It took less than a week for my resident rat to find the zapper. Luckily I got her before she had a litter. It seems like a quick death and very simple to dispose and reset. It even gets mice.
Got actual eyeballs on the rat in the aisle at night check and yeah…she’s beefy. And very likely a pregnant girl.
Moved the bucket trap into the cam’s view and will deploy snap traps tomorrow. NO desire to host her family 
Wellllll.
Found Ms Rat in Blush’s water tub today. That solves THAT problem.
We did clean up the storage room, too. Removed all the cardboard boxes, swept up the mouse AND rat droppings and filled in her little burrow that she was creating under the stall mat.
If anyone is curious just how big she was (pretty big!) I took a picture. Warning! Dead rat! Clicky clicky.
That looks like a packrat, not our invasion of brown Norwegian rats we had two summers ago.
The bad part of mice and rats can also be the fleas, that your dog/cat will get if they come close to where rodents live.
Poison works well and most rodents die in their burrows and are dessicated by the time anything that could get poisoned finds them.
The trouble can be those few that get too sick outside their hidey holes and don’t make it there, that something else may eat and if they get a big enough dose, get sick or die also.
We bought a ton of poison when we had that invasion, it really was that bad to need to do something drastic.
Once we started using that bucket trap, we never did need to put any poison out, that peanut butter must be rodent crack.
At least you know what to try next time you have a problem.
Beware the old phrase, for every one rodent you see, there are many others you never know are there, so keep your guard up.
That’s not a rat, that’s a chihuahua! :lol: Good riddance.
We rarely have rats in our barn, but once in awhile one makes its presence known (droppings) - then good old snap traps do the job. I also used a trail cam to spot what was visiting our barn and where it was entering!
$(&)(^(#@^(!
Battle: Rat isn’t over.
Something dug in behind Blush’s water tub last night. That ground DEFINITELY wasn’t disturbed yesterday. That corner is pretty much all concrete except for the stall…it’s digging under the concrete slab. GRRRRR.
It is ON. :mad:
Are there ANY poisons that are safe??
NO most rat poisons are so toxic that even the dead rat is toxic to anything that eats it.
sanitation traps friendly predators
rats love chocolate and it can be tried as trap bate
I also thought that it looked like a packrat - but then I saw that you’re up in CT and I didn’t think that you had them up there. Lo and behold, the wonder of the internet indicates there is a variety that ventures pretty far east. Here’s more than you probably wanted to know about pack rats:
http://icwdm.org/handbook/rodents/ro_b133.pdf
(and our rodent control is a dedicated barn cat, plus a housecat who goes down to the barn on occasion. no sign of the mice we used to have in the hay. not super fond of the housecat bringing the live kangaroo rat through the cat door, into the house, though. makes for an instant indoor rodeo - terrier and Catahoula chasing cat chasing rat. in the middle of the night, of course.)
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Teeter-totter traps have been great for us. IDK if they are available where you are, I haven’t seen them around very much. They are a long narrow wooden box, with a teeter-totter inside. Bait is put at the far end, on the far side of the ramp. The rat goes in, and climbs the ramp. When they get past the fulcrum, it tilts downwards, dumping the rat into the box. A metal support drops into place, not allowing the ramp to release the rat. The rat will be there, alive and unharmed, captured. What you do with the rat after that, is your decision. If you are averse to killing the rat, a good option is to take him for a car ride many miles away from your house and farm, and close to a resident that you do not LIKE, and turn him loose there. With luck, he will move into their house/barn and take up residence there. Win/win situation for you.
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Huh. That’s interesting!
Does anyone use zinc phosphide in a bait station for rodents? That article says it’s effective for these guys and this article says secondary poisoning is pretty much nil.
We’ll deploy the snap traps tonight but in case those don’t do the trick…
Nancy, funny you mention live traps! My husband asked if we should bait our cat sized have a hart just for giggles. Asked him what we would DO if we catch it in there! :lol:
The article, following the bold word, states that “Dogs and cats have been affected.”
In addition, foxes, coyotes, and bob cats, linx, (any feline or canine) can be affected by eating rats poisoned with zinc phosphide…
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There is no such thing as A rat - behind the walls there are families, armies, in fact. They are wily, and reproduce amazingly fast - the rat is pregnant while still nursing its brood.
Setting traps may help, but never did the job for us. Traps have to be set along the perimeters, with the bait facing away from the wall. Rats rarely go into the open.
We had a cat that helped - but I think what she did was catch the babies and keep the population down to a dull roar. The full grown rats were a bit much for her.
Eventually we went to poison in those lockable poison boxes. We do not see dead rats outside - they seem to go into their burrows or under the concrete of the barn to die. But we have to be dilligent about keeping the poison topped up, or their population explodes and all your work is for nought. We used Orkin once for several months, but their poison was too weak for liability reasons and complaints, so we went to the Co-op and purchased, with several signatures and i.d., the strong stuff for farms…
I, too, am squeamish about killing things, but this is all that has worked.
This ^^. If you see one, that means there are many. The barn where I grew up riding had a major rat problem for a long time. Lots of places to hide. They were bigger than the cats! And tended to hang out most where the dogs couldn’t reach. However, they didn’t seem to cause a ton of damage to blankets, etc. Just the droppings (gross). There was for a while a teeny watermelon patch that had a resident snake or two, but not much of a match for all the rats. We did not have a good bird of prey population. Years and years of slowly repairing and refurbishing and CLEANING (including pouring concrete in a lot of places that had been dirt), and the rats became fewer and fewer. I wonder if installing a fly spray system in the barn also helped as a deterrent. Not toxic to them for sure but maybe unpleasant? In the storage areas, moth balls did seem to help some, although they were purchased for their original purpose to protect wool items.
It looks like those pack rats are pretty solitary, but yeah, that’s been my understanding, too: rats come in droves.
Snaps traps down tonight. Hope that’s fruitful. If not, I’ll call the pest people we have for the house.
Be wary of “either/or” thinking when dealing with rodents. Cats are a Good Idea, but they won’t get them all. Traps are a Good Idea but won’t get them all. Poison can be a Good Idea but won’t get them all. A considered program of all three might not get them all. But that program will get a lot more than any one element will.
Think systemically. It will work better.
G.
Ask if a wildlife rehab facility needs a place to release a weasel. I had a rat problem in one barn, a weasel or ferret type critter came in for a few days and cleaned the place out, then moved on.
I would love a weasel!
Nothing in the traps. More evidence of digging between stalls. Although–interestingly–not in the same spots. Trying something new each night.
I think I will put the horses out overnight and try the traps IN the stalls. If still unsuccessful, I give up. Then it’s up to the experts.
If you’re gonna do traps, get what the Pros use: T-Rex Traps. Easy to load, instant death.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/140306132283
No rats in traps. About 70 cam pics of rats having fun in the barn all night. They were all around the traps, and up the ramp of the bucket trap–smart suckers. At least two.
Sigh.
Tried reeses peanut butter cups last night on the traps. Seriously, what self respecting critter of any species doesn’t love them?
Our rats, apparently.
Pest people coming Monday.
