# Rodents in Goat Barn



## goateeman

I have seen a lot of comments about getting rodents out of goat houses. I hate rodents (literally) but I want to know what are the major dangers of having these pests around. Should any kind of poison be used or would this be too much of a hazard to have around the goats? Do they make goats sick or what? Other than poison what rodent deterrent could be used?
I am full of questions but if I don't ask , I won't know.

thanks genie


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## ksalvagno

Rodents carry disease and can get into your feed so it would be best to get rid of them. I don't like to use poison since there is a chance of my goats getting to it. I have barn cats. Best rodent deterrents ever. I can leave bags of feed out on a pallet and they are never touched. Never see a live rodent in the barn either.


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## KarmakeeFarm

Cats -i agree best deterrent-if you dont like cats those stickey traps are the best-cant beat em-but also the good old wooden trap with that green mouse attractant works GREAT!


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## goateeman

ksalvagano, do you have any LGD ? If so , don't they get after your cats? I've heard that pyrenees don't like cats.


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## ksalvagno

I don't have an LGD but I do know people who do. They can learn that the cat is ok and part of the group.


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## clearwtrbeach

I would have a cat, and always had until 2 yrs ago when they finally passed. They didn't bother my chickens (which aren't free range). I noticed a feral cat around here a few times and he's tried to go after my chickens and my neighbors, which are free range. Now I'm a little apprehensive of getting another cat. We do keep poison up in the shed, no animals get in there, for the pack rats! Those are horrible and so destructive. Not sure what to do about the mice that are all over my hay, under the pallets you name it.


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## KarmakeeFarm

tee hee hee my neighbors cats are over all the time-they dont feed them-they got after my chickens and the hens beat the crud outta them before the rooster could even get there-It was Hilarious!


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## clearwtrbeach

:laugh::laugh: I'm worried because his chickens didn't beat up the cat they ran. I only have a few hens (5) and a rooster after loosing 5 to a **** earlier (which BTW is now skinned out side) I'd hate to loose any more.


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## barb_jess

has anyone had any experience with using guinea fowl to keep the rats and mice away?


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## Jodi_berg

I keep poison out under a milk crate with a cement block on top of it in my hay storage and in the barn, but the goats are never around it unsupervised, I find if you kill them off in the fall after they have moved in we don't have much trouble until the following fall.


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## 8566

we put the killer green pellets out under the grain bin. we tried cats but the cats brought in the coyotes.

I had a friend who got the mouse virus ..... can't remember name. We typically hear about 2-5 ppl getting it once a year in Colorado on the news but when it hit close to home ..... I am sooo afraid of smelling mouse poop dust and getting the virus now. It just wiped out my friend for months.

I brought in a horse a number of years back who presented with EPM a few years later after a stressful foaling. It was determined that she got it in Texas from possums bringing the disease into the grain. I always wondered if mice could carry diseases like that and why my goats couldn't get EPM. I need to educate myself on this.


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## liz

Rodents carry too many ickies that are not healthy for goats or people.... Black rat snakes are awesome at keeping rodents away, if you like snakes... I don't so I use one of those safety bait stations for rodent poisons under the area of the barn that is off the ground, goats can't get to it and the pest control guy that handles things where I work told me that the residual toxins in the critter is not enough to cause a dog or cat harm should they catch a poisoned one. I currently have 2 barn cats that were dumped here a few months ago... I haven't baited the box at all and though I feed the kitties in the barn, I haven't seen any sign of mice.


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## nursehelg

I recently got a male cat. His name is Spooky. We were having mice problems. I haven't seen any big rats around. I didn't want to use poisons. I don't like them. So my kitty was given to me by someone who said a whole litter was dropped off at their house. He has done wonderful. The day after we brought him home he has been killing mice. I have counted 16 so far. Now he has taken to going out in the field to look for them. I wonder if he came from some good mousers? Well he is doing the job good enough for me. I hate mice. I haven't seen any for a few days now.


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## goateeman

*Hooray for the Mouser I HATE MICE*



nursehelg said:


> I recently got a male cat. His name is Spooky. We were having mice problems. I haven't seen any big rats around. I didn't want to use poisons. I don't like them. So my kitty was given to me by someone who said a whole litter was dropped off at their house. He has done wonderful. The day after we brought him home he has been killing mice. I have counted 16 so far. Now he has taken to going out in the field to look for them. I wonder if he came from some good mousers? Well he is doing the job good enough for me. I hate mice. I haven't seen any for a few days now.


I don't particularly like cats but I hate mice more


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## clearwtrbeach

LilBleatsFarm said:


> we put the killer green pellets out under the grain bin. we tried cats but the cats brought in the coyotes.
> 
> I had a friend who got the mouse virus ..... can't remember name. We typically hear about 2-5 ppl getting it once a year in Colorado on the news but when it hit close to home ..... I am sooo afraid of smelling mouse poop dust and getting the virus now. It just wiped out my friend for months.
> 
> I too use the green pellets in the shop for the pack rats. I definately don't want to bring in anymore coyotes we have enough.
> The mouse disease is hanta virus, and is mainly spread through dried fecal matter getting air borne.
> In Az we used those sticky mouse traps in the house, that was bad then I had to kill them. Not to mention my husband stuck one on the hairy part (blonde fuzz) of my arm then pulled it off! I was laughing and tears at the same time it hurt!


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## bdawg6381

I think the virus you are talking about is called hanta virus and is mostly in the western portion of the U.S. Nasty stuff and can be fatal - I think I remember hearing about some of the state and national parks advising people to beware of rodents around campsites.


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## MissyParkerton

barb_jess said:


> has anyone had any experience with using guinea fowl to keep the rats and mice away?


I have Guineas and have never seen them go after a mouse. A rat would be too big for them. Guineas are REALLY loud and not for everyone, especially those with close neighbors. I love mine, but will probably not get more after these ones are gone.....I'm afraid they are going to live forever though....!


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## MissyParkerton

I have 3 cats who catch a lot of mice, but the problem is, the mice hide in the hay bales so the cats can't get them all. I used to put poison out (kept the hay/grain shed closed up tight so the cats couldn't get in to it) but when the mice started hiding little caches of those bright blue pellets IN the hay bales I had to stop. Now I leave a window ajar for the cats to get in and use a mouse trap called the Tin Cat. It is a live trap (didn't want a sticky or a snap trap because of the cats) and have caught up to 5 mice at a time in it. I'm a softy, so I do release them a few miles from my house, but another option would be to throw it in a bucket of water to kill them.


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## barb_jess

MissyParkerton said:


> Guineas are REALLY loud and not for everyone, especially those with close neighbors. I love mine, but will probably not get more after these ones are gone.....I'm afraid they are going to live forever though....!


I did hear that they were very loud but that they kept the bug and tick population under control. I also read that you can let them into your vegetable garden to eat bugs and they won't damage your vegetables...is that true? Do you have a particular breed?


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## MissyParkerton

Yes, they do eat lots of bugs! So do my chickens and ducks...hard to tell if either species eats more than the other. Guineas don't scratch the ground like chickens do which is why they are better on gardens. They do, however, love veggies, so wouldn't be a good option for maturing veggie patches. Tomatoes are a particular fave! I think the most available breed here in the states is the helmeted variety. They come in lots of different colors. I have lavender and.......now I forget what it's called. Their plumage is quite beautiful!


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## geonjenn

Last year we planted a very small fall garden and within two days, the grasshoppers decimated it. The only evidence that there had been plants were the little plant info cards that came with the plants. They even ate the tomato plants, which I had read they wouldn't touch. WRONG. So, when we planted our spring garden, we put young chicks we hatched and baby guineas in the garden. They took care of the grasshoppers. Unfortunately, they liked the squash, melons and tomatoes too. I don't know if it was the guineas or chickens, but either way it was better to us that they ate them than for the grasshoppers to get them. Now they've all moved into the chicken coop and we didn't plant a fall garden this year. Guineas are definitely loud, but it doesn't bother me. Drives my husband insane. We have only three left and if we still had the ten we started with, I imagine that might get on my nerves a bit. Also, they pick on the young chicks we have now. They don't hurt them, but chase them away from the food. I figure they're just toughening the chicks up, but it makes my husband mad. LOL I don't know if the guineas do any good for mice, but I haven't seen any snakes and the grasshoppers were under control in the garden and around the house whereever the guineas would go.

We started noticing little field mice in the goat shelter when it got really cold. We have four cats who are definitely good mousers, but they don't really venture over to the goat area much. And we bring them into the garage at night due to coyotes. Maybe I'll have to take a couple of them over to the goat shelter and show them there are goodies there. OH and the cats were raised with our chickens and they don't bother them at all. Not even the tiny silky chicks we had. The cats will walk around in the bunch of chickens and drink with them. The chickens aren't afraid of the cats at all and the cats don't even look at the chickens twice. So cats aren't necessarily going to kill chickens. And our dogs don't bother the cats, though they don't live "together" but they do see each other frequently and don't try to chase or run. Even the Pyrenees - he just sniffs and goes and lays down. We do have a terrier mix that kills chickens and guineas (why we went from ten to three) but we don't let her out unsupervised anymore.


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## audrey

Years ago I had a major mouse problem. I had a handful of cats, but clearly they were lazy. One stray showed up, and he is a maniac hunter! He is so driven. He has really decimated the rodent population around here. 

Anyway. At one point I had a fairly deep container for my grain bin. I had just a little covering of grain left, and I forgot to put the lid on one night. The bin was next to this part of the wall that obviously mice could somehow climb up or whatever, as there were like 10 mice hopping around in the bottom of the container! It was too tall for them to get out of. You could probably set up something like that that you could just catch mice in all night long! I didn't know what to do with them, so I took them to a cemetery a ways away and let them go LOL! Only thing I could think of to do was drowned them, and I have a MAJOR fear of drowning, so of course I would never subject something to such a slow and scary death. 

The one time I had a zip lock gallon bag of muffins that my sister made, that had turned out really badly, so she gave them to me for the horses. I had the bag, closed, in the feed room over night, and a mouse had chewed a hole in the bag, and a ton of them climbed in, and proceeded to suffocate in there! Their breathing had collapsed the bag, and the hole they climbed in had gotten covered up by a muffin, and they all died.


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## mjgh06

Just an FYI, don't know if anyone has had trouble with this but cats can give your goats Toxomoplasmosis. It is caused by does eating hay or feed containing cat feces infected with Toxoplasma gondii. Cats are natural carriers of the protozoan. Toxomoplasmosis can cause stillbirths, abortions, birth defects, mummification, and weak kids. Humans can become infected with it as well and if pregnant should not handle cat feces or clean areas of infected goats. Currently there is no cure and no treatment, although some immunity may occur in previously infected goats. I don't have cats around just for that reason. We only use bait traps and then release in the woods.


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## pdpo222

I don't see any mice or rats...yet. But the thing that I don't like is that rats and mice constantly urinate when they are walking to leave a scent trail for the rest. I love seeing snakes around my barn. Tells me there are vermin there and they are there to help me with the problem. And once the snakes move in the mice seem to leave after the snake catches one or more of them. I'll take snakes over rats and mice any day.


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