Horrifying if thats what happened. Due to my country using a lot of rat poison. im very familliar with it. If you want to invoke suffering onto a creature, that is what a person would use. Its one of the most fucked up things ive ever seen in use, and even more ironic, the rats are becoming immune to many of them due to overuse. It is inhumane and causes the most awful suffering over several days, the animal is conscious and feeling for most of it. Its sick, no dog would also get into straight rat poison due to bitterants dogs can taste, its disgusting to them, even a starving animal would taste it and spit it out in revulsion, like other farmers have suggested, it had to be mixed with something, either accidental or not, thats negligant to just leave that shit around if youre trying to bait rats. I dont know who did it but its disgusting it happened.
Ill have links on rodenticides below and how fucked up they are, opt for quick and painless traps if you are going to kill rats please. It will save wildlife and reduce suffering so much for all (especially raptor populations) and you can put them to rest in the garden groves without worrying you are poisoning an entire ecosystem or your beloved family members/pets. There is no downside
In surveys, most (if not all) rat poison that is consumed by dogs is mixed into other foods to entice rodents, rats know poison and if it smells like something that killed another rat they wont eat it.
Rats also essentially take a little of something and see if it makes them feel sick if its a new food, then if they feel okay they will continue to eat it but if they dont and feel sick they wont ever touch it again and will tell others to not as well, even slapping it away in disgust. This is the reason they have developed a strength to it.
Some of the statistics on dead native american birds are awful, two red tailed hawk corpses were found and tested and their livers contained 3 of the 4 currently restricted second generation anticoagulant rodenticides. Many bald eagle corpses also contained the same chemicals.
More in depth info, a thing to mention is rat poison stays in the tissue for MONTHS so anything that feeds upon the rats corpse will be also affected and have to cope with the harrowing effects, which are more pronounced in other species due to different metabolisms, especially pets.