So you have a rat problem? We’ve been there. And even when it seems hopeless, know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Follow this step-by-step guide of the best way to get rid of rats in chicken coop.
You’ll be rat-free within a few weeks!
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The Best Way to Get Rid of Rats in Your Chicken Coop
Step 1: Know your Enemy
Before we head right into how to get rid of rats, it’s important to know some basic facts about your problem. You can’t defeat your enemy if you don’t know them, right?
Fun and Disgusting Rat Facts:
A pair of rats can produce up to 2,000 descendants per year. Which means a couple of rats around your chicken coop can quickly lead to a rat infestation if it goes unchecked.
Rats are creatures of the night. If you’re seeing them during the day, you have a major problem. Either you’re looking at an infestation or they’re starving and so desperate for food they’ll do anything to get it.
Rats have teeth harder than iron. They can chew through a number of things they shouldn’t logically be able to such as:
- Chicken wire
- Cinder blocks & bricks
- Plastic totes and garbage cans
- Lead pipes
- Wood, regardless of thickness
- Drywall
Basically, anything that’s not thick steel is susceptible to rat teeth.
Rats can squeeze through spaces as small as the diameter of a quarter. Some can even squeeze through the holes in chicken wire. This fact combined with chewing is why chicken wire is not your best defense.
Rats will kill and eat baby chicks and in desperation will also attack grown chickens.
They are known to be carriers of a number of horrific things such as fleas, mites, plague, salmonella, hantavirus and hemorrhagic fever.
Rats can dig several feet deep and jump up to eight feet high. They are also expert climbers and can access your coop or run from above if it’s not protected.
Rats can go a longer time without water than a camel can. They can survive a long time in water- they’ve been known to be able to tread water for three days and swim a quarter of a mile.
Rats will eat practically anything, including your garden veggies and your livestock
Now that you know all about them, how in the world do you get rid of rats?
To get rid of rats in the chicken coop you’re going to need to take a three-pronged approach. You’ll need to take away their home, starve them out, and go to war on any rats that are left.
First off, you’ll need to take several steps to make your property as unappealing as possible to a couple of rats looking to eat, sleep, and mate.
Step 2: Take Away Their Home
If you’re giving rodents a wonderful place to live, why would they want to leave? Your first task is to make your property a terrible place for a rodent to live. This will not eliminate every last rat, but it will help to get them out in the open and discourage them from nesting and making thousands of rat babies in and around your coop.
Clean up clutter
Rats love to live and hide in cluttered areas. If you have piles of tools, bricks, wood, or junk on your property, you can bet the rats are living in it. Get everything up off the ground. Put it on shelves or hang it from walls to discourage rats from making a home there.
Make an effort to keep grass trim around the coop as well, don’t give those rats anywhere to hide.
Rat-proof the chicken coop
Let me start by saying this is incredibly hard to do. When it comes to rats, if there’s a will there’s a way. If your coop is made of wood or has a dirt floor, you’re likely to get rats chewing or digging their way into your coop at night. If you have the option to build the coop from scratch, build it up off the ground at least a foot to make it harder for rats to hide and enter the coop. Alternately, make your coop floor out of poured cement.
If your floor is wood or dirt, cover it with hardware cloth and be sure to cover corners and edges well. If you can, fold the hardware cloth where it meets the wall and staple it into the wall a few inches up as well. Rats are most likely to enter through corners or places where the walls meet the floor or ceiling.
Fill and cover holes
If rats have chewed holes into your coop or underneath it, fill the holes with steel wool and cover them with hardware cloth. Fill any holes in the soil around your coop as well, as rats love to tunnel. Be adamant about filling holes, if they make new ones the next day, fill those too. Remember, you’re trying to convince their tiny brains that this is not an ideal place to live, and it’s going to take some work.
Rat-proof the compost
Many people that raise chickens also have compost piles. If you don’t, feel free to move along to the next tip, but if you do, you’re going to need to get that pile on lock down.
Rats and mice love to live in compost. It has everything they need, comfy bedding, a safe place to breed, and plenty of food. If you don’t want rats living in your compost you’ll have to make it as uncomfortable for them as possible.
First off, stop putting food scraps into an open bin. Instead, put them into a steel garbage can with small holes drilled into it. This will allow the matter to compost until it’s sufficiently broken down without rodents being able to get to it. When we were dealing with rats we read over and over that rats only go after cooked food in the compost. This is not true, if they’re hungry, they’ll eat anything in there that’s edible. Put every bit of food scraps into the steel bins or you’ll be feeding the rats.
You can still compost yard trimmings, leaves, straw, and livestock poo in an open pile, but keep in mind, it’s the perfect place for a rat to nest. To keep them out of there, soak the pile frequently with water and turn it over with a pitchfork every few days to disrupt any would-be rodent dwellings.
Step 3: Starve The Rats Out
The number one reason you have rats is because you’re feeding them. I know you’re not standing in the backyard tossing food on the ground and calling all the rodents of the neighborhood over, but if they’re on your property it’s because you’ve got the goods and you’re handing it right to them. The one and only way to get rid of rats forever is to stop feeding them. In order to do this, you’re going to have to cover all bases.
They will never, and I mean never leave if you continue to provide food for them. You can trap and poison them by the thousands, but more will come if there’s still food. If you feed them, they will come.
Did I get that point across? Okay, now lets investigate how you’re feeding the rats.
Collect Eggs Frequently
Rats don’t love raw eggs, they prefer for you to cook them first, but they will steal and eat them if they have nothing else to eat. Keep up on egg collection and never leave eggs in the coop overnight. A friend of mine was wondering why her eggs were disappearing from her nesting boxes every day and was just about to blame the chickens when she dug around in the box and found a whole nest of baby rats living there. What a perfect place for a rat to live!
Contain your Animal Feed
This is a big one. Most chicken folk keep their chicken feed outside, where it’s convenient. Most of them also keep the feed in plastic bins. Rats can chew through a plastic bin in an hour and feed from it all night. Instead, keep your livestock and pet food in steel garbage cans with a tight fitting lid. Any other type of container can (and will) be chewed through in a matter of hours.
Don’t Leave the Trash Out
Rats will chew through plastic trash bins and fatten themselves up on your garbage every night. Either store your outdoor trash in a steel garbage can with a tight lid, in a garage or shed, or wait until garbage day to take it outside. This doesn’t have to be a forever thing, but until you get this situation under control you have to starve the rats out in every way possible.
Don’t Leave the Chicken Feeder or Water Fount Out at Night
If the chicken feeder and fount are sitting out all night, that means there are rats eating and drinking from them all night. This is not only providing sustenance to the rats, but risking the health of your flock if the rats pass on their diseases and parasites through food and water.
You have three options here:
- Bring the feeder inside every night and take it back out every morning.
- Figure out exactly how much food your chickens need and only feed them that amount every day.
- Or get a rat-proof chicken feeder. If you go this route we suggest going through Grandpa’s Feeders, as they’re the only ones we’ve found to work.
Another note: If you’re feeding the chickens snacks and table scraps throughout the day, clean any leftovers up before night as well. This includes boredom buster blocks, which will keep a family of rats fed for months. The point of this step is to leave absolutely no trace of anything edible on your property at night.
Keep small chicks inside at night
Desperate rats will do anything for food, including killing and eating a baby chick. We’ve had rats steal six week old chicks right out from under their mom at night and by the time Momma hen noticed, it was too late.
Step 4: Go to War
The final step to getting rid of rats in the chicken coop is to flat-out go to war on any rats that are sticking around after the previous steps.
Get a cat
A good mouser is your best defense against a looming rat population. Not only do cats hunt and kill rats, but the scent of cats on your property will help to convince rodents not to make a home there. Now, if you’re like us, and your lazy good-for-nothing cat would rather play with rats than hunt them, move onto the next step.
Set traps
We’ve found only found one type of trap that works really well. It’s fast and effective, killing the rat by breaking its neck. The Snap E Rat Trap is made from sturdy plastic and we’ve used them and lent them to others to use for two years and they still haven’t broken.
We bait the rats with chicken feed. Seriously. It’s what they’re after anyway, and when we realized they had no interest in peanut butter or meat, we tried chicken feed. Worked like a charm. When we had a rat problem we would set ten traps per night and usually catch 2-6 rats every night.
Some tips for these traps:
- Rats love to travel along the edges of walls as it feels safer. This is the best place to put your traps.
- Make sure you only put the bait inside the little cup, not on the plate and not anywhere around the outside of the trap. If a rat accidentally sets it off by eating food spilled next to the trap and doesn’t get caught in it, it will remember not to go near it again.
- Please be careful not to leave traps anywhere that other unsuspecting animals could get to them, such as your dog or the neighborhood cat. We usually block off the traps leaving only a small space for a rodent to get through.
If you’re willing to shell out a little more cash for a more humane method of rat extermination, try out the Rat Zapper to take care of your problem. You still have a body to clean up, but these are notoriously less messy than snap traps.
If you can’t handle the idea of cleaning up dead rats at all, you can always get a Havahart Trap. Then of course, you have the problem of handling a live rat, and finding somewhere else for it to go.
Poison
I’m going to say this right at the start: beware the use of poisons. This should be your last resort if nothing else is working. I know it seems like an easy fix to a big problem, but using poison to get rid of rodents could lead to bigger problems down the road. If a poisoned rodent were to die anywhere out in the open, it could be eaten by your chickens, your cat, your dog, or neighborhood wildlife. This means poisoning the rat is effectively poisoning other animals as well.
Another downside to poison is that over the years rats have developed immunity to many poisons, and others they’ve just learned not to eat it. This means you’ll have to frequently change the type of poison as one won’t work for long.
Even if you do manage to get the rats to eat the poison and they do die from it, they will likely die in a very hard to reach place, such as underneath the coop or within its walls, and you’ll be reminded daily of this horrible mistake by the stench.
If you do decide to use poisons to get rid of rats in your coop, I highly suggest getting a Rat Bait Station to dispense the poison so you don’t have to worry about your chickens or any other animal accidentally getting poisoned.
One alternative to poison that many chicken keepers have found to work is to mix up corn meal with plaster of paris. The rats will eat the mixture but not be able to digest the plaster and will die. Again, this may result in rats dying in hard to reach places. But it does eliminate the possibility of your animals or wildlife getting poisoned if they find and eat the rat.
Call a Professional
If you can’t get rid of rats on your own, you need more help than I can give you. I’m a big fan of doing things myself, and if you’re reading this, you probably are too. But sometimes you have to throw in the towel and bow down to your new rat overlords. Just kidding! Call in the professionals and pay the big bucks to clean up this mess for you.
Hopefully, these tips to help you get rid of rats will have your chicken coop rat-free in no time!
Rats aren’t your problem in the chicken coop but mice are? We’ve got a guide to help you get rid of mice too!
A trick i use to keep pests out of my compost bin is to let the hose run very lightly for 24 hours every now and then. Fire ants and things move on because of the wet conditions. 🙂
I was lucky enough to find a few aluminium milk churns which can hold a 50lb bag of feed with space left over, really helped us protect all the yummy stuff at our place. Only problem now is mice getting caught in the rat traps which upsets the kids!
I would also like to add that the sulphur sticks used to poison gophers and moles will work on rats and mice. Just light and toss down the holes and cover them up. Last time I did this I literally had to kill a escaping rat with my cultivator.
Was this safe for use around the birds? I just found an option to smoke out the rats but they’re all under my coop.
I would definitely NOT try to smoke them out, there’s a good chance you’ll kill your chickens or cause respiratory distress.
Plaster of Paris mixed equal amounts of flour or corn starch & a little dried maze, mix this well so the two become one then add a very little bit of cooking oil (RATS ENJOY COOKING OIL & WILL HELP TO ATRACT THEM TO THERE FINAL MEAL) mix well then make into a doe make into small, into small balls about twice the size of a marble but do not add water or this will make plaster of Paris go off. Leave a little water close to this none poisenouse mixture. When eaten the mixture sets inside the rat & it dies with in minutes normally not far from where it ate the bate that should be placed where you see lots of droppings & 99% of the time place on the route the rats use daily wich is always against walls & skirting boards if rats have entered your house then find where there getting in & use hard brick & mortar to seal the entry holes From the start of making & handling this mixture surgical gloves should be worn as if the rat smells the sent of a human it will stay far away from the bate mixture. I spent a fortune on every type of rat trap I could ever buy & found them a waste of good money as rats are intelligent & if they have been close to been cought in the past they never forget & will stay well clear of most types of trap. I’ve tried those glue mats where the rat should get glued to the trap & can’t move but the rats where so intelligent they nibbled at the glue mat until they got to the sunflower seeds & then took the bate with out been cought very clever animals rats & they will drive you mad at trying to catch them. My Jack Russell who now only has 3 legs as he lost his back one in a car accident is still faster then the rats & they never get far before he shakes them to death.
What kind of mess do you have to deal with when it rains??
Excellent advice here. While a multi strategy approach was needed to eradicate the rat infestation in my coop, moving chicken feed and water (and securing food at night) is what ultimately drove the rats away. I had an infestation of roof rats by the dozens. I temporarily relocated my girls to safer housing while I went to work to reclaim their coop. I used a zapper trap, and snap traps catching 9 rats over a few days. Securing steel wool in the interior corners of the coop along the roofline (where the rats enjoyed hiding) made the coop less ‘comfortable’ for them. I flooded their underground holes with water prior to filling with steel wool, gravel and clay dirt. I now provide feed and water in another area of my property far away from the coop. Feed is placed in tin dishes and I remove any leftovers on the ground at the end of the day. I’m setting up a separate ‘laying station’ for the hens, also away from the coop. My girls free-range during daylight hours, so the coop will just be used for secure nighttime shelter. My hope is that limiting their time in the coop, will help prevent future infestations. Speaking of the coop, mine is large with a dirt floor. Question: Has anyone tried laying down a very thick layer of heavy gravel instead of cement? Next question: Has anyone attracted owls to their property to help control the rodent population? Thanks so much for your thoughtful write up on eliminating rodents from the coop. Patience, trapping, and removing food and water was successful. 🙂
I have enjoyed reading all of this and will try harder to get rid of rats
Brenda
We don’t have rats. We have field mice. My chickens catch them and kill them as I lure them. One of chickens are one whole. Just devoured it. I couldn’t believe what I saw. All you do is find their hole, pray water in it till they come out and the chickens will catch it and shake it to death. Just make sure you have the chickens interest first.
I am disgusted to have juvenile rats coming out in broad daylight into my suburban back yard after 6 years of chicken-keeping. I am truly lucky that my neighbors haven’t forsaken me for bringing this nuisance to the neighborhood — now I’m trapping and researching poisons and thinking this is really not worth it for eggs I can get from a local farm that has plenty of barn cats keeping the rodents to a minimum. We’ve invested so much money into back yard chicken keeping — UGH! Thanks for these ideas. I think we will do what we can with traps and maybe get out of the back yard chicken keeping “business.” Oh, and I’ll spread the word to my friends who are interested. Not worth it! Rats are gross!
One source of rats you did not mention is neighbors. My neighbors chicken coop is a regular source of rats in our yard. It helps to keep our yard clean of anything they can hide under. We’ve also used stone underneath our shed and at other key locations as a foundation. We’ve found if we put a foundation about 10-inches down in the ground, rats don’t dig deeper than that, and they go away. We’ve done this under our beehive, our greenhouse, and elsewhere, and we’ve had no problems in our yard for several years.
Some dog breeds are better than having cats for killing rats.Our wired haired dachshund does a good job of catching and shaking them to death. He doesn’t eat them just kills them and he is relentless and doesn’t get bored like our cat in trying to catch them,
You are Amazingly funny, this was a great read, I am not even going to bother reading anything else on this subject. Getting this issue taking care of right now… Thank you…Amy
Something got in the henhouse during the night and bit all the hens heads off leaving the bodies untouched. Any ideas please?
Aw I’m so sorry to har that! It’s likely a raccoon, possum, or weasel. My bet would be weasel if you can’t find any sign of how the predator got in. They can fit in really small spaces and kill just for the fun of it.
Definitely racoon or weasel.. or fisher cat if you have them.. never had a possum show a bit of interest in attacking.. well anything and we’ve had chickens, goats and rabbits for over 20yrs now. Raccoons however are notorious for ripping things apart and eating just the tasty bits ..(to the racoon anyway).
weasels will kill for no other reason than to kill
This statement is false wessels kill to eat problem is they go.in chicken coop kill a chicken and try to drag it out cant cause they wont fit out size hole a weasel can so then they drink the blood and kill the rest of chickens and drink their blood as well
Thank you so much for sharing that information! Good to know!
Is there any ‘anti rat spray’ one could spray around the pen that would not affect chooks or wildlife but scare off rats that are digging big holes and tunnels under the chook pen?
Not that I know of. Rats don’t seem to care a thing about smells and I haven’t found them to be deterred by them at all.
I’m designing the foundation for my coop and run right now. I was thinking of putting concrete blocks to frame and in the floor, covered by about one foot of sand. In your article you mention pouring a cement floor. Do you think concrete blocks could work as well as pouring cement Do you know anyone who has done this? I’m also interested in drainage and what to put below the concrete… gravel??! Thanks!!
That should work just fine! Sounds like a good plan!
I just want to be added to your newsletter. I’m dealing with rats at the moment, will defttry some of your suggestions.
We’d be so thrilled to have you on our newsletter! You can sign up here: https://backyardchickenproject.com/subscribe/
Thank you all for your helpful suggestions. I have kept chickens for years and this is the first time I’ve had a problem. I’m going to bung up the holes with wire wool and take the food and water away at night and see what happens. Wish me luck!
Thank you for the information.
I already brought the feeder and water containers in for the night. I had an infestation before and I came up with a rubber attachment to a regular hose which I connected to the exhaust pipe in my SUV…I did not see any more of them for a couple of years. They are back and hungrier than ever so I plan to drive my ATV on the snow covered grass to deal with them the same way.
I had 15 10 week old chicks looked. At first I though it was weasels but now I’m not so sure. I seem to have rats around my house.
Crazy thing is there wasn’t a drop of blood or feather left in the coop. Two were dead in the coop but the were buried. They had slices on their throats. The other 13 were gone without a Trace.
I had put new fencing on the coop. The only place I could see thru got in was a 3inch by 1/2 inch opening unless they tunneled in.
Only one poor chicken was left.
Do you think this is the work of rats?
That does sound more like weasels to me. Rats will kill chickens but seem to do only do so out of desperation, and wouldn’t kill so many at once. Weasels can take out a whole flock in one night, so I’d guess that’s what you have.
I saw my first rat tonight, high on the walls of the coop where my broody hen is sitting on 16 eggs and another on three one week old chicks, I could not cope with losing any of these tiny birds or their mothers. Ms Plymoth Rock is sitting on eggs in a dog transport cage, airplane approved inside a bit of a run I built for her, so I locked her in the cage, when I saw the rate. Mother silkie and her three babies are inside a rabbit hutch but I suspect the wire is galvanised. I just hope the rate eats all the food lying around on the floor, I must be more vigilant with the food. Thanks for the article.
I have a large coop with 3 chickens, a cement floor; hardware cloth under roof and on all open walls. Old brick and building material on other walls. Mice easily enter through tunnels in the walls but rats haven’t been an apparent problem until now. Today I was shocked to find a dessicated rat on the floor, lying in straw and wood shavings.His skin was intact along with feet/tail but there wasn’t a bit of flesh left and he had only a little bristly hair on his tail and the top of his head. Truthfully, he looked like he’d been lying around for a hundred years old. How did he get there? Would another rat drag him in? That wouldn’t be easy at all..almost impossible. Could my chickens have killed him? Could he have crawled in and died? I don’t have any poisons or traps and I put the straw out with my bare hands in small bundles … it’s the expensive dustless kind that’s sold for use with chickens. So, I know he didn’t arrive with that. What could be going on?
Rats can fit into the most remarkably tiny spaces. I’m sure he found a way inside somehow, a hole you haven’t discovered yet. And yes your chickens probably killed him and ate him. Chickens are predators and definitely would attack and eat a rodent.
We just found 3 tiny mice in our $40 chicken food which is expensive and they had eaten the whole bin full I have no idea how they got in and I hate Mice they jump around a lot when I tried to catch it it just jumped and ran away. every time we get them out we find them in there again and my son who owns the chickens is very scared of mice and rats
i need help with runner ducks..eggs…and chickens i would like buy a rat proofed house for all of the especially the ducks as they do not roost I am thinking of something with metal floor and maybe sides We have tried cement etc
Rats galore! its rat city now! Little ones, large ones etc., nasty creepy things that can run at the speed of an athlete! 11 cats and NOT one of them does anything! Cowards 9or lazy), tried traps – all I caught were chaffinches and sparrows! No rats!. Tried spraying water – they dont like it but seem to come back nevertheless. Chickens dont seem to tackle them much and dont want poisoned dead things either. Tried all the stuff i.e. curry, peppeermint, fine wire wool, blocking holes galore every day, removing any left over food! None of this stuff seems to work. Hubby managed to shoot ONE grandaddy rat but his family appear to be taking revenge and coming around in daylight to laugh at us! So upset that am thinking of giving chooks away to rescue centre. Dont want to do this as am fond of them BUT what else can I do. We are wired up (admittedly you say correctly the rats get through the smallest of holes and tunnel like they were coming out of Coldtiz!) also have electric fencing wire at top but they run up the fence/tree line and jump over the cable!) Begrudingly they ARE bright but what on earth can I do to eliminate them?? We had owl that came and cleared the lot BUT how to get Mr. owl back??? Thanks for reading my ramble.
Can the rats step on the platform to open the Grandpa’s chicken feeder, and they all climb in and eat?
Rats can’t open that feeder, it only opens with the weight of a chicken on it.
Thank you for all the information I just found 2 of my smaller chickens dead in my backyard with bite marks in thir backs their backs between thier wings and just happened to see a huge rat run underneath an unfinished coupe I am so upset right now I just feel so overwhelmed !
I’m so sorry to hear that! Rats are the WORST. I hope you can get rid of them soon!