Rats!!!

[Snadger]

Spotted what I think was a scurrying rat yesterday in my run. It appeared to dart under the coop.
Don't like the idea of rat poison so may have a session soon putting something like tin sheeting around the base of the hut on the two sides that border my pen!
Any other suggestions?

[Hilary B]

Borrow an air rifle!

The safe options for a coop are... a space underneath, big enough to readily see into, and get plenty of light, so there is no concealment, and it isn't tempting
or
a solid concrete underfloor (slabs are possible, but they must fit very closely together).

I doubt there is a chicken keeper in the country who doesn't have a few rats hanging about nearby. Some simply won't know about them......

[RichmondHens]

We've fortunately "lost" our rats at the moment as they are all out in the fields after the grain. OH shot a nursing female a couple of weeks ago and subsequently the babies all crawled out from the nest driven by hunger and I managed to stamp on those. The cats just turned their noses up!

[Bramble-Poultry]

theres not a household in the country that doesn't have rats hanging around nearby - sod chicken keepers!!

Raise the coop a little if you can, onto a couple of bricks or we use fenceposts, just enough to stop them nesting under there. Obvioulsy only as feet so that you can see right through underneath.

yep air rifle is a good solution but where there is 1 there are 100's and you have to be there to catch them - still blinking good fun.

What about a cat - got a great ratter as a cat, she really does keep all of our rodent pests down lovely, that and a few measures like runs on feet, sheds on concrete bases and feed in metal bins we don;t seem to have an unusually large problem with rodents considering the unusually large amount of poultry

[RichmondHens]

You are lucky Bramble to have a ratting cat. Ours will eat everything else - mice, voles, baby rabbits (their favourite), and recently a partridge, but not rats. They lie across the chick coops drooling! I've even dangled live rats (caught in a trap) in front of them to try and get them excited but they just walk away. Think will have to invest in a good ratting terrier.

[Bramble-Poultry]

theres an option - my dog loves ratting (she not that good) she trys to dig them out - never succeeds but it seems to be enough to annoy them and as such the go away! Perhaps if I had a better ratting dog such as a terrier then it wouldn;t annoy them it would mutilate them!!

[Snadger]

I own an .22 air rifle so i imagine dusk or dawn are the best times to spot em?

[vicky]

I keep a cage trap inside my coop all the time 'just in case' I caught one a few months ago but regularly find mouse droppings. Rats are everywhere - not just us chicken keepers. I reckon my neighbour's over the top bird feeding is more to blame...

[Bramble-Poultry]

I think you are probably right vicky - our old neighbours used to just chuck slices of bread on the lawn to feed the birds and put those fat balls down too - they then blamed us for rats and mice!!

Snadger - anytime is rat time but yeah probably dawn and dusk as its quieter and they probably think there is less risk of predation!

[Bramble-Poultry]

somewhere i read an article about rat poison beiong based on a particular chemical which has an antidote - vitamin C. As most chicken feed contains elevated levels of vitamin c for the chooks. the rats could eat the poison and follow it with a mouthfull of layers pellets and suffer nothing worse than a bad belly.

However, there is a newer bait on the market that isnt based on this chemical and therefore it sorts the buggers out. I think it was in homefarmer.

The other downside to bait is that if it does kill the wee beasties, then a cat (like ours) might pick it up and get a dose themselves.... i think "eradirat" is good on that score as it doesnt follow through to the animal devouring it.

[Hilary B]

somewhere i read an article about rat poison beiong based on a particular chemical which has an antidote - vitamin C. As most chicken feed contains elevated levels of vitamin c for the chooks. the rats could eat the poison and follow it with a mouthfull of layers pellets and suffer nothing worse than a bad belly.

However, there is a newer bait on the market that isnt based on this chemical and therefore it sorts the buggers out. I think it was in homefarmer.

The other downside to bait is that if it does kill the wee beasties, then a cat (like ours) might pick it up and get a dose themselves.... i think "eradirat" is good on that score as it doesnt follow through to the animal devouring it.

Rat poisons used to be based on warfarin, which is an anti-coagulant. The antidote is Vitamin K, found in alfalfa (and probably other sources), but some rats developed an immunity to 'normal' doses ('super rats') and had improved blood-clotting ability. In fact it used to be said that these creatures needed the anti-coagulant in order to not get unwanted blood clots. I don't know how true that story is.

There is an option that kills the rat, but not a predator. It is a very nasty trick, which can be prepared at home, but be vary careful to keep poultry away!
Blend dry plaster of paris with some form of crushed or ground grain, put it where it won't get wet.
Anything eating a significant portion will die, unpleasantly. The dead rat is safe for a predator to eat.
I couldn't use it. I can imagine what it does.......

[Suechooks]

A guy on our site has a terrier which just goes berserk if she as much as smells a rat! She has also unearthed the resident fox from under his shed!

[Snadger]

Rat poisons used to be based on warfarin, which is an anti-coagulant. The antidote is Vitamin K, found in alfalfa (and probably other sources), but some rats developed an immunity to 'normal' doses ('super rats') and had improved blood-clotting ability. In fact it used to be said that these creatures needed the anti-coagulant in order to not get unwanted blood clots. I don't know how true that story is.

There is an option that kills the rat, but not a predator. It is a very nasty trick, which can be prepared at home, but be vary careful to keep poultry away!
Blend dry plaster of paris with some form of crushed or ground grain, put it where it won't get wet.
Anything eating a significant portion will die, unpleasantly. The dead rat is safe for a predator to eat.
I couldn't use it. I can imagine what it does.......

Rat sculptures???????

[Two_Sheds]

The other downside to bait is that if it does kill the wee beasties, then a cat (like ours) might pick it up and get a dose themselves....

or a hedgehog. Apparently hundreds are dying because of rat poison in their systems: BBC NEWS | UK | England | Bristol | Hedgehogs killed by rat poison

[snuffer]

We don't keep chickens (yet) but do get rats in the garden. Others have sugested a base of concrete slabs. I'm not sure that this will deter them. The rats in our garden make tunnels under our paving slabs (sometimes making them very uneven). I sometimes have to reset the slabs. What's really needed is a good few inches of poured concrete floor.

We have four cats, two of which are good ratters. I also, occasionaly, use an air rifle. However, eradicating one set of rats doesn't mean there isn't another set ready to move in.

We live in a small village surrounded by fields of grain. It is rat heaven.

Don't like using poisons for the reasons already stated by others. Do sometimes use traps but have to be careful where they are sited. Hate to imagine what damage they might do to an over inquisitive cats paw and the resultant vets bill.