What animal is tunneling under our coop? Photos

[microchick]

Whow, thanks, Rammy. I've not experienced any attacks on our chickens from rats, nor loss of chicks. Either I'm very lucky or we have really lazy rats.

So far this fall and late summer we have eradicated 3 rats. One very large one drowned in our stock tank. 2 were victims of Ramik.

 

[CluckerFamily]

A trial camera would really help especially now that the culprit is on the inside.
I'm leaning toward rats but I just noticed a visitor in my yard that I haven't seen in a while and I thought maybe... red squirrel can dig in loose dirt, they tend to dig under tree roots but there is always that possibility, and red squirrels can hide wonderfully. A trap in the run at night maybe be a good idea also, maybe on the inside border of the run so that the culprit runs into the trap or two traps.

 

[Rammy]

Whow, thanks, Rammy. I've not experienced any attacks on our chickens from rats, nor loss of chicks. Either I'm very lucky or we have really lazy rats.

So far this fall and late summer we have eradicated 3 rats. One very large one drowned in our stock tank. 2 were victims of Ramik.

Mine didnt at first, either. I used Ramik first, now Tomcat. First the chicks started disappearing, then one morning I noticed a fresh wound on one of my LH hens and fresh blood on the roost pole. I guess once they had the taste of chicks they tried for a bigger one. Thankfully no more attacks since.

 

[Al Gerhart]

@Al Gerhart I took your advice and moved all feed into the coop at night. Fortunately it’s already stored in metal barrels, but I was in the habit of leaving their automatic feeders out in the run 24/7. I also cleared the run of any leftover foods- cracked corn, etc.- so hopefully they don’t have any reason to come back (if they can get through the new mesh wire set-up, that is.)

The rats will just take the feed during the day. What kind of automatic feeders do you have? Pictures? Most are not actually rat proof.

You probably have tunnels under the coop, blocked off or not, they have what they need, feed available during the day, water, safe place from predators.

 

[microchick]

I've had rats chew into my coop. Even had one chew into my feed room which is in our shop. They will chew threw 2X4s here. I'm just glad we don't have super rats here that will chew through metal. If they start chewing through the metal siding in my coop I'm in deep doggy doo doo. I've had to wrap the wood window frames in my coop due to rats chewing through them in hardware cloth to stop them.

 

[77horses]

Update: Yup, it's rats. Couple little (kinda gross, fair warning) stories...
First, I went around the entire chicken run/base of the coop and reinforced the mesh wire. I was determined to make it impenetrable. I attached new underground wire, topped it with crushed stone and heavy rocks, and packed it down. A couple nights went by...every morning I checked for any signs of digging. There were a couple attempts on the outside, but no more rats were getting into the run. No more tunnels. After a couple days, I stopped finding any attempts at all. Had they simply given up?
I have two indoor cats. A few days after making those adjustments to the run, I awoke to find a dried blood smear on the hardwood floor in our living room along with a small, rodent-sized kidney organ. My cats are skilled hunters; they have caught mice in our house before and for some reason, when they eat them, they always leave behind the kidney. This looked exactly like a mouse kidney, but bigger- about the size of a quarter. It seemed that one rat had somehow made its way into our house, but clearly didn't last too long with our cats. Maybe the rats had turned on our house in search of food and shelter after being blocked from getting into the run?
We have two 30-gallon buckets right up against our house in the backyard. We'd had a few big rain storms recently, so the buckets were filled with water, almost to the brim. A couple days after discovering the rodent-sized kidney, my husband discovered two drowned rats in one of the buckets. It looked like they had been in there for at least a couple days. So, that explained the sudden halt in signs of digging. It seems that the rats have defeated themselves, making my job much easier.
Anyways, that confirms the culprit behind the tunneling. Rats, just like many of you suspected. It has been about a month since discovering the drowned rats, and I've seen no signs of them since.
But this morning I went out to the coop to let the chickens out in the morning and, lo and behold, there was a big old rat snooping around in front of the coop (not inside the run.) As soon as it saw me, it scuttled off into the woods and disappeared. So, apparently they're still around. But the good thing is they have not been able to get back into the run (or the house.) Our coop is pretty solid, so they've never been able to make it into there either.

 

[cmom]

Every now and then I have seen a rat but I also have kept the bait boxes loaded. For quite awhile nothing has touched the baits and I haven't seen any rats.

 

[microchick]

Within the past three weeks I noticed something burrowing around my coop and run. At first it resembled a mole, which we have an abundance of here in MO. And they are big! Some of them will be close to 6 inches in length and they have a bit of an attitude about them. I didn't think much about it until I noticed the tunnels had breached my chain link fence and there were exit tunnels....a lot of them. Okay, rat alert. I started stuffing bait down tunnels and covering the exits with wire and or metal so the chickens and the dogs couldn't access them. More tunnels, more exit holes.

Determined little so and so. I spent a week setting out Tom Cat Bait holders at night and picking them all up in the morning.

This went on for another week. Suddenly I found bait missing. Okay, mr or ms rat is getting greedy. Score. Three more days of diligent bait trap placement, work with a shovel collapsing tunnels and FINALLY. Last week I started smelling something dead. Very dead. I looked around but couldn't find anything obviously belly up in or out of the run. But today I was doing some clean up around the run and once again got a whiff of dead raton. No more new tunnels, no more exit holes. Battle over, at least till the next time.

Good job @77horses. Not stay diligent.

I've read that if you sprinkle a few sunflower seeds on top of a bucket filled with water, rodents will fall in faster and drown. They have no depth perception and suspect that they don't see the water level or that there is even water in the bucket.


Interesting though and something I wanted to pass on. I was wondering where the rats were coming from. We have what we thought were mole tunnels all over our pasture and in some places, yard. Okay some are moles. Our dog occasionally bring us us a gift mole home. But some are rats. Of course maybe a lot of them are rats but at least I know what and where the enemy is. I'm going to put out bait holders over the winter months when the ground finally freezes and there is snow on the ground so the vermin are hungry. Hopefully I can lower the census a bit before spring.

 

[cmom]

Within the past three weeks I noticed something burrowing around my coop and run. At first it resembled a mole, which we have an abundance of here in MO. And they are big! Some of them will be close to 6 inches in length and they have a bit of an attitude about them. I didn't think much about it until I noticed the tunnels had breached my chain link fence and there were exit tunnels....a lot of them. Okay, rat alert. I started stuffing bait down tunnels and covering the exits with wire and or metal so the chickens and the dogs couldn't access them. More tunnels, more exit holes.

Determined little so and so. I spent a week setting out Tom Cat Bait holders at night and picking them all up in the morning.

This went on for another week. Suddenly I found bait missing. Okay, mr or ms rat is getting greedy. Score. Three more days of diligent bait trap placement, work with a shovel collapsing tunnels and FINALLY. Last week I started smelling something dead. Very dead. I looked around but couldn't find anything obviously belly up in or out of the run. But today I was doing some clean up around the run and once again got a whiff of dead raton. No more new tunnels, no more exit holes. Battle over, at least till the next time.

Good job @77horses. Not stay diligent.

I've read that if you sprinkle a few sunflower seeds on top of a bucket filled with water, rodents will fall in faster and drown. They have no depth perception and suspect that they don't see the water level or that there is even water in the bucket.

Interesting though and something I wanted to pass on. I was wondering where the rats were coming from. We have what we thought were mole tunnels all over our pasture and in some places, yard. Okay some are moles. Our dog occasionally bring us us a gift mole home. But some are rats. Of course maybe a lot of them are rats but at least I know what and where the enemy is. I'm going to put out bait holders over the winter months when the ground finally freezes and there is snow on the ground so the vermin are hungry. Hopefully I can lower the census a bit before spring.

I tried the bucket with water and sunflower seeds floating. I even put a ramp up on the bucket. Nothing... The rats didn't go too well for the Tomcat baits so I bought some Just One Bite bars. They really seemed to like that. I don't think I will ever totally eliminate the rats because they will travel some so they may try to move in from other areas, but I sure can cut down on the population. I know when there is activity because the baits will be chewed on. I check the bait stations regularly.

 

[MrA123]

Squirrels, maybe? Or do they stick to trees? I can't remember.
Do you have any cameras that you could set up by the tunnels?

Lol. Squirrels don’t burrow underground. They stick to the trees.