How to raise Backyard Chickens: Re: Non poison mouse trap.... was Re: [CHICKENS-101] ]How many chickens in a 10x10 coop?? Now enrichment, also! :)

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Re: Non poison mouse trap.... was Re: [CHICKENS-101] ]How many chickens in a 10x10 coop?? Now enrichment, also! :)

How about when the rodent goes from the coop outside where it gets
consumed by an owl or a house cat. Those Mouse bars use Coumedan
(Warfarin) which causes the blood to stop clotting. Look I know its in
small doses. And relatively safe. I dont care if you use it and am
glad you are responsible with it.

I just wanted to offer a non poison solution that was easy to build.

I lived in a house once that had rats the size of bedroom slippers and
believe me I used Poison for them. I made up dog proof bait stations
made of five gallon pickle buckets cut some rat holes i the sides and
top, and hung the buckets where I saw the rats going into the house. It
worked.... though I had to live with the smell of Decomp in the house
for a few weeks.

FWIW if you happen to get the wrong critter stuck on one of those papers
you can get them off by using vegetable oil. I tried that paper for the
rats and caught a couple of sparrows.... I like the idea of rolling it
up and putting it in pipe too. Brilliant.

deb "who really isn't trying to stir up controversy...."

On 8/30/2011 10:10 AM, lafleche49 wrote:
> I have yet to poision a nontarget species with well constructed bait stations. For rats and mice I use one bite bar bait. The bars are so hard that poultry cannot eat them and being locked inside a well constructed wooden box the birds can't get to them anyway. All permanent bait stations are best kept outside of the areas where your birds are housed such as a feed room or a hallway within the hen house.
>
> An alternative to poison baits is mouse paper which I have found to be much better than the best mouse trap I have ever owned. In a poultry house it can be rolled and placed inside of a 2 foot section of 4 inch sewer pipe and placed along a wall where mice are often seen. When it is full take a long stick and shove it out the other end. Mouse paper also catches snakes, spiders, and other things that can pose a threat to us and our birds. As a foot note never place one of these sticky pipes in a coop with or near baby chicks. I am sure they would get caught in greater numbers than the mice. Dean