Farmer Jeff's Last Strike

We are into the last round, we hope, of our battle against the rats. For those of you new on the scene, if you have chickens chances are you will soon have rats or some sort of predator or food nibbler. We have been fighting the rats for the 3 years we have had the chickens.

We have lined the entire coop with hardware cloth, including the flooring, but they have tunneled underneath and found the "seams" of the wire. We have hung the food on wire cables and raise the feeders at night only to see the rats walking a mighty fine tightrope and then dropping into the feeders from the top.

Then Farmer Jeff came up with these cool silos topped with old Ford hubcaps that the feeders were raised into. That didn't work either.


The latest solution is sheer genius. Farmer Jeff poured 200 - 400 lbs. concrete pads, suspended the feeders from cable and then metal trashcans from yet another cable. At night the cans are lowered over the feeders and rest on the cement pads. Unless the rats are on steroids (which, well, you never know what they are up to!) they can't get under the cans.

Farmer Jeff is quite proud of himself and I, in turn, am happy that the chickens are safe.