trying to deal with rats - electric fencing?

So, part of the problem of my own making is that the chicken coop is too close to the veg garden...  and I made the coop out of scrounged chicken wire, which the rats can get through.   I've set up motion cameras and know my coop gets a dozen or more visitors per night.  

And they've moved on to the garden as well.  Cantaloupes still on the vine, with a small hole chewed through, and then completely emptied from the inside!  nothing but skin left.  Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers gone.  bean sprouts chewed off and carried away.  etc.

Without building a complete cage out of hardware cloth (1/4" screen) that includes a roof... and the garden is in about the only place it can be.  so is the coop. I'm not sure what to do.  

No, I can't really do cats.  The current dog would eat them, and I'm allergic, and I don't want another creature to be responsible for.

So I'm trying to figure out about maybe doing some sort of (solar powered) electric fencing that would keep out rats.  I'm thinking of a band of 1/4" screen that's electrified (24" wide) along the ground, and then probably plastic deer fencing on top.   I seem to be running into problems with the way typical electric fencing needs to be grounded - while my idea basically NEEDS to be along the ground, or they'll simply go under.  

Anyone have good solutions, or experience with using electric fencing for rodents?

Tys

Hmmm.  I'm not certain any sort of electric system would work for really motivated rats. But if you were to reduce their motivation (possibly the chickenfeed?) and can manage the maintenance for keeping electric from shorting out, mesh electric fencing might work.  Friends in Oregon keep their ducks out of their garden that way, with a short mesh electric fence all around the garden.

Turns out it's called "Net electric fencing". Like this:


Here's a seller of it: PermaNet electric mesh net fencing

And note they say:

Weeds must be controlled for PermaNet to remain effective... If you can’t do this, PermaNet may not be the right fence for you.

But a note- if you were in a very dry region, like a desert, electric fencing won't work well because the animal doesn't have a strong enough electrical connection to the dry ground. That company, Premier, is the one who told me this issue and they recommended against my using electric fencing because of this problem.

We have terrible native rat problems here, packrats will take almost everything in our garden if they don't have access to enough food otherwise.  So it's a challenge to get your garden started, and very difficult to have a winter garden.

In my experience, the first and most important thing to do is to deal with the chickenfeed.  That's likely the high-value stuff that is attracting them in the first place.  Fencing the coop better is good for other reasons, but you can also spray the chicken food with homemade cayenne pepper spray. The birds can't taste it, but the rats can't tolerate it. And it's medicinal for the birds. It's such a simple fix, but it does take doing it. Some people leave the bottle outside by the place you feed them, and spray each time.

Next, we have to just keep trapping rats and removing them.  In our case we use live traps.  There are a lot of really cool animals here in the desert that you can accidentally kill, and we don't want to do that.  Back in Oregon, when neighbors accidentally imported a load of city (Norway) rats to our previously rat-free country location, we did use snap traps. Same when we lived in a small town.  But here, being diligent with the live traps also works.

Cayenne spray as a deterrent can also work if you find specific pathways the rats are taking. It's cheap and simple, too.

Hope others see this and have more ideas for you!

Hi Tys.
Don't know what your property looks like so I can only tell you about my experiences.....Sedona has a huge rat problem. So does most of Arizona. I know most of my neighbors place these little LED lights under their vehicles (from auto parts store) to deter the rats from getting up in their expensive vehicles and chewing on the wiring. Some are strobe lights and others are just regular lights. My one neighbor has a flood light pointed under his big ass RV. They all say they work pretty well. I can't personally attest to this. The rats don't seem to be interested in my 26 year old pickup.

I know some neighbors who have chickens always put their feed in metal trash cans so they won't tempt the rats.

However, my property was overrun with rats when I bought my really beat up old place 10 years ago. They had been nesting under the back deck, in the crawlspace, in the garage and under huge piles of dead brush and trees for about 40 years! And they had no intention of moving out! First step was to take away all their nesting places. I mortared all the holes in the foundation so they couldn't get in any more. My deck is 10 inches off the ground so I piled up rocks all around the perimeter. Turns out.... rats can move some serious rocks when they put their minds to it! So I started over and placed a wall of 8” blocks under the perimeter with bricks above it, made a good and tight fit... because I found a whole bunch of them on the property. Then I put a big pile of rocks against that. So whenever they moved the rocks they came up against the blocks and bricks and gave up. A few years later one did actually chew a hole in a 2x6 deck board! I took him out with a snap trap. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

I put my 2x10' wood pile up on cinder blocks.  Placed a sheet of 4' chicken wire over the blocks,  put 2x6 on top of that to hold the wood and then folded the sides of of the chicken wire up around the bottom of the pile to keep them out. Burned all the piles of old wood and basically took away all or most of their places to nest. That solved about 75% of my problem!!

My backyard is ¾ acre surrounded by a 6' chain link fence. I wanted to protect just ½ an acre for my garden. So I attached 18” of chicken wire along the bottom of the fence and piled up some rocks at ground level. Chicken wire comes 2 ways.... with 1” holes or 2” holes. I used the 1”. Our rats are pretty big and can't get through it. Mind you, rats can climb if they have a mind to. But when they come up to the fence they just don't think about climbing it very often; they just run along it.... and stay out mostly!  And it totally served my purpose to keep the rabbits out!

I wasn't enclosing the whole backyard for the garden, just the ½ acre, so at the end of the garden I put up a makeshift chicken wire fence. Nothing fancy! Just hammered some old 1” pvc pipe into the ground and attached 4' of chicken wire to it. I was thinking Rabbits! The thing is I didn't make it all tight and 'well manufactured'! I did the opposite. I made it rather loose and flimsy. It turns out that rats have a really hard time climbing up flimsy chicken wire that keeps moving and rocking and rolling! I had a great time watching my neighbor's cat try to climb it!!!

And then there's the vegies that go vertical, like tomatoes and cucumbers etc..... As soon as the plants are 2-3' tall I cut all the fruits and branches off the bottom 12-18” so they are out of reach.

Now, only occasionally does a rat come in to bother me. Takes just a bite or two out of a zucchini or melon laying on the ground. Just enough to ruin it! Jerk! Then I put out the snap traps there. They just can't resist that peanut butter!

Hope this gives you some ideas! Best wishes.

have a heart live traps or good old fashioned rat traps or even the 5 gallon bucket home made rat trap might be some options for you.

Recycled (or new) metal roofing panels, buried in a two foot trench (to discourage diggers) then topped by a second course OR the electric netting.

The Metal Roof panels/sheets are maintenance free and unclimbable; will stop raccoon, rabbit, mink, rat, squirrel (ground or tree), mink, lynx, weasel etc. Often avail for free when folks re-roof or tear down metal sided barns/buildings (contacting a local roofing company sometimes works when doing tear offs). If not free, quite reasonably priced (12ft x 3ft in BC about $35).

Ensuring the ground is wet/damp along the exterior of the electric fencing (roof/gutter diverted or slow drip barrel) will ensure paws are damp enough to make "contact".

This will also secure from all land dwelling predators (garden or chicken) from accessing your stuff; assuming you eliminate all "bridging options such as trees, structures, fences or "stuff" they could use to leap over or past this defense.

Get a tall bucket about 3 foot tall, fill maybe a third with water, then take a 2 L bottle cut off top and bottom, you should have about a 6 inch cylinder.  then use a coat hanger and drill two opposing small holes (for coat hanger wire) in top of bucket.  Then puncture the cylinder in the middle with coat hanger, after you are done you should have a free spinning cylinder at roughly top of bucket.  Rats probably like peanut butter (PB), next take a board and lead it up to the clyinder, put some under inside top of cylinder, and a little on board, to get them up the ramp.  they go for PB but the cylinder freely drops them in water even if they don't drown, they can't get out.  Or add a bit more water.

here is one version of the bucket trap. these work very well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVTI_0K9Dqg

I have also had great success with sticky boards catching rats and mice.

a couple natural options if you can't have feline friends

here is an interesting trap idea ive never seen before

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erK6zvdJI-0

I've read reports of people catching rats, chopping them up and feeding them to their chickens (it used to be a main source of winter protein for much of North American small farm chickens). Apparently, if you train the chickens well, they'll start catching the rats themselves and that would certainly help manage the population. Chickens consider rats a natural predator, so they're motivated to attack them.

I admit I haven't tried this myself. Although we have occasionally had a mouse or rat problem, I've trained my chickens to clean up any spilled feed, and their feeder is hung above their perches, so the rats can't get to it without them attacking it and that seems to be enough. Our feed is in a rat-proof trailer (although occasionally mice can get in and we trap them then) until it goes to the field in a square bucket with a lid, which sits inside a lidded garbage can. I think the "double layer" approach contains the smell enough that so far they haven't tried to chew their way in. A square bucket on its own, they will chew.

There are a number of ways to deal with rats, and the best method may vary depending on your specific situation. An electric chicken fence can be effective at keeping out some animals, like deer, bear, raccoons, rabbits, foxes, coyotes, and stray dogs. However, it likely won't do much to deter rats. If you're looking for a more permanent solution, you might want to consider hiring a professional pest control company to remove the rats from your property.