I had a neighbor a few doors down who ended up pouring a concrete slab for their coop because rats were tunneling in to the coop. He ended up sinking 12" of sta

I had a neighbor a few doors down who ended up pouring a concrete slab for their coop because rats were tunneling in to the coop. He ended up sinking 12" of stainless mesh into the ground around the slab to stop the rats. The rats also did $15K damage to his crawl space and a few thousand dollars damage to that of a directly next-door neighbor. The torches and pitchforks soon came out because the suburban chickens experiment caused the whole neighborhood to become overwhelmed with rats. This was back in COVID times and the exterminators said the infestation was made much more severe than normal because all the restaurants in the area were closed down and the usual rat food sources disappeared forcing the rats out into the residential neighborhoods. Some of the rats never left and, even today, we are still having to trap them. Fun times.