Do rats eat chaff?

[Jenko109]

This is bizarre. Sorry.

I have a bag of chaff out in the open. Not in a bin. Have done it for years. Never any signs of rats.

So do rats just not eat chaff? Or is this just indicative that we dont have rats?

Are there other horse feeds that rats dont eat that arent chaff?

 

[catembi]

That's an interesting point! I have all my food in bins except for my chaff & have never seen any signs of rodent activity in it. (I have a pest control man who comes round once a fortnight so I don't tend to get rats/mice, but even so!)

At my last house (no pest control, mice, no rats AFAIK) the thing they loved most of all was micronised linseed so if I forgot to put it in a bin straight away, it was attacked. Although the Sh*tland will also attack an unguarded bag if I'm trying to put food away and she gets into the tack room.

 

[Arzada]

Are there other horse feeds that rats dont eat that arent chaff?

Speedibeet

 

[pistolpete]

We never saw any until I bought barley straw. They frickin loved that!

 

[Indy]

They do eat chaff, they also make nests out of it too

 

[Nonjumper]

Rats tend to eat seeds, fruits, veg, meat and fats. I'd have said they'd be more likely to use chaff as bedding material than eat it.

To be honest if you have a stable yard you almost certainly have rats.

 

[SpotsandBays]

I too keep my other feed in bins and my chaff just in the bag. Once had a bale of chaff unopened that had nibble holes in the corners, but I haven’t ever seen any signs of them going for the open bag?

 

[TPO]

They do eat chaff, they also make nests out of it too

Can't sadly confirm.

I left a bag of Cool & Condition chaff, along with Ease & Excel mix, on my hay stack while I sorted storage.

A couple of days later I went to move it and there was only half a bag of each. The local rats must have spread thr news far and wide...

The traps were in overdrive that week. We had to move the hay stack and check every bale. When it got close to the bags' there was a whole rat metropolis. The streets were lined with chaff with lots of feeding and sleeping quarters along the way. Cue a big hay bonfire

Up until that point there hadn't been a problem with rats so it didn't even cross my mind when I left the bags on the bales. Idiot!

Edited to undo autocorrect of alone back to along!

 

[criso]

They didn't eat it but I had rats chew into a bag, drag it out and pile it under some shelves in a nest.

 

[tda]

in my experience they will eat into the bag anyway just to try

 

[Pearlsacarolsinger]

They will eat anything! Even the bins if that's the only way they can get to the food.

 

[Btomkins]

Not sure about rats but mice certainly do!

Though I was safe leaving a bag of Top Chop Lite on the floor until I’d used the load already in the bin but apparently not!

We don’t even have a big mice problem but they ate through the corner of the bag last week and a load spilled out. It’s just straw chaff so not sure why they felt the need when there’s literal bales of straw 2m away

 

[Nonjumper]

They will eat anything! Even the bins if that's the only way they can get to the food.

Can confirm. I once discovered a massive hole chewed in the back of a feed bin and the rats had been getting fat on the bounty within. I did wonder why we were going through that particular food so quickly!

 

[Sealine]

I keep Alfa A in the bag in the feed room and the rats and mice never touch it. I bought some horse treats once, I can't remember what type. The rats chewed through the plastic box they were in and were storing them in the corner of the feed room. They were rat crack cocaine.

 

[Indy]

I think if you lined bags of chaff up Mollichaff Calmer would come out as top choice, quickly followed by the Topshop Lite and Healthy with Thunder brook Herbal coming in 3rd.

 

[JenJ]

I think if you lined bags of chaff up Mollichaff Calmer would come out as top choice, quickly followed by the Topshop Lite and Healthy with Thunder brook Herbal coming in 3rd.

You sound like the voice of experience

 

[Indy]

You sound like the voice of experience

*Other chaffs are available

 

[Glitterandrainbows]

We never saw any until I bought barley straw. They frickin loved that!

Snap they broke into a bag of chopped straw and made the biggest mess ignoring the healthy herbal chaff I was fuming as it was everywhere

 

[blodwyn1]

My honey chop light and healthy is emptied into the feed bin by holes eaten into the sides of the sacks until there is more outside the sack than in it.

 

[criso]

*Other chaffs are available

It was Agrobs Grunhafer they used for nesting. The rat equivalent of high thread count Egyptian cotton

 

[asmp]

Speedibeet

Speedibeet

Sorry to disagree but once found a very dead, very bloated rat in a dustbin of speedibeet. It had chewed a hole in the dustbin to get in.

 

[JenJ]

It was Agrobs Grunhafer they used for nesting. The rat equivalent of high thread count Egyptian cotton

I had half a pallet of flax bedding stored behind my stables for most of a winter. By the time I got to the bottom bales, they had all been part-excavated and redistributed into various nooks and crannies.

I never bought flax again!

 

[TPO]

Sorry to disagree but once found a very dead, very bloated rat in a dustbin of speedibeet. It had chewed a hole in the dustbin to get in.

I'm sure sugarbeet/speedibeet has vitamin k that's toxic to rats. Happy to be proven wrong.

Feeding/baiting with things like beet and instant mash is often recommended because it gives them bloat and kills them. Again, no idea if that's fact.

 

[suestowford]

I had one of the big sacks of Readigrass once. It wouldn't fit into any of my metal bins. I had to chuck out the bottom half as by the time I got down that far the mice had taken up residence in it.

 

[asmp]

This is why I gave up buying haylage bags in bulk - the rats chewed holes in a few wiping out all the savings I’d made by buying in bulk.

 

[Smitty]

I have my sister's old Dengie bags as bin liners. Most of them have duct tape on them somewhere to cover up holes!!

I'm sure they they used to chew into my HiFi and can confirm during foot and mouth in 2000, they chewed the straps of some knee boots I had left in the feed shed

 

[Pearlsacarolsinger]

I'm sure sugarbeet/speedibeet has vitamin k that's toxic to rats. Happy to be proven wrong.

Feeding/baiting with things like beet and instant mash is often recommended because it gives them bloat and kills them. Again, no idea if that's fact.

Yes, with the advantage that it won't poison anything else.