This year, now our two terriers are too old, deaf and doddery to be interested in rats, has become the Year of the Rat. We wrapped our 6x8 foot wooden hen house in wire mesh to stop the little horrors from getting in through the holes they have chewed in the walls, or chewing new holes. The house is built on concrete. So now they are chewing their way up through the wooden floor - it must be a tight squeeze between the floor and the concrete.
I know all the options we have such as getting rid of the rats - we try and we try, but we daren't use poison near the hens, geese and wildlife; we can shoot some but it would be a full time job to get them all; we could have no feed in the house overnight but our hens eat their main amount of pellets first thing in the morning before we let them out as they are totally free range during the day; we could bring in someone with working terriers but we don't want to do that and disturb our own dogs; we could use traps but something else would be bound to end up caught; we could track where they live by following back their motorways/runs - we know exactly where they live, underneath the barn where we can't possibly get to them.
Oh Woe!
So we were thinking of getting a metal shed and lining it with insulation and wood to keep the hens cosy in our very cold winters, with ventilation of course. Has anyone used a METAL hen house? The obvious problems are cold and condensation but I think the linings would solve that.