Did you know rats can tunnel? Yeah, I guess it shouldn’t come as a big surprise, they’re clever beasts, but we were gobsmacked to discover a network of tunnels running under our chicken coop last weekend, and popping up opportunely near the feed bucket. Thus, last Saturday found us digging out the floor to bury a wire mesh barrier connecting to all the walls, to keep the little nasties out.
It didn’t work. Two days later, they’d managed to create a spacious cavern beneath the mesh, in which they could lounge about and wait for food to drop through the grate.
Plan B: gravel underneath the mesh, which supposedly they have a harder time tunneling through.
Anyhoo, that’s not at all what the Woodland Park Zoo has in mind when they talk about “habitats for backyard wildlife”. Instead, they’ve got a series of classes coming up to help you turn your backyard into a home for the good kinds of wildlife:
WHAT: Create and sustain your own backyard habitat with a series of classes this spring designed to show you how to turn your backyard, schoolyard or community garden into healthy habitat for wildlife. Learn from experts from Woodland Park Zoo, Seattle Audubon, Seattle Tilth, and Washington Native Plant Society how to design your wildlife habitat, attract birds and other wildlife to your backyard, select and care for native plants, manage your yard sustainably, coexist peacefully with the wildlife you attract, and get your yard certified as a Backyard Habitat.
Classes are designed to build on each other as a series, but may also be taken separately.
- Site Evaluation, Design and Maintenance – Wed., March 14, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. Join Allen Howard, Woodland Park Zoo horticulture staff, to learn the basic principles of creating habitat for wildlife, with a focus on planning, site analysis, design and garden maintenance.
- Attracting Birds To Your Backyard – Wed., March 28, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. Offered in partnership with Seattle Audubon. Join Neil Zimmerman, Seattle Audubon Outreach Chair and Master Birder, to learn how to attract and care for birds in your yard through plant selection, placement and maintenance of bird feeders and nestboxes, and use of water features.
- Spring Plants and Planting – Sat., April 7, 10:00 a.m. – noon. Offered in partnership with Washington Native Plant Society. Join Monica Vander Vieren, Washington Native Plant Society Native Plant Steward, and David Selk, Woodland Park Zoo horticulturist, to discover how different plants in your garden can provide for the basic needs of wildlife. The class includes a plant walk around zoo grounds focusing on aesthetic and size considerations, as well as proper planting techniques.
- NEW CLASS: Your Vegetable Garden as a Backyard Habitat – Sat., April 7, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. Offered in partnership with Seattle Tilth and the Garden Hotline. Your backyard vegetable garden not only provides fresh fruits and vegetables for your family and friends, but can also provide habitat for wildlife! Join Laura Matter, The Garden Hotline Program Coordinator, to learn how you can provide food, water, and shelter for wildlife while you grow delicious food to eat!
- Butterflies and Bees – Wed., April 25, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. Join Woodland Park Zoo entomologist Erin Sullivan and horticulturist David Selk to discover how to attract and care for local butterflies and bees. You’ll learn about the importance of these backyard pollinators as well as the threats they face and what you can do to help, including insect-friendly gardening practices.
Classes cost $25 per person, per class or $100 per person for the five-part series if you register before 3:00 pm on Wednesday, March 14. To register, visit http://www.zoo.org/
It has been suggested on a farm co-op bulletin board that planting mint around the edges of the coop discourages rats (as does removing the food container in the morning and taking it back out to the coop just before locking it up at dusk). Mint can get out of hand but apparently chickens don’t eat it and if the mint were surrounded by gravel it would be easy to contain.
Will you please keep sharing the progress regarding this? The rats on Thackeray pre-date chickens by decades and there have always been plenty of them.
Much as I enjoy backyard poultry, rats and chickens seem to go together like love and marriage. My tenant’s neighbor just got rid of chickens he’d owned for less than a year. Even though they were housed in a supposedly rat-resistant environment, within months rats appeared inside the tenant’s house where we’ve never had them in the 18 years we’ve owned the property. Problem is, rats have really good memories and lots of friends. Now, as landlords, we’re probably looking at years of extermination at a fair expense we don’t need right now. We enjoyed his chickens, but I’m really glad they’re gone.
Some years ago I took Tilth’s City Chickens tour of local backyard farms in Wallingford and nearby neighborhoods. We were caring for the home of an absentee owner down on 39th Street at the time. One of our jobs was to deal with the various vermin (including rats) pestering their tenants (the neighbor had chickens) so rats were on my mind and I asked the vermin question of each owner on the tour. Every owner either had or used to have rats in their chicken houses. Some had successfully tackled the problem in their own yard, usually by installing a concrete pad and plenty of rat wire, but only one had made an effort to help their neighbors who’d also become infested.
Even if they stayed out in the back yard, rats are not the kind of wildlife I prefer to have around. I’d like to heartily encourage all chicken owners to learn how to control vermin and do it effectively. To do otherwise is unfair to your neighbors.
We had a severe rat problem when our neighbors kept chickens. The rats would come down out of the trees to try to drop into the coop. It was a bit frightening if you went outside at night. As if there were eyes everywhere! It definitely turned me off to keeping chickens. Though ironically my children now have pet rats.
However, I am happy to report that once the chickens went away, the rats did also. I think they moved on to stalk some other coop.
There has been a or several colonies of rats in the rectangular block of Thackeray/Latona 42nd/43rd to my knowledge since 1989, block top to block bottom, and with some running across the streets on the wires. Also opossums and raccoons. Renovating my garage and removing a Holly tree ameliorated the problem, though at great expense, LONG before any chickens showed up in Wallingford. Extermination, old garage removal, etc., have been thrown at them for years in that rectangle and the latter is on-going. One example of a very irresponsible backyard poultry keeper just starts a rag on a blog such as this when I believe Jordan was honestly trying to enlighten people. Let’s work together to get rid of rats and share solutions (like true rodent-proof coops and runs, not supposed ones).
We have observed rats running across our neighbors’ roofs and lawns on several occasions the last several months, none of whom host chickens and all of whom keep well tended yards. I would have thought all the loose cats would have kept this population down. Conversely, our local squirrel population seems to have dropped. Is it just the increase in chickens in the ‘hood that is encouraging the rats? Is this one of the unintended consequences of city gardening and orcharding?
Global warming! Not that I have noticed an increase, East Wallingford has always been “Rodentia.”
Looks like you have all kind of ‘rats’ in your area, two legged and four legged. Might an alarm system be in order? Anne