Rat Proof Chicken Coop

Rat Proof Chicken Coop – When the cold weather arrives, mice start looking for a warm and safe place to spend the winter. Don’t let your chicken coop become a home.

This is the time of year when temperatures drop and mice and rats look for a warm, safe place to spend the winter and a nearby food source.

Rat Proof Chicken Coop

Your barn is looking pretty good for them now. It is filled with soft bedding and chicken feed, and protects the mice from predators such as mice, mink and foxes who enjoy a snack!

Rats In Your Chicken Coop

A couple of small field mice in your chicken coop may not seem like a big deal, but letting them live around your chickens is a really bad idea.

Not only can mice and other rodents carry disease and contaminate the area with their droppings, they can also transfer lice, mites or ticks to your chickens, they can eat your chicken feed and chew up all sorts of things you don’t want. .

If your chicken coop is wired for electricity, mice can climb the walls and chew on electrical wires, causing fires.

Not only that, but often snakes, weasels, or other pests will travel through tunnels dug by rats, which is the last thing you want. Therefore, it is very important to remove mice from the box and running area.

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In addition to holes and tunnels in and around your chicken coop, there are other signs that mice may be in trouble or trying to make a home for your chicken coop. Signs you may have a rat infestation include:

Since most mice are nocturnal, they may not be on the move during the day, but placing trail cameras after dark catches them.

Of course, using poisons or traps isn’t practical around your chickens and other pets. Poison is especially bad because often hawks, eagles or owls will eat the poisoned rat and die in the process.

While I’m not a fan of sky hunters, I certainly don’t want them to slowly die of poison.

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Traps can be dangerous around children, other pets, or your chickens.

I strongly advise caution when setting up this type of trap, as the typical spring-loaded mousetrap poses a great danger to your chickens or other pets. However, as an alternative you can try setting up a Hav-a-Hart or similar humane mouse trap.

Mice caught in human traps should be relocated or removed from the coop.

But now you’re thinking, “But my chickens catch and eat mice.” You would be right. Chickens are omnivores, which means they will eat almost anything, including mice (another reason why you don’t want to use rat poison when raising chickens).

Rat Proof Feeder

But the only problem with thinking you’re going to use your chickens for rodent control is that mice and rats are nocturnal, and as you know, chickens can’t see very well in the dark, I hope so. At dusk they are safely locked in the cube.

When they go to sleep, they put their heads under a wing and the light goes out.

That’s when the rats come out of the corner where they’ve been sleeping all day.

Hidden from view, mice are perfectly safe in your box during the day. Chickens cannot smell their “prey”. Chickens actually have a poor sense of smell. They find food by sight.

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A chicken can run nine miles per hour compared to the ground running record of a field mouse (a mouse can run 8 miles per hour). So the foot race between the chicken and the mouse will be close.

Now compare that to the roughly 30 miles per hour your house cat can run on average, and you’ll see why that barn cat is so important on a farm!

Our cat Linus is 16 years old and spends his days roaming our property looking for mice to eat. He sleeps indoors to protect himself from coyotes, owls, and foxes in the woods, but he certainly makes good use of his time outside.

Despite his age, he catches his share of rats. He knows their favorite hiding places!

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If you don’t have a cat, spraying coyote urine or fox urine where you see signs of rodents can help eliminate them.

Rats and mice have excellent eyesight, so they use their noses to smell food. They use their sense of smell to detect predators and other threats.

Because their eyesight is so poor, they have a strong sense of smell to compensate. They use pheromones or scent markers to find feed, communicate with each other, navigate, find their way and, of course, catch predators. So-called “background odors” interfere with all of these activities.

This is the key to keeping mice out of your chicken coop. Mix it with smell and they’ll find another spot.

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Of course, you must first remove the initial soil of your barn. Mice look for two things when considering a suitable winter home: food and shelter. Take them away, and chances are they’ll come out with little animation.

I never feed my chickens in the coop. All feed and water are kept outside year-round. I put away the water bowls and take out (or cover) the feed when the chickens are locked up at night. I keep all of their food and treats in covered metal containers. So, there is no rat food around.

Now to the accommodation. Rats, like other animals, need to feel safe and secure in the place they choose to make a home – to breed and raise their young. By introducing strong, overpowering odors, you confuse the rat’s sense of smell.

If a rat can’t use its sense of smell to identify where a predator is lurking, it won’t perceive it as a safe place to bond, gather, or breed. (Remember, since chickens don’t have a strong sense of smell, the smell won’t bother them).

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Balsam or pine, citrus, rosemary, lavender, and mint are particularly effective at repelling mice. Since mint grows like a weed and is perennial and perennial, I focus on planting mint around my box: in flower beds, pots, and window boxes.

I regularly sprinkle mint leaves in my chicken coop and nest boxes. I dry a lot of mint to use in the barn over the winter and I want to make this lavender mint coop freshening spray.

Mint essentials are a good solution if you don’t grow basil or it’s not in season. Saturate the cotton balls and stuff them into any mouse or rat holes you find running around and around.

Then use a screwdriver or a long stick to push the crumpled balls of aluminum foil into the holes. Make sure they are pushed down so the chickens can’t get out. I doubt a chicken would eat it, but it’s best not to take any chances.

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Mice also dislike the taste of mint or cayenne pepper. Chickens don’t have “hot” taste receptors, so they won’t be bothered if you sprinkle cayenne pepper on your chicken feed.

Adding dried mint leaves and some cayenne pepper to chicken feed (just a sprinkling of each) will help keep mice away from the feed.

Especially in winter, cayenne is really beneficial for your flock because it helps improve blood circulation, which reduces the risk of freezing combs and combs.

There are also safe commercial grass mouse control products that I have used with varying success:

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Peppermint might work to keep mice from running away from my box, sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s free, easy and safe. And since I’ve been using basil in my chicken coop (I think around 2011?) I haven’t seen a single mouse in our tank. So you be the judge. Ask anyone who’s attuned to country living and they’ll tell you that if you raise chickens, sooner or later you’ll have mice. That’s a pretty fair statement, especially since every garden in the country has at least one mouse roaming around tonight. Build a chicken coop, add food and water, and the common rodents will come around and soon you will be aware of their presence.

What do you do about it? Our advice is to be prepared to be mice. We’re not telling you to put your head in one

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