Rodent Puzzle

Don't want to change the mouse problem thread but I am puzzled right now.

Saw a few small holes in the barn. Too big for a mouse so I'm thinking rat (first sign in over 15 years so I can't complain too much).

I've tried poison and tried the cookie crumbs mixed with cement. Neither has been touched. Kicked in one hole and it was opened up again so something is about.

The other part of the puzzle. We caught 3 mice in the house in rapid succession (I always have traps baited just in case). I set my repeater trap in the henhouse thinking that maybe we were getting overflow. Nothing. Checked the trap and everything is working.

The other day, daughter sees a weasel in the ditch while she is waiting for the bus.

Could explain the lack of mice in the chicken coop. Maybe the ones in the house were not overflow but were fleeing the carnage.

Could it be a weasel making holes in the barn? I did see a weasel in the henhouse years ago and it never bothered any chickens. I do have a squirrel live trap ready to go just in case.

Going to pick up a rat trap and try peanut butter and see if anything happens then.

Hmm...time to don your sleuth's hat and solve the mystery. I've heard others tell terrible stories about a massacre in the henhouse, and a weasle is found to be responsible. If your uninvited guest is a weasle, best to get him out of there right away.

I've heard the bird carnage is generally from the male weasels.

I'm all for live and let live. If this is a female working on mice, I'd sooner not kill her.

Frankly, I'm more concerned about the rat possibility.

So I continued to set out rat thingys and started removing the bird's feed every night. Rat trap with peanut butter, another rat poison, even rigged up a live trap I had with some canned mackerel (just in case of weasel). All in places where the livestock couldn't get at it.

The barn was starting to look like a est control display at a trade show.

FINALLY, the very first poison I put out was all cleaned up. Must have been a rat. Either it has finally gotten hungry enough with the chicken feed gone or it was nervous of the new things popping up. Might explain why it went for the stuff that had been there the longest.

Going to leave the rest of the bait out for a bit and try blocking up the holes again. See if they stay blocked this time.

good luck with the sleuthing!
I am always terribly nervous about catching stuff I didn't mean to catch(which seemed to happen to me Lots)

I have never read or heard of only male weasels killing chickens yet everytime I have had a weasel visit it has always killed some chickens sometimes only one chicken and bit the throat and drank the blood and other times killed every bird in the coop by ripping off the heads and even limbs and defeathering some of the birds as if it was in a frenzy.

I read that thing about the weasels on another site. No idea if it is true or not.

Have the live trap set just in case but the weasel may not be a concern. I bought the live trap years ago because I saw a weasel in the hallway of the chicken coop. I never had to set it up because nothing ever happened to the chickens.

The holes were still stopped up this morning so it's a good sign.

Sounds like rats and that you got them. Well done, they can be tricky things to manage. So smart.

coopslave wrote:Sounds like rats and that you got them. Well done, they can be tricky things to manage. So smart.

Very glad I did. I was running out of ideas.

My next step was going to be a bowl of rat seed underneath an anvil on a string.

Than maybe I would have tried chasing it on rocket skiis.