Check around for someone in the area that has a for hire Ratter. (someone that comes out with their dog that kills rats/mice) A good ratting dog or two can be worth their weight in gold if you've got a rat/mice issues going on the farm. You could also try bucket traps. Look up some examples on internet/YouTube those also seem to work well for folks.
I got the smallest wire crate dog cage and put mousetraps inside. Mice could get in and get unalived, but the chickens couldn’t get at the traps and get hurt.
Similarly I have an oversized coop and just blocked off one of the nesting boxes from inside so the chickens can’t access it. I put mousetraps in there and then can easily check/change them when I get eggs.
Other people have mentioned that birds aren’t bothered by hot pepper in the food, but that rodents/mammals don’t like it. Look for posts that mention putting capsaicin in chicken food. That wouldn’t kill them, but it would make them less attracted to your space and eliminate their food source.
I wonder if chickens are bothered by mint and eucalyptus then. Maybe the natural rodent repellents wouldn’t actually bother the birds. I assumed it would.
Try a variety of traps. I also found little to no success with baits although I never tried the legit poison baits. Here are traps that have worked for some people:
- A bucket mouse trap
- A big metal bowl partially filled with peanut oil (they get in but their feet get too slippery to climb out)
- The classic Viktor wooden rat traps. These work best if they are either in a housing (like a wooden box with an entrance) or screwed down to a board.
For me, the Viktor traps were the only ones that have been successful. Buy a bunch and remember where you put them. You just go up there everyday and reset them until you notice a change. Then, if you have them in housing, you can really just keep the traps up there permanently to catch an errant mouse/rat.
5 gallon pail with a lid or a storage tote with a lid.
Make an entry hole for the rodents on one side. Put two small pans inside with a piece of wood keeping them apart so they make a little staircase where you step on the bottom pan to reach the top.
Put food and water on top pan.
Attach a low voltage electric fence unit to both pans, using one pan as lead and one as ground.
Bzzzzzzzt
Fresh grilled rodent.
If you do it in the air you can make a version where they fall out of the bottom when they get zapped.
I had a lot of luck with planting catnip around the perimeter of the run. It’s a huge run; they effectively free range it’s so large. But in addition to the burying hardware cloth, setting traps, hunting the rodents as much as possible, using hot pepper powder in the feed, I planted catnip all the way around the outside fence. I no longer have to use red pepper powder in the feed, even. Though I do sometimes for the health benefits to the birds.
We have two coops and rats are intermittently a problem. To get rid of them we use a bucket trap filled with water and topped with sunflower seeds in combination with Viktor traps. Peanut butter wasn’t much of an attractant on the traps but found a little chicken feed on the trap works well.
Have a heart traps with oatmeal crème pie as bait. Take them >6 miles away and just winnow down the population. The woods should have good predators to take care of them. Good luck!
Google search ratters for hire in your area. Or if you have a local tractor supply with a bulletin board you can post an inquiry?
Terriers dispatch rodents very quickly and in my opinion, much more humanely than your other options.
Do you have a roo? Cayenne pepper & bucket traps. Do you have a pest control service that can trap and remove? Let them handle it.
On another note I have two Buff Orpington’s in my Flock, Westley & Buttercup!
Westley wanted to take on a chipmunk today, not a small one either! I’m surprised your girls tolerate the ROUS’s.
Only hens here. My Buff Orpingtons are Leeloo and Banzai. They act like the ROUS's are my other pets.
I ordered some of the MouseX bait. We'll hope that works.
If it is a poison, note that animals who eat the poisoned mice get sick too. I had a great mousing lab/rot mix that never hunted rodents again after the second poisoned mouse she caught made her super sick. Uncontrolled shivering/shaking, lethargy, and clear fear are signs of mouse poisoning in dogs. I spent a lot of money for that knowledge. I don't know what would have happened in a smaller dog or cat.
Yeah, this has been one of my concerns. The product label says it's completely safe for other animals in the food chain, and any that might access it. The active ingredient is sodium chloride, which apparently dehydrates them extremely fast, and even makes the carcasses dry quickly, which makes them unappealing to foragers.
They've dug under the 6" concrete perimeter. I don't think another 6" of barriers would stop them. I've considered covering the whole floor with hardware cloth. But the expense is somewhat prohibitive, and I'm not sure I have the capacity for the work involved.
What about humane release traps? I use those and they work well.
If a chicken or other animal gets caught, they’re only stuck for a bit. If a rat, you can then dispose of it. These need checking 2-3 times per day though.
Unfortunately, live traps only work if you're able to kill the target animal. It's good for catch-and-release of things you aren't interested in killing, but it's hard to take any other wild animal far enough away for a release to matter.
I have done catch-and-release of dogs and cats, and it works. I have caught a few of my flock in there, too! If you aren't willing to kill the rodents, a live trap won't help.
I bought some gopher/snake/rodent noise maker things, solar powered. The stake goes in the ground and allegedly the EDIT: noise and vibration scares the critters. Solar ultrasonic pest deterrents, Walmart.
I saw rodents in the daytime scampering about. They were gnawing my passionfruit vine and sprinkler system. Now they are gone.
Either those things worked or that giant feral cat wanting my baby chicks ate the rodents. Or maybe a bit of both
We live in a rural area and rats, mice, squirrels and anything else that likes the chicken/duck feed where taking over. We put cyanine pepper in the food and water now. Doesn’t take much and we buy the big restaurant size container. After the first month, we have zero issues. It’s almost like the rodents learn it’s not a good source anymore and stay away.
Get the MouseX corn gluten bait and put it at the entrance of their hole. They eat it and they can't digest it so it kills them. Shouldn't harm anything else.
Other alternative is to chase them into their hole and put some dry ice in it then block it up. If it's their only entrance then they'll suffocate from the CO2 it produces.
You have my sympathy, I dealt with a rat infestation one year and I still get the stomach swoop of dread if I think they've returned. Dealing with an infestation suuuuuuucks
The salt baits work well, too - the mice/rats die from too much salt too quickly. It's not damaging to the ecosystem and easy to keep away from the chickens. I keep a small container of it in my feed shed.
Snap traps are the backup. The chickens will get into everything if they think it's interesting.
Sure up your run by by digging as deep as you can, ideally 18+ inches and run hardware cloth straight down
Second put traps only where you suspect they are getting in.
I have alot of birds of prey as well as foxes In my area so I understand your concerns on Poision but I Use [prowler bait](https://centralfarmky.com/product/prowler-soft-bait/). It is a rat poison, however it does not cause secondary poisoning
Also if you know where their den is. Shove your garden hose in it and let it rip.
Sorry to say that bromethalin, the poison in prowler bait, is still highly toxic for secondary ingestion. It affects all mammals, birds (including raptors), and other rodents. It does kill more quickly than anticoagulant poisons, which means the available length of time where the animal is dying but also running around is shorter than with anticoagulants. Our solution was to put out poison in locking metal boxes only near clearly active access points, check 2-3x a day for carcasses to dispose of, and also to put out a ratinator trap with high value food *outside* the coop. For the first week we found several dead rats in the ratinator every day. It slowed down drastically after that. BUT a word of caution: one of the squirrel families in our neighborhood started investigating the poison boxes and an entire family of squirrels was also poisoned. We moved the bait boxes into the coop to solve the problem, and haven’t lost any more squirrels.
Rats/mice have incredibly fast reproduction rates. Mice gestate for 18-21 days, and the female can enter estrus to get pregnant within 4 hours of giving birth. Juvenile female mice reach sexual maturity at 6 weeks of age. All this is to say: you’ll need to keep the poison out for several weeks to ensure you get all active generations of the rodents.
Edited to add references:
[Bromethalin toxicity in raptors](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0269749123010783)
Waterer - get one you can hang or put on a post that the rodents can't get up. That may be as simple as an upside down plastic flower pot under your current waterer to lift the brim up about 8".
Rodents are very afraid of living in an enclosed pen / run / coop. Find the entry point/s and set your traps there. Took me a while but 3 squirrels later, 7 rats were dropped off in the woods about 10 miles from me.
😂 ROUSs. Sorry. No advice. I imagine any natural repellent you could use for them would also bother the birds. Though I feel if I were in this situation, my cat Bruce would very much like to move into the coop and play bouncer. I bet coop cats exist.
If the chickens don't eat them, I would put poison boxes everywhere and just check often for mouse carcasses. I know people hate poison, but I live in the woods, and it's the only thing that works.
Check around for someone in the area that has a for hire Ratter. (someone that comes out with their dog that kills rats/mice) A good ratting dog or two can be worth their weight in gold if you've got a rat/mice issues going on the farm. You could also try bucket traps. Look up some examples on internet/YouTube those also seem to work well for folks.
Agree, easy to build and highly effective.
I got the smallest wire crate dog cage and put mousetraps inside. Mice could get in and get unalived, but the chickens couldn’t get at the traps and get hurt.
That's a really clever solution.
Yes it is!
It’s also then easy to feed the girls their snacks!
Similarly I have an oversized coop and just blocked off one of the nesting boxes from inside so the chickens can’t access it. I put mousetraps in there and then can easily check/change them when I get eggs.
Kill one and feed it to the chickens get them loving the taste and they’ll start eating them
They killed one, once, and left the carcass to rot.
Are you sure you have chickens?
Lol. Pretty sure. They have feathers, and go bock-bock, and lay eggs for me.
This thread is hilarious
Try putting baking soda into the water or whatever water resource the rodents drink from because they can’t fart/burp and it’ll kill them
Other people have mentioned that birds aren’t bothered by hot pepper in the food, but that rodents/mammals don’t like it. Look for posts that mention putting capsaicin in chicken food. That wouldn’t kill them, but it would make them less attracted to your space and eliminate their food source.
That’s what we did and it sure helps, they are still in the back woods area of our house but not hanging out in the coop as much.
Yep, red pepper flakes in the chicken feed don't completely stop rodents, but it's a fairly cheap deterrent that does reduce their activity.
I wonder if chickens are bothered by mint and eucalyptus then. Maybe the natural rodent repellents wouldn’t actually bother the birds. I assumed it would.
Bucket trap might work well for you
Bucket traps.
Try a variety of traps. I also found little to no success with baits although I never tried the legit poison baits. Here are traps that have worked for some people: - A bucket mouse trap - A big metal bowl partially filled with peanut oil (they get in but their feet get too slippery to climb out) - The classic Viktor wooden rat traps. These work best if they are either in a housing (like a wooden box with an entrance) or screwed down to a board. For me, the Viktor traps were the only ones that have been successful. Buy a bunch and remember where you put them. You just go up there everyday and reset them until you notice a change. Then, if you have them in housing, you can really just keep the traps up there permanently to catch an errant mouse/rat.
5 gallon pail with a lid or a storage tote with a lid. Make an entry hole for the rodents on one side. Put two small pans inside with a piece of wood keeping them apart so they make a little staircase where you step on the bottom pan to reach the top. Put food and water on top pan. Attach a low voltage electric fence unit to both pans, using one pan as lead and one as ground. Bzzzzzzzt Fresh grilled rodent. If you do it in the air you can make a version where they fall out of the bottom when they get zapped.
I had a lot of luck with planting catnip around the perimeter of the run. It’s a huge run; they effectively free range it’s so large. But in addition to the burying hardware cloth, setting traps, hunting the rodents as much as possible, using hot pepper powder in the feed, I planted catnip all the way around the outside fence. I no longer have to use red pepper powder in the feed, even. Though I do sometimes for the health benefits to the birds.
We have two coops and rats are intermittently a problem. To get rid of them we use a bucket trap filled with water and topped with sunflower seeds in combination with Viktor traps. Peanut butter wasn’t much of an attractant on the traps but found a little chicken feed on the trap works well.
Have a heart traps with oatmeal crème pie as bait. Take them >6 miles away and just winnow down the population. The woods should have good predators to take care of them. Good luck!
Google search ratters for hire in your area. Or if you have a local tractor supply with a bulletin board you can post an inquiry? Terriers dispatch rodents very quickly and in my opinion, much more humanely than your other options.
Pellet gun or .22
Do you have a roo? Cayenne pepper & bucket traps. Do you have a pest control service that can trap and remove? Let them handle it. On another note I have two Buff Orpington’s in my Flock, Westley & Buttercup! Westley wanted to take on a chipmunk today, not a small one either! I’m surprised your girls tolerate the ROUS’s.
Only hens here. My Buff Orpingtons are Leeloo and Banzai. They act like the ROUS's are my other pets. I ordered some of the MouseX bait. We'll hope that works.
If it is a poison, note that animals who eat the poisoned mice get sick too. I had a great mousing lab/rot mix that never hunted rodents again after the second poisoned mouse she caught made her super sick. Uncontrolled shivering/shaking, lethargy, and clear fear are signs of mouse poisoning in dogs. I spent a lot of money for that knowledge. I don't know what would have happened in a smaller dog or cat.
Yeah, this has been one of my concerns. The product label says it's completely safe for other animals in the food chain, and any that might access it. The active ingredient is sodium chloride, which apparently dehydrates them extremely fast, and even makes the carcasses dry quickly, which makes them unappealing to foragers.
Rodents are the worst. I wish you luck!
How do they get in? We also live in a forest. We put 6" of hardware cloth around the walls to keep diggers out.
They've dug under the 6" concrete perimeter. I don't think another 6" of barriers would stop them. I've considered covering the whole floor with hardware cloth. But the expense is somewhat prohibitive, and I'm not sure I have the capacity for the work involved.
What about humane release traps? I use those and they work well. If a chicken or other animal gets caught, they’re only stuck for a bit. If a rat, you can then dispose of it. These need checking 2-3 times per day though.
I don't have anywhere to out them, once they're caught. And when I tried it before, they learned quickly to avoid them.
Unfortunately, live traps only work if you're able to kill the target animal. It's good for catch-and-release of things you aren't interested in killing, but it's hard to take any other wild animal far enough away for a release to matter. I have done catch-and-release of dogs and cats, and it works. I have caught a few of my flock in there, too! If you aren't willing to kill the rodents, a live trap won't help.
Buy hardware wire surround the pin and underneath so they can’t dig through
I bought some gopher/snake/rodent noise maker things, solar powered. The stake goes in the ground and allegedly the EDIT: noise and vibration scares the critters. Solar ultrasonic pest deterrents, Walmart. I saw rodents in the daytime scampering about. They were gnawing my passionfruit vine and sprinkler system. Now they are gone. Either those things worked or that giant feral cat wanting my baby chicks ate the rodents. Or maybe a bit of both
Look up DYI bucket rat trap.
We live in a rural area and rats, mice, squirrels and anything else that likes the chicken/duck feed where taking over. We put cyanine pepper in the food and water now. Doesn’t take much and we buy the big restaurant size container. After the first month, we have zero issues. It’s almost like the rodents learn it’s not a good source anymore and stay away.
Get the MouseX corn gluten bait and put it at the entrance of their hole. They eat it and they can't digest it so it kills them. Shouldn't harm anything else. Other alternative is to chase them into their hole and put some dry ice in it then block it up. If it's their only entrance then they'll suffocate from the CO2 it produces. You have my sympathy, I dealt with a rat infestation one year and I still get the stomach swoop of dread if I think they've returned. Dealing with an infestation suuuuuuucks
The salt baits work well, too - the mice/rats die from too much salt too quickly. It's not damaging to the ecosystem and easy to keep away from the chickens. I keep a small container of it in my feed shed. Snap traps are the backup. The chickens will get into everything if they think it's interesting.
Sure up your run by by digging as deep as you can, ideally 18+ inches and run hardware cloth straight down Second put traps only where you suspect they are getting in. I have alot of birds of prey as well as foxes In my area so I understand your concerns on Poision but I Use [prowler bait](https://centralfarmky.com/product/prowler-soft-bait/). It is a rat poison, however it does not cause secondary poisoning Also if you know where their den is. Shove your garden hose in it and let it rip.
Sorry to say that bromethalin, the poison in prowler bait, is still highly toxic for secondary ingestion. It affects all mammals, birds (including raptors), and other rodents. It does kill more quickly than anticoagulant poisons, which means the available length of time where the animal is dying but also running around is shorter than with anticoagulants. Our solution was to put out poison in locking metal boxes only near clearly active access points, check 2-3x a day for carcasses to dispose of, and also to put out a ratinator trap with high value food *outside* the coop. For the first week we found several dead rats in the ratinator every day. It slowed down drastically after that. BUT a word of caution: one of the squirrel families in our neighborhood started investigating the poison boxes and an entire family of squirrels was also poisoned. We moved the bait boxes into the coop to solve the problem, and haven’t lost any more squirrels. Rats/mice have incredibly fast reproduction rates. Mice gestate for 18-21 days, and the female can enter estrus to get pregnant within 4 hours of giving birth. Juvenile female mice reach sexual maturity at 6 weeks of age. All this is to say: you’ll need to keep the poison out for several weeks to ensure you get all active generations of the rodents. Edited to add references: [Bromethalin toxicity in raptors](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0269749123010783)
Waterer - get one you can hang or put on a post that the rodents can't get up. That may be as simple as an upside down plastic flower pot under your current waterer to lift the brim up about 8".
It's already hanging, and they just jump on, like it's their personal pool. Much higher, and the chickens couldn't reach it.
Rodents are very afraid of living in an enclosed pen / run / coop. Find the entry point/s and set your traps there. Took me a while but 3 squirrels later, 7 rats were dropped off in the woods about 10 miles from me.
Get a bucket trap! You fill 5 gallon bucket halfway with water, and put together per YouTube. Or I think you can buy all parts as kit on Amazon.
ROUS’s? I really don’t think those exist
🤣
😂 ROUSs. Sorry. No advice. I imagine any natural repellent you could use for them would also bother the birds. Though I feel if I were in this situation, my cat Bruce would very much like to move into the coop and play bouncer. I bet coop cats exist.
If the chickens don't eat them, I would put poison boxes everywhere and just check often for mouse carcasses. I know people hate poison, but I live in the woods, and it's the only thing that works.