentally prepair for having to do it..

I had to kill all the babies on the sticky trap, hubby was out've town.. I cried like a baby, hubby yelling at me on the phone, you have to do it, their gonna grow up, and blah blah blah, I wasn't prepaird for the noise they make well hitting them over the head with shovel..
Good luck