Ever since my neighbor started doing so I've had a problem with mice in my laundry room and kitchen. The coups are right next to my property. Could the chickens be attracting the mice into the area? Thanks

Maybe the chicken feed.

I concur.
It's the feed.
I have lots of outdoor cats to keep down the rodent population and they do a good job.

I'd think the feed for the chickens would be available to mice and rats either in the coups or on the ground. So the local population of rodents would probably increase.

In a cold winter, anywhere indoors would be attractive. It may make sense to get this under control before nesting season.

Rodents follow the chicken feed and snakes follow the rodents. Could the neighbors relocate the chickens away from your property? Interesting - one of my hens caught a mouse one day and swallowed it whole.Creepy.

It's the only place they can put it.

Get a gopher snake.

Gopher snakes are wonderful but they don't eat that often. Cats are way better.

Make sure you can reach the eggs, without having to go into the pen. This makes sure you don't have to step on all the poop in the chicken yard, and that the old mean roster won't come after you to peck you (to keep you from getting at his harem).

We had chickens and rabbits during WWII, which gave us all the hard-to-get meat we had access to in those rationing-of-meat days. (Besides SPAM.) My father skinned the rabbits, and put them on a stretcher, and used them in exchange for food for the animals.

BTB: Have you ever seen a chicken with his head cut-off, run around the yard until it finally collapsed?

My great-uncle used to tell me about his chickens running around without heads. It was during the depression.

That's how my dad butchered both chickens and rabbits. It made me sick to watch. Chickens especially since they could run a few circles before dropping. My dad grew up on a farm and ranch. He was able to live off the land.

I don't believe I have what it takes to be a farmer. I've never been able to butcher an animal for starters. Unless I were a vegetarian farmer, but I'm not a vegetarian either (though I don't eat much meat these days.)

They don't "run around". They flop all over uncontrollably with wings and legs flailing. Lose all control over muscles.

While it may not look good to those who have no connection to their food supply, it is quite humane. After the head is off, no consciousness.

Nothing better than a good life and a quick death. Most of us will wish we could die like my chickens.

I'm a former health inspector and mouse hunter.

I've noticed over the years that most people think first of trapping mice, instead of keeping them out. More fun, I guess. I'll second the notion of inspecting your house for entryways. I live on a small farm and there are mice around, but I haven't seen one in the house in the 21 years we've been here.

But they were in the garage we discovered a week after moving in. Turns out the former owners left dog food in the garage, and the mice had an entryway under the siding above the concrete foundation. And a pile of pine needles 20 feet from the house for mouse habitat.

Sealed the house with a can of foam insulation, and eliminate the pile. End of problem.

Generally, a mouse can get through a dime size hole. If it can get it's skull through, the rest can follow. Check door seals, look around pipes that enters the house, and look under the siding or around windows. Sometimes need to get down and look up.

Also keep all dog food in a sealed container. Don't feed more than they'll clean up in a few minutes.

Same with chicken feed. I keep the feed bags in a barrel. I once had problem with mice in the chicken feeder. Caught 12 with traps in one night. Then I built a pen on stilts hard to get at, and end of problem. Until this year when a few found out how to get up there. I now put the chicken feeder in a garbage barrel at night.

So hit the problem from all angles - seal the house, eliminate food sources, and eliminate habitat (vegetation or piles around house). Hopefully you have a good neighbor and they would be open to ideas, like keeping chicken feed contained.

And lastly, you could get a cat or traps.

(Re-posting down here where it belongs)



I'm a former health inspector and mouse hunter.

I've noticed over the years that most people think first of trapping mice, instead of keeping them out. More fun, I guess. I'll second the notion of inspecting your house for entryways. I live on a small farm and there are mice around, but I haven't seen one in the house in the 21 years we've been here.

But they were in the garage we discovered a week after moving in. Turns out the former owners left dog food in the garage, and the mice had an entryway under the siding above the concrete foundation. And a pile of pine needles 20 feet from the house for mouse habitat.

Sealed the house with a can of foam insulation, and eliminate the pile. End of problem.

Generally, a mouse can get through a dime size hole. If it can get it's skull through, the rest can follow. Check door seals, look around pipes that enters the house, and look under the siding or around windows. Sometimes need to get down and look up.

Also keep all dog food in a sealed container. Don't feed more than they'll clean up in a few minutes.

Same with chicken feed. I keep the feed bags in a barrel. I once had problem with mice in the chicken feeder. Caught 12 with traps in one night. Then I built a pen on stilts hard to get at, and end of problem. Until this year when a few found out how to get up there. I now put the chicken feeder in a garbage barrel at night.

So hit the problem from all angles - seal the house, eliminate food sources, and eliminate habitat (vegetation or piles around house). Hopefully you have a good neighbor and they would be open to ideas, like keeping chicken feed contained.

And lastly, you could get a cat or traps.

Thank you so much for that very helpful information. I'll definitely make use of it.

One of my neighbors built a chicken coop a few feet from another neighbor's driveway. Oh, my! What problems with stench and noise and the coop encroaches on their yard illegally. The trouble is that they don't want to pay court costs to deal with it and the chicken coop will continue to be a problem. Sigh

The neighbor would probably deny that his chickens have anything to do with the problem, like when I mentioned that the poison he put into his gravel driveway to kill the weeds was also damaging my plum trees next to it. Sigh

Thank you everyone for your advice. Sigh

My chickens lay easter eggs. They are blue or brown and very delightsome to the palate.

My mom kept some Easter egg chickens on our farm. She kept them separate from the other ones - they had their own coop.

We had the meanest rooster in the world!
We called him "Finger Lickin'".

LOL, did he become dinner?

Roosters make the toughest meat.

Re: Posted by: Chery,lReg. "One of my neighbors built a chicken coop a few feet from another neighbor's driveway. Oh, my! What problems with stench and noise and the coop encroaches on their yard illegally. The trouble is that they don't want to pay court costs to deal with it and the chicken coop will continue to be a problem. Sigh"
---

If any of it encroaches on the neighbor's yard, they don't have to pay court costs to get rid of it. On your yard, you're legally the boss, and can tear it down. Small claims court will support you, if need be (much, much less expensive, and the person who looses has to pay the cost--which, alone, can cause him to take care of his own-made mess).

To try and avoid all this, I would let the inconsiderate boob know what you plan to do, if he doesn't clean up his act.

Yeah, it's the food--I went out a couple times at night and there was a big ol' rat hanging around with out the chickens like it was a coop party.

So it definitely is the feed. Sigh The neighbor gives me some eggs occasionally, so I will have to approach the problem tactfully.

I lived on a ranch with a large chicken coop. We had a lot of chickens, but the mice outnumbered the birds by a long shot. We were told to trap and kill all the mice we could, and we did. It was bloody.

I would get a couple of cats, or be prepared to do a lot of trapping.

Rodents may also be drawn to the chicken droppings, not only the chicken feed. They eat almost anything.

Cats might help. We had cats on the farm when I was a child. They may have helped to a point. We still had mice, just not a bumper crop of them.

I'm sure the chickens and/or feed is attracting extra mice, but, you will have mice with or without the chickens. I would be more concerned about how the mice are getting into your house and maybe once that problem is fixed, the chickens (or lack thereof) won't matter.

They've only had them for about a year and a half. We have long yards and their coop is way at the back of their property, but up against my fence. I haven't noticed any more mice than we usually have. The first year I got a dog, I had a lot of mice come in as the cats hanging around the neighborhood didn't stay around. I'd say I've had less mice, especially this past fall when I usually have them, than I usually have had in the 31 years I've lived here.

My house is built in an old field. It is a subdivision, but it is surrounded by fields. All my neighbors get mice.

The neighbors are thinking of getting rid of the chickens as she is tired of taking care of them. The kids do, too. She's afraid a dog would be too much work. I'd rather have a dog by far. I grew up as the daughter of a farmer, although we didn't live on the farm. We had sheep, a few horses, and a few cows, and having had to take care of sheep when I was a little girl, I'd pick a dog ANY DAY. We never eat lamb. Not a one of us even if we haven't had sheep in many years.

Another issue with mice to consider - for whatever reason, the liitle buggers like to chew on electrical wires.

I'm going to share my mouse story, to show what a soft, stupid heart I have.

I moved out to the country, next to a fellow who kept a lot of farm animals. Nearly everyone around me had horses and or cows. Lots of mice - I grew up rural, but had been a city girl for a lot of years.

So I start hearing the patter of little feet at night, see some mouse poop in the pantry, find the box of nibbled cereal. Clean up, secure the pantry using glass containers, no food sources. Whew. That wasn't too bad, right?

Uh, poop in the utensil drawer. Yuck. Okay, so I left them hungry, and they went exploring. I don't really mind feeding the little buggers, mice are cute little things anyway, but I know they carry disease. I can't kill them. I can't. Apparently, my two little poodles are useless in seeing to their duties. What am I going to do?

I'll trap and release. That's it. Maybe it will scare them, and they'll stay away. So I get a no-kill trap, set it on a shelf in the pantry, and when I check it in a day or so, there's a dead mouse inside, and five live mice in the formerly empty five gallon bucket that just happened to be in front of the shelf. ...? Okay, the bucket's a better trap than the real trap. I put the bucket in the car, and drive the mice to a nice big field about a mile away. They're field mice, right?

Home I go with my bucket, thinking, that ought to do it. I take care of the trap, triple bag it and ask forgiveness of the poor little thing, put it in the bin outside. I think I'll leave the bucket where it worked so well before, and go about my business. I look in the bucket in a day or so, and there's a still, small body in it. I murdered another one! Maybe I can save it...

So I pick it up, take it to the bathroom, and with the medical expertise of knowing that water thaws a pound of meat pretty damn fast, I run the tap to the perfect baby milk on the wrist temperature, and careful not to soak its tiny face, I gently stroke it as water flows over its body. It starts to move a little in a minute or so, and I'm so relieved. About fifteen seconds after that, it suddenly comes fully alert, is clearly terrorized, leaps out of hands onto my arm, runs up my shoulder and takes a flying leap. I was expecting a hug.

Now, the dogs yapping and throwing fits, want to hunt it down. I want it to escape. We're all under the bed, going for the gold. We give up after five or ten minutes, the mouse claiming the prize. We never see it again. I turn the bucket upside down, never to capture another mouse. i think they might use it to springboard down from the pantry shelf.

I go buy some cat food and wood chips, put them and a little dish of water in an unused aquarium on a dresser in my bedroom. In under a week, I had at least a dozen mice I don't know how to get out of the new mouse Ritz, and they smell. Ungrateful. That's all I have to say. They're impossible to catch with a fish net, and I don't want rabies or anything. So I load the whole aquarium into the car, and off to the field we go.

I put a little dish of cat food on the porch rail. The aquarium goes next to the bucket. I secure my utentils, leave my dishes in the dishwasher until I use them, at which time I hand wash them and return them to the now useless dishwasher. The mice had defeated me.

That was nothing, though. Sometime I'll tell you about the evening I came home to find four of the most beautiful, huge, dark brown quarter horses you ever laid eyes on , just loose in my front yard. That was a real treat.

Anyway, when I moved out, the mice had done a number on my stove's electrical wire. It had to be replaced.

wait until you see what they do to automobile wiring. KILL THEM ALL !!!

Oh, my! I can relate to a lot of your story. You told it well.

It's time to get ruthless, I'm afraid.

My BIL's chickens will viciously attack mice! I mean they are FAST and when they catch one they'll shake them violently and then gulp - down the hatch!

Rats! We got some into our attic. I followed a remedy a friend used for getting rid of raccoons in his attic: We put holes in boxes of moth balls to get rid of them.

We tied the boxes onto long sticks (at least 6' long) to stick up into the attic (so we could take it out later), and made sure all holes for attic access were stuffed with round-wire household pot cleaners. It worked swell.

Now, as to ants: Use household pepper to put into their little outside dirt ant hills. (He-he-he-he, I feel like a devilish witch.)

These are good-to-know tips.

When I had a flying ant infestation last summer, one thing that was more effective than the insecticide was to pour boiling water over their ant hill/hole/s outside where their colony was.

It seemed to help, but still took me several weeks to be rid of them - been here 20 years and not had a single infestation before last summer. Strange creatures too because they aren't common to the area.

My friend, Louie the Torch, can help you with your chicken coop problem.

Has your rodent problem improved since you posted this last winter?