I love it when people assume I am not in fact a farmer myself. I’m a shepherd, with sheep. I don’t have barn cats because, among other reasons, cats spread toxoplasmosis. You know what toxo does? Probably not. You’re probably not dependent on small ruminants for any part of your livelihood.
Toxoplasmosis causes abortion in sheep and goats. Every ewe or doe who fails to lamb or kid is lost milk, lost meat, a lost replacement animal in the flock, lost cash from the sale of a new herd sire to someone else. When you have rare breed primitive sheep like I do, each lost pregnancy is also the entire breed slipping closer to the brink of disappearing.
You also appear to be unaware that there are live traps for catching the very feral barn cats - I’m SO glad someone who knows my profession, life, and attendant tools so well chimed in - we also use them to eg trap raccoons, foxes, and possums who are predating small livestock like chickens and rabbits. Incidentally, did you know cats can shed salmonella which can go on to infect your chickens? Why are you raising your own chickens for eggs and meat if you’re just going to get the same salmonella roulette you could get at the grocery store without all the goddamned work?
Chickens will also eat mice and young rats, incidentally. If you’ve got an honest to God adult rat infestation in your barn your husbandry practices are fucked up six ways from Sunday and you need to build better feed containers before you do anything else. The country isn’t the city. We do a lot more mice here.
You could of course also get yourself a nice working terrier and while you’re doing chores let the dog go to town on the rodent population.
Because if you actually have barn cats you can’t get near, they’re serving as a potential reservoir for rabies (which will pass to any mammal including you, including cattle), feline distemper, toxo, salmonella, and a host of parasites starting with coccidia and running out to various worms that don’t much care if they infect a barn cat or, yknow, a pregnant cow worth $2000.
So no, actually, that’s generally not how the conversation goes. But thanks for chiming in, city kid, assuming I was not in fact a working shepherd.