to speak to my neighbours about their chickens

[Mitzi50]

Last week, my greyhound caught a rat in the garden and after investigating, I notice there were several rat holes in the garden. Today, a local pest control firm came out (£144) and said that there was a clear rat run from next door's chickens (living in a pen right up against my fence) into my garden. He said they were probably feeding on the chicken food and coming into my garden.

Should I speak to the neighbours? I feel quite put out that I am forking out money I can't afford when they are "feeding" the rats. The wife is lovely, but the husband is known locally to be quite temperamental. The husband is providing work experience for my son over the summer so I don't want to fall out with them (well even if he wasn't, I still wouldn't want to fall out with them). I live in a rural area so accept that people should be able to keep chickens etc but they (and the rat run) are 10ft from my back door - I am concerned that the rats will keep coming back and, when the weather gets colder ,may decide that my garage or house is significantly warmer than outside.

Rat not eat :)

Please please please stop poisoning rats, it really doesn't work, all you do is create a vacancy for more rats, and there is always more rats, just ask a kakapo.

and is the reason why all our raptor birds and owls are dropping in such numbers,

Barn owls are in such a sharp decline we will end up not having any, this last year was the worst year yet, most owls in this country die from rat poison.

You cannot rat proof, unless you encase everything in glass or concrete made with lots of broken glass in it, the only things they cannot chew through.

rats follow mice.

remove the food source and they will move on,

It is possible to keep chickens without having problems, but it require effort and design.

put up owl boxes, encourage foxes, people moan about foxes, but they eat a lot of rats.

the wildlife safe advice

article

why

how

please sign

Scarcymare you can get smaller treadle feeders. You can also get wooden ones and there are plans on the net to make one yourself too.

Signed and shared Quote

Thank you so much QueMieda it really does matter.

We've never had rats with our chickens before, the run has brick walls on three sides, the front has wire netting dug down a couple of feet below the lawn and we take all food away at night, so we thought we were safe. Recently an old disused factory down the road was demolished and now we have loads of massive rats! Even with all our precautions they've managed to dig up into the run so we are now about to pave it over, with wire netting under the slabs.

Trouble is I know rats are living under next-doors decking (you can see the holes under the fence and I've heard them under the hot tub) but they deny it so our chooks are getting the blame from other neighbours .

Just looked at that list and we are doing most of it, we have lots of foxes! Only thing is my mum won't let me borrow her Jack Russell. I have asked but she's afraid she'll get bitten. I've told her that's what terriers are for but she won't listen!