[harry]

I use a very cheap way to stop feeding rats with my poultry feed.  Get a pedestal table preferably a chrome leg with glass top. The rat  cannot climb up the chrome leg or climb along underneath the glass top. Place your feed hopper on a couple of bricks on the table. Also put something on top of the glass for the hens get to grip  i use shed felt. A couple of quid for a table from a car boot sale. Since doing mine i havent seen a rat there's nothing to eat. Get a tall one i watched a rat jump 2 feet into a feed hopper  the first one I did was a piece of wood on top of a shiny glazed large plant pot. Train your hens to jump to the table top. If the pedestal leg is wood or metal.greese the top few inches. Reckon the rats were eating as much as the hens.

[Marches Farmer]

I take poultry feeders in at night.  When the rats come off the fields after harvest they go to predictable places in the sheds and I bait accordingly.  I always leave a 30cm gap between hay or straw bales and the wall of the shed.  They'll use the gap as a corridor and it's an ideal place to put bait stations.

[doganjo]

I've been using traps - got two but I think they're smart and aren't taking the meat now.  I'm scared to use rat killer because I have an older cat that still hunts and dogs that retrieve, including a young one that might swallow it's retrieve if one of the oldies came near her.  Any suggestions?

[nutterly_uts]

I've been using traps - got two but I think they're smart and aren't taking the meat now.  I'm scared to use rat killer because I have an older cat that still hunts and dogs that retrieve, including a young one that might swallow it's retrieve if one of the oldies came near her.  Any suggestions?

We've always used banana and peanut butter in our traps and never had one resist

[harry]

I tried trapping got some but forget it dream on there's no way you will trap every rat in your area. You have to remove access to the food.and rats aren't nocturnal there's plenty about in day time eating the feed.

[doganjo]

They don't have access to my chicken food.  They are in my garage where my birds are.

[Justin]

We bought a Grandpa's feeder and it seems to be rat proof. The only time we've had rats around the run was when we had a couple of rescue birds in a separate area while the others got used to them and we had a regular feeder in with them. The rats took just a couple of days to figure that out. Once we moved the hens over, and removed the feeder, the rats went elsewhere.

The feeders are expensive but you don't lose feed to the rats and they only need filling once a week.

Mind you, the rats went through 100kg of feed from bags in the barn last year until I realised that mistake and took to sitting out with an air rifle each evening and putting down some bait stations. That reduced the population fairly quickly.

[Ghdp]

After taking time to get used to it the birds were fine with a grandpa feeder and I reckon it was money well spent. No rats.

[cloddopper]

I've been using traps - got two but I think they're smart and aren't taking the meat now.  I'm scared to use rat killer because I have an older cat that still hunts and dogs that retrieve, including a young one that might swallow it's retrieve if one of the oldies came near her.  Any suggestions?

 Perhaps buy a couple of the fully enclosed in a wire outer cage break back rat traps . You'll soon see if you have a catch & can take it out if you wear marigold gloves etc  Then burn the dead rat or put it on the manure heap in a natural pose for the carrion eaters or raptor birds .

[doganjo]

Killed one and we think a second one but it got away (blood left behind)  Trap hasn't been touched since.  Left chicken pellets around and they haven't been touched either.  Maybe they've moved to my shed.