Installing Indoor Cat Tree

[Egluntyne]

Have only had my Eglu and chickens for 6 days and already a mega stonking rat has been spotted marching about the garden as if he owns it.

 

Plan to send him packing toot sweet. Have ordered a Rat Zapper from ebay, and you bait it with peanut butter and the uninvited guest will get a lethal shock. - The gadget is battery run.

 

Don't want to use poison as we have hedgehogs from time to time, and in any case it causes a cruel lingering death, also any wild animal eating the corpse will suffer the same fate.

 

The zapper is instantaneous (so they say) so I feel more comfortable about that.

 

Don't fancy a humane trap for a rat.

 

Will let you know how we get on in due course.

 

Bye for now

[Sheilaz]

Hi! Yes, they don't take long to find a new food source, and water too, but it's likely that there's a nest near you already. I found that a compost heap (old fruit remains, yum) was the attraction for some here, before they even found the chicken feed.

I'm afraid you do need to be rid of them, and if you've seen one, there's probaly a dozen more. They can spread disease or even gnaw at the chooks, so you def. don't want them in your garden.

Now, we bought one of those zappers. 2 problems; Firstly, no rat ever went near it. They are very neo-phobic, just too canny to go near anything new. Also, ours kept false alarming, so had zapped nothing (could have been damp set it off) but therfore wasn't set to work again until we saw.

Well, maybe yours will be more effective, the peanut butter is good idea!

We then used giant traps similar to mouse trappers but bigger.

We only caught some that way (using p.nut butter) because we knew exactly where they fed in the compost. However, again, the trap was in place a while first, and catching one now & then we realised they'd be breeding faster than that!

We also bought cage traps (OH has to "deal" with those, but again, they were too wise to go anywhere near, even though we had tracked where their runs were!

So, although feeling the same as you, I bought tons of ratbait. I imagine they crawl off back home to curl up & die in their sleep, we searched & disposed of any we found, but then we knew the nest was in our garden. I really think it's the only way. We now have permanent safe baitbox containers, which haven't been visited, we're vermin free cross fingers!

Be sure to remove food, (and water, they love finding that!) at night if you can. Apart from the attraction, the vitamin K in the feed can be an antidote to the bait!

Maybe the zapper will work, I really hope so, but I had to act faster than that. For me, rats are vermin near humans or chooks, and destroying has to be done. Good luck! Do keep us up to date!

[Martin B]

Never had a rat problem but we do have frogs!

[The Dogmother]

I've not seen any rats here, but would get a friend to bring over their jack Russell if I did.

[Sheilaz]

I was really very tempted to get a terrier just for that reason, Clare!

[Paola]

OH cat was good at catching all sorts Thankfully we are lucky enough not to have any pests, except for next doors cat weeing everywhere I want to get a cat to but OH is not to sure

 

Good luck

[The Dogmother]

Both our cats are good hunters so perhaps they keep vermin away.

[Sheilaz]

Er, no thanks. There are cats all around here & they didn't get them, the rat problem was in several gardens, not just ours, incl. cat ones. It'd have to be a terrier.

[Cinnamon]

We have a stream running the length of our garden,so rats are always about,although we rarely see them.

 

The chicken pen backs onto the stream & I do a weekly check for signs of nibbling- so far so good

 

To be honest I reckon any rat would get short shrift from my girls,who can be pretty fearsome when they want

 

The new kitten is a bit too small for rats yet, but is turning into a prodigious frog catcher

[rachel19]

We haven't seen any rats but suspect a possible mouse...........very small hole dug under chicken run and also my mum raspberries are being slowly nibbled away!!!! My mum has seen him/her in the compost bin a couple of time s too.........very cute apparently. Anyway, hole has now been blocked and no further attempt has been made to infultrate chicken run. I wouldn't fancy it's chances if one of the girls spotted it tho.........I saw what light work they made of a huge stag beetle the other day

[Merryn]

We have had a rat on and off in the garden (and next door neighbour's) for some time, trying to eat the bird feed but it's getting bolder and I have seen it hanging around the run. Now, this morning, I found it had burrowed through the bark chippings and been INSIDE the run. Henna and Penna were not grabbing at the food I brought so I wonder if they had been upset by it.

 

The real trouble is that the girls seem to undermine the bark chippings where the skirt of the run goes, thus making it dead easy for anything outside to get in. What do I do? I try to tamp it back but with an extension on there is a hell of a lot of skirt to keep a watch on. As fast as I replace the chippings, they are pecking and scratching it away again...

 

The rat makes me feel physically sick.

[bunee1]

Our neighbours have just informed us that they spotted a rat near the guinlu i try not to leave any food lying about but it seems they are still interested, i supose that's no more free range for the guinea's for a while till we get it sorted, what a shame

The scary thing is it's a bigun.....size of a small horse

[The Dogmother]

Merryn, try sinking some paving slabs in around the edges of the run - that'll stop it.

[Merryn]

Thanks, Clare, The same thought came to me this morning and I have been working out how many slabs we need.

[The Dogmother]

You could halve them and use less. I did that at the door end of my run, where the soil was getting a bit manky from me standing there to feed them. I don't have a photo, but I placed them so that the slabs were partly inside the run and part outside too. It works well and is easy to clean.

[Merryn]

Just spend the afternoon putting paving slabs all round under the skirt of the run. Lets hope this stops the RAT!

 

[The Dogmother]

Well done Merryn - bet that was hard work! I hope that it's secure.

 

I have some slabs blagged from a neighbour, and intend laying them under the eglu and the first part of the run, but the soil there is very hard and impacted, so I'll need to water it first!