Update on Mystery Predator

[DivaHick]

My mom was right, what we found was a mole or vole and not the culprit. One night our mamaduck and her ducklings were really far from the coop and dh went to shoo them in. Lo and behold- there was a nice fat rat in the coop. Me, I would have screamed like a little girl. He simply shut the coop doors, went and got a gun and shot it. Since then we've had the have a heart traps out, as well as this special bait box with rat poison in it (it's only big enough for a rat or smaller to get in.) No more rats so far. But don't they travel in packs? Oh and we were putting blocks of bait directly in the holes and covering them with hardware cloth. The animals in the hole to the entire block and made off with it. I'm a little scared that this is a bigger problem than we thought....

 

[mmwb]

I don't believe rats travel in packs, unless the pied piper is involved.

Where there is ideal habitat for a particular animal, they tend to fill it. You have a habitat that is attractive to rats. Make the habitat less attractive for them. Eliminate all secondary entrances to the the structure. Eliminate any ground cover for some distance from the coop.

IDK what kind of coop you have, but seal off the entire perimiter of the coop to the ground with hardware cloth. Make sure it is "digger" proofed at the ground level. You may still have the odd critter come in through the main door, but less so than when other options are available.

 

[Wolf-Kim]

Rats are plenty strong enough to carry the blocks away themselves. I've watched them do it.

While they usually run in numbers, not usually "packs". They don't work together, rather every rat for itself. I've watched one rat drag a bait bar off only to have a second run up, attack it, and run off with the bait bar itself.

-Kim

 

[DivaHick]

Yeah we set up a have a heart trap with peanut butter to see if there's any left in the area and haven't caught anything in over a week. (Except one irate duckling that got out of the fence....) So I'm hopefull they're gone!