Erm <whispers> we seem to have a rat - advice?!

[arfur]

We live in a large housing estate with a wood in the middle which our garden sides onto. We have in the past seen the odd rat nicking food off the bird table but council uninterested as 'you live next to a wood'. Chooks live in a converted wooden Wendy house at bottom of garden and I had noticed holes dug out underneath front so having been vigilant. Saw a eat up in the run couple of days ago and today saw it in the house sniffing around at their food and water (we have CCTV in the hen house and run - dh is technogeek - don't ask) have put a humane trap up their baited with chocolate and pb. Is this this beginning of years or rat issues? Any experience or advice welcome - eeewww!

we seem to have rats too...

Although, the kids are very good at shouting out at the tops of their voices every time they find a new rat hole, so I suspect our allotment neighbours are fully aware of our little visitors

We have blocked all visible holes with rocks or dug them over. Apparantly sausage fat is the best bait for rat traps.

We think ours are living in a compost heap & as the heap needs moving anyway, we are just going to do the job sooner rather than later.

The rats are attracted by the grain and we also suspect that they may have been into the nest boxes as well stealing eggs.

We had them made a nest in the compost heap and under a shed. Hideous things, they just got more and more brave, wandering about in broad daylight and drinking out of the pond. Got the rat man in the end. He put down poison. We got some in traps too. Peanut butter worked well, or nutella. Yuk. Hate them.

We had rats under our henhouse when I was a kid, only thing that discouraged them was digging down and burying chicken wire all around it, like foxproofing. Unlike foxes however they're less likely to tunnel just for a quick snack, so if you've got holes under the wendyhouse then they're probably living under it.
Even if you stop them getting at the food, they've got a nice place to nest so might not move on. I'd prepare the ground, lay traps/poison (apple works well for bait as has such a sweet smell), and then give it a few days before fitting the wire and refilling the trenches. Hope that's helpful!

The only way to stop them is to rat proof which is a bore and something which you have to keep checking on as they gnaw their way through chicken wire. rats are good diggers and as Tiddly says they are probably living under the wendy house. for this reason it is a good idea to have a coop that you can move around so that when the area is completely holey you can move it on and bait the holes with lovely blue food and no risk to your girls. we do our own baiting as we then know where it is and can protect it from other creatures. sorry rats are all part of the rich tapestry that is chicken keeping!!

Thanks everyone - problem has been temporarily solved by dh borrowing his dads air rifle Am sure they'll be back at some point so we have filled in some holes and will be vigilant in the future. Don't really want to use poison as we have a lovely resident owl in the wood and would hate him to eat a poisoned rat!