Chicken-Safe Remedies for Eliminating & Controling Rodents in Your Coop
When you are raising chickens in your backyard, there are many benefits and rewards for work you put in. Unfortunately, along with chickens come the attraction of mice and other rodents in and around the chicken coop. Rodents are not attracted to the chickens in your yard, but their food and living environment that provides them a comfortable place to live.
Although you can eliminate and control rodent populations in the other ares of your yard and your home using poison baits and traps, treating your chicken's coop and run with similar methods can harm and kill your chickens. Here are some non-harmful remedies to eliminate and control mice in and around your chicken coop.
Mice Elimination Strategies
When you discover a mice population inside and around your chicken coop and run, it is best to get rid of the mice. They can spread disease to your chicken flock through their droppings and eat the chicken feed, increasing your costs as you will have to buy more feed. Mice can also chew away at electrical cords you have installed inside your coop. And larger rodents can chew away at the feet of your chickens while they sleep, causing injuries and infection.
Mice will also use materials inside the chicken coop for bedding and multiply faster than you can image with the warmth and protection the shelter provides them. To eliminate the mice population, adopt a cat from a local shelter. Cats are natural predators to mice and can kill the mice off one by one as they hunt them. Be sure to provide food and water for your outside cat to keep them close to your home and yard so they know where their home is.
You can also buy a couple of electronic zapper traps and set them around the coop in areas where you know mice travel. These small box-like traps work by battery power and some food as bait inside the trap. Because only a mouse or rat can fit inside the opening to get to the trap's inside where they will be electrocuted, your chickens won't be harm from it and there is no poison involved.
Mice Control Strategies
It is impossible to build your chicken coop to block mice from moving in and making it their home, as a mouse only needs a hole the size of a dime and a rat needs an opening the size of a quarter to enter into the coop. So instead, you can use methods to make your chicken coop a non-attractive home for a mouse or rodent. There are several options you can use to accomplish this.
First, keep all chicken feed in sealed containers off the ground so mice cannot get into or chew into the feed containers. There are treadle-style feeders where the feed is sealed inside and the access hatch opens up only when your chicken stands on the lever to prevent mice stealing the feed. Then, be sure to clean up any spilled feed inside the coop daily.
Next, ask around with any friends and neighbors who have an indoor cat if you can have some of their used kitty litter. Used cat litter clumps into cat urine-soaked balls and contains cat's feces, which are perfect to scatter around the perimeter of the coop and run and any obvious mouse-entry points inside the chicken's area. Mice will smell the strong odor of the cat urine and feces and will deter them from living there because they think a cat lives there even if one does not. Cat litter and feces are harmless to your chicken flock. And if you can't get access to any used cat litter, you can buy wild cat urine online, which you can spray around the perimeter of your chicken coop.
Use these tips to help eliminate and control the mice and rodent population inside your chicken coop. For more ideas or assistance, contact mice extermination teams.
