Once I had a problem with mice getting into my chicken feed. I put a few mouse traps out and put a little pile of chicken feed on the traps as bait. I caught three mice, but after that the mice got smarter and could carry all the feed off the trap without setting it off. Then safely use poison. I have yet to encounter a rat that I could get close to whack, and I wasn't comfortable with guns in the coop.
Cats seem to only take the youngsters.
Follow directions closely with any poison, and diligently search for the dead rats so cats or wild animals don't eat them. This is a private posting area. A valid username and password combination is required to post messages to this discussion.