Ok, thanks for that info. I’ll keep trying. Worst comes to worst, maybe she can have it shipped to the border and get a friend on the mainland to pop over and pick it up, or she can make a day trip and pick it up herself, or… (at least there are options).
I end up catching a bunch of sparrows in my rat traps. It’s infuriating honestly, how many rats could that thing have caught if the stupid bird wasn’t in it???
This birth control stuff looks awesome, and if I get my new property I will definitely be deploying it.
In my experience, probably none. 
Rats are far too smart for snap traps. I’ve been using different styles of them for about 5 years and have caught exactly one rat. (plus a few mice and too many snakes 
)
But I keep using them in lieu of chemicals.
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My cats certainly eliminated the rat population in my barn.
I do not know that they killed any ADULT rats, but they killed LOTS of baby rats, and the adult rats decided to move out.
My father had a cat, called Tiny Tim, who killed a rat that was as big as he was. He was VERY pleased with himself.
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I have a fox family denning near my barn, and I suspect it is the rat buffet that drew them there. . .
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I’ll trade you rats for my California gray ground squirrels! OMG. Wily, ferocious diggers of burrows and tunnels, big (bigger than rats!), prolific breeders and invasives from out of state. The last infestation we had, they dropped a concrete slab 2 inches in my barn-the back corner of my feed are is now tilting. We had to hire a pest control company to set traps and dispose of them. Ugh. That cost a pretty penny, but we discovered that DH can trap them and drown them as well as the pest company could! But still…eesh.
So, now I have competing underground pests. The squirrels generally run off the rats, we trap the squirrels/dispose of them, then the rats come back. Fun cycle! I need to borrow a few Jack Russells.
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I think in the issue of cats vs. rats, it depends on the cat. Our current barn cat Fergus is a Mighty Hunter. He will hunt anything, including prey like squirrels that are technically out of his weight class. He is 1/4 bobcat, but I’m not sure if that makes any difference or not. His mother, who was 1/2 bobcat, preferred to hunt moles and voles and would leave presents on our front porch regularly. Fergus, however, never leaves gifts - “This is MINE. I caught it. Hunt your own food.”
Have to say, I have always loved Jack Russells, and if I could talk the rest of the family into it, I’d have one in a heartbeat.
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When I bought my place 42 years ago there was a rat problem. I bought a case of Warfarin, literally threw it into the pig barn (I was too scared to go in) and it didn’t take too long to get rid of them all. I made sure the barn was completely closed up so the cats and dogs couldn’t get near it. The rat problem cleared up fairly quickly.
All my horse and cat food is in metal containers and I have not had a rat problem since.
Not sure if Warfarin is legal now, it was many years ago.
While it’s a risk to cats and dogs, the bigger, uncontrollable risk is secondary poisoning of wildlife.
But warfarin is one of the lower risks of secondary poisoning compared to some of the other rodenticides. It’s still available, however rats have actually developed a resistance to it.
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I believe Warfarin is not a poison but a blood thinner causing internal bleeding. I have often wondered whether another animal eating the dead rat would ingest enough of it to cause harm.
It was my believe that because the effect was not immediate the rats didn’t realize its effect and therefore did not create a resistance.
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It is a blood thinner, even prescribed for human use such as post-cardiac repair.
I think why it’s a low risk is because it is readily excreted v. the rodenticides that accumulate in the liver of both the rats and the species who might consume them.
If an animal came and ate a bounty of dead/dying rats who had consumed warfarin, it could kill them. But if an animal eats one warfarin rat periodically, the risk of fatality is lower.
Ideally I don’t like to put warfarin or any poison into the food chain. But I don’t judge either because rats can be a major problem.
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Yes, absolutely. It’s called secondary poisoning.
I follow a local raptor rescue and they post regularly–every few weeks–about a new bird in their care suffering from secondary poisoning due to anti coagulant rodentcides. They’re treated with vitamin k, but many still die. A very small portion of birds or other animals that wind up with secondary poisoning manage to get to a rescue for treatment.
Which is why I use Terad3, a vitamin d rodentcide.
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Are there any issues with other animals coming into contact with it? What’s the name?
I was also curious, it’s this:
Looking at the product literature, it needs to be dispensed in locked bait boxes. Primary and secondary poisoning of non target species is a concern and may cause infertility in other mammals.
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