I think we are winning the war against rats...

..at least in the meantime!

This warm weather has seen an explosion in our local rat population. Whether we like it or not rats (and mice) like to live close to us humans as we regularly leave food out for them to eat. Whether we feed the wild birds, leave cat food out for the cat, or drop some rubbish near our bins, all of these things attract rats.

In our case, it's our chickens!

There has been the odd hole appear in their run (they have a large outdoor run, some 40 metres by 20 metres) but this summer they seem to have multiplied out of control.

They didn't seem to like the poison put down for them in the run and seem to avoid going anywhere near the bait stations. The rats then seemed to build a nest in one of our clumps of pampus grass which is just outside the chicken run and we seemed to have two populations, so something had to be done.

We changed the bait in the bait stations, we moved them closer to the pampus grass, the dogs got a few as they seem to be very bold in coming out to scavenge, and a friend in the village lent me their air rifle. Yesterday we had someone come around and remove the pampus grass, and that seems to have reduced the numbers still further.

A few dead rats have been picked up and disposed of - Pepper managed to kill a rather large one last night - but the sight of them scurrying around when we go in to feed the chickens has stopped. phew....

I didn't manage to shoot any with the air rifle, I am obviously a bad marksman, but I got close a few times and that scared them.

Our baby chicks are safe as they are small enough for a large rat to decide to have for tea!

Blooming rats!

A very pleasant evening out in the garden on Wednesday, despite the chilly wind, drinking a glass or two of beer while playing with our dogs, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a creature move along the hedgerow.

I didn't believe it at first but it was quite a large rat - the dogs didn't seem to be taking any notice and I was prepared to just let it go, and then it turned right and headed across the lawn towards the chickens. With 3 young chicks still only a week old it wasn't the wisest thing to let rats get a sniff of them so, come on Pepper, lets go chase it off.

Pepper is our Jack Russell X,

There he is, in a more relaxed mode!

Anyway, it didn't take him long to realise that there was something in the shrubs that needed catching, and it didn't take Lladdie long to realise there was something up either. Lladdie spotted it first as it made a run for the pampus grass, and got to it before Pepper, but dropped it as Pepper got there. The dispatch process was amazingly quick. Both Pepper & Lladdie had a sniff and left it.

Along comes Gizmo the retriever and he picks it up and takes it off up to mum, who wasn't happy.

Lots of fuss made of the dogs for a job well done when Pepper wanders back to the pampus grass and finds another one, 2-0 to Pepper.

Thinking about it, Pepper had dug a few holes along the fence line where we saw the rat and he had obviously sniffed it out before, but no luck on those occasions. A much swifter demise for the rat than putting poison down.