Rats in the Chicken Coop

The chickens enjoyed their time out of the coop today, while we tried, yet again, to rat proof our run.

We had hoped that the rats were gone, as we were not getting pictures of them on our game camera anymore. Martin bought a night scope for his pellet gun when our efforts of using rat poison and a live rat trap failed. He had for sure shot and killed one rat and shot and likely killed another (evidentially it wasn't a clean enough shot that it couldn't move for at least a time, but it definitely jumped and moved like it was hit). But, unfortunately, a few days after reinforcing the outside of the coop in several spots, we saw clear evidence of more rat activity in new locations.

We wish we had known about our rats before we put the run in place, but we didn't. If we had, we may have fortified it better from the beginning. When we first discovered the rats, we put chicken wire around the outside of the run, and that seemed to help for a time. We had many pictures of them looking frustrated on the game camera, but they eventually found weak spots where they were able to enter. We would fortify those areas, and then whey would find another way. It is way too much work to move the mulch and electric fence again to do a better job on the outside of the coop, so today we tried to fortify the inside of the coop.

We cut our 3 foot chicken wire in half and dug trenches along the sides of the run, stapled the chicken wire to the run and put spikes in it to hold it down. Then we reburied that portion and moved onto another side. We were lucky enough to get two sides done before it started to rain. We were able to work on the back side during the rain, as that part of the run is covered. So, we have one side left to do, but it has rained the rest of the day and we have a freeze warning in our area tonight, so who knows when we will get that last side finished. At least we got the three sides done where they have actively been entering the run, so maybe it will take them more time to find the new week spots than it will for us to get the last side finished.

Loner came in the run several times to help supervise the work.

Clove, Ginger, Parsley, and Sunny supervised from their hutches.

10/29/2023 Update:

Positive/Wishful thinking doesn't always work. Of course, the rats found the weak spot last night and spent the night in our run and coop. So, we braved the 35 degree weather and finished up that last side with wire today.

We have had a lot of rain this week, and we were glad to find a spot to dump the mud that was in our wheel barrow so we could get it put away. The mud was from extra dirt we had from planting some fruit trees last week.

10/30/2023 Update:

Well, the rats somehow got in again. Seeing where it got in didn't help us understand how it managed it, but we decided to bite the bullet and go ahead and take down the fence and re-do the outside reinforcement over again on those two sides. Today the chickens got to supervise from inside their run.

It looks like the chickens enjoyed the mud.

We also put up our winterizing panels on Sunday night due to our freezing temperature.

We can always hope that we will someday learn to do things right the first time. It typically takes more time to re-do things than it would to just put in the effort the first time, but we don't always know what is needed the first time. And maybe we still don't have it right after all of our re-dos.

If this doesn't work, our next effort will be to buy more chicken wire and put it down all over the floor of the run and then buy a truck load of dirt to cover it with.

We hope you can learn from our experience and prepare well to keep rats out of your coop. Would that all our coops (and yards for that matter) were rat free.