Luvachicken Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 After almost 5 years of having chickens and seeing just one fat rat in the first week we had them ( which had a brick thrown at it and never came back ) we had never seen any signs of rats - until today. I noticed a hole in their play pit, a nice neat round hole. Hubby lifted up the paving slab and couldn't find a tunnel, so he dug down deep to underneath the railway sleeper on which our shed sits and found the tunnel there. We were amazed how deep down the tunnel was, almost a foot deep, and wondered why it had dug where it had. Odd little creatures. 99% of the time I take the food in but we were away for New Year's eve and the weather was so awful when we got back yesterday that the food got left out again. Hubby has blocked off the tunnel with a breeze block today and filled the hole back up. I'm hoping the rat doesn't come back. If it does we will have to look at traps and bait etc. I just wondered though if rats are a problem in other ways, I know they spread germs and disease to humans but what danger are they to chickens ? Do they hurt chickens ? Or steal eggs ? Or do anything else that I haven't thought of ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olly Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 I think the rats and your chickens could co-exist quite happily although they will steal the hens' food and can spread disease. It's more that most people don't want rats in their garden, or at least they don't want to encourage them. If they've dug a tunnel almost a foot deep, I'm guessing they didn't just arrive on New Years Eve! Blocking up the holes is a good start, the best solution is poison in proper secure bait boxes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chickabee Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 I had rats, and they were only interested in the food. Apparatley their faeces are not good for the chickens to eat (no surprise there), but chickens are quite savvy about what they eat and don't. I had to poison mine unfortunately. They bred, and bred. That's where the real problems start. Just keep an eye out, but don't panic. I had one rat visit my garden years ago before I had chickens. I just stopped feeding the birds and it went away Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luvachicken Posted January 3, 2014 Author Share Posted January 3, 2014 Thank you both. No sign of it this morning, thankfully, but I think I will put traps in at night to see if I catch anything. If I put them in the run overnight I won't risk catching anything else by mistake. When we had the first rat, we put a friendly trap out and ended up catching a hedgehog, so I wouldn't want to put the nasty trap out for it to catch an innocent animal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chickabee Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 Rats love peanut butter, so bait you traps with thickly spread PB on bread Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MillyJude Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 We had a bad experience with a rat last October, opened up the nest box of the cube one morning to find a big rat in there and my araucana next to it with her head chewed off, horrible. We have put bait boxes down and have had no problems since. I know its accepted wisdom that a rat will not attack a chicken but this one clearly did, our only theory is that maybe she was hurt or unwell when she went to bed and the rat sniffed her out. I don't like poisoning them but feel i have to now. But presumably our experience is very unusual, i don't want to worry you unnecessarily but just thought i should mention it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luvachicken Posted January 3, 2014 Author Share Posted January 3, 2014 Thanks Sonya for the tip about peanut butter MillyJude I'm sorry you might have lost one of your girls to a possible rat attack. It has made me think more about what to do. We have split the run before, so I will do it again, and put bait and the trap in the sectioned off bit. I did think of putting the trap in the whole run overnight but then Hubby shocked me by saying what if I let the girls out and forgot to remove the trap, so maybe not such a good idea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MillyJude Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 I was worried about poisoning the chickens as well so did a bit of research. If you use the ones that have difenacoum as the active ingredient its very toxic to rats/mice but not to dogs/cats/poultry, so even if they ate it they would not get ill. If you google difenacoum poultry you can find some figures about the toxicity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luvachicken Posted January 3, 2014 Author Share Posted January 3, 2014 Thanks MillyJude, I will look into that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
