Tried beef jerky on the traps last night. No surprises, nothing in traps. Little bit of a surprise: no digging activity at all last night. Cam caught one rat peeking in through dutch door early this morning. Honestly would have preferred late night partying to show pest guy today, sigh. But maybe the rats are moving on? (Hopefully not to the HOUSE.)
Foxtrot, do you have any issues with secondary poisoning? Do you find the carcasses? It is this stuff, maybe?
Huh. Pest guy punted case to his boss, the owner of the company, due to the complexity of a lot of wildlife and the forest. He’s going to come out in next couple days. Boss did mention that Terad3 is what they use when there’s a large concern over secondary poisoning. Has anyone used it?
That’s not a Pack Rat, don’t believe they are found in the east, mid-Atlantic. That is your standard, run of the mill Brown rat aka Norway Rat. By FAR the most common barn rat found in the east. Most places. They can get quite big. For those who say get barn cats. Well we had 8 dedicated barn cats. They were good at catching mice but had no interest in the rats. Too big and too much work.
If you see one, if you catch/kill one I can guarantee there are a LOT more to be dealt with. A lot more.
“The Norway rat reaches sexual maturity in two to five months and can breed any month of the year. Litters may number from four to 22. Females can have three to 12 litters per year. Adults generally live up to one year in the wild”
Rats are VERY smart, you may catch the odd one but they seem to learn from others mistakes. I’ve done the various bucket traps. got the odd one, set out lots of spring rat traps, got the odd one. Most of traps went untouched and or the bait was eaten off without setting off the trap.
I tried to solve, get our rat problem in check as humanly as possible. We won some battles but were losing the war. I left the light on in our feed room one night so I went to the barn to turn it off around midnight. Walked into the room and rats were everywhere. Like a scene out of the movie Willard.
No more Mr Nice Guy, took the gloves off and bought Tom Cat rat poison pellets. Placed small piles around the room. Which they ate up quite readily. Those who worry about wildlife eating a dead or dying poisoned rate is a bit unfounded. Barn rats are basically are just that. They live in the barn, the walls and far more so in a lot of barn by digging burrows, tunneling. They are quite the excavators I promise you. If the population is left unchecked they can and will make swiss cheese under stalls floors, isle ways etc.Which can and will create sink holes.
Barn rats generally do not venture far from their home, the barn area. No need. They are not wild “field rats” anymore. The rat poison kills takes effect with in 24 hours. You will either find dead ones but a lot of the times I have found ones struggling from the effect of the poison. Easy to pick up by the tail and I drop them in a bucket of water to finish them off quickly. More human then letting them die from the poison.
Because barn rats tend to stay around the barn there is little to no chance that wildlife is going to go after a poisoned rat. Our barn cats had no interest in a dead or dying rat. But it is important to make sure where ever you have set out rat poison pellets it is in places that cats, dogs, etc can’t get to it.
Controlling the roving rats is one thing. But getting rid of and or cutting down substantially on the breeding population tin their burrows is another. I look around the entire barn for the tell tail burrow entrance holes and pour pellets down the hole and cover with a rock and or fill with cement.
The best way to clear out the burrowing population can’t be done by us DIY. You have to hire a “rat catcher” who is licensed to use a strong poison powder. That is placed in strategic places, cavities of walls, “rat ways”, hole entrance etc. The rats walk on this stuff which sticks to their feet, bodies and is carried back to their nests and the stuff gets on the other rats, young and old. Rats groom themselves like cats so they ingest the poison which kills them quickly. The problem is rarely cured but the population is cut way down.
Had one of my silly moments and took a silly picture of my rat population control results after my feed room run in with them. 2 days after setting out the poison I found dead or dying rats all over the feed room floor. In the end over 35. Took a picture of a bunch and titled Rat hung out to dry. [ATTACH=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“full”,“data-attachmentid”:9719790}[/ATTACH]
OMG!!! I would have moved out and paid someone to dispose. I can’t handle rodents. They are the reason I got married, no more touching bugs, rodents, spiders, and frogs for this girl. I am a scaredy cat.
OMG the place would be up for sale and i’d be moving out. Rats & bats creep me out i’m scared to death of them. We had a Bat issue, had a bat exterminator come in and get rid of the darn things.
Stupid Bats took up residence in our house Attic & barn the exterminator eliminated 250 bats from our house and barn total.
Yes please don’t kill bats! They are a keystone species for many environments and eat mosquitoes and other flying insects. A property with bats has no mosquitoes. Just wait until the fly out for the night and then close up any openings in your home. Make sure you wear a mask and clean with bleach.
We had mosquitoes horrible even with the Bats. I don’t miss them or their filth they made in barn and attic. Cost $$ to have professional cleaning crew come in and clean up the mess. Bug zappers work for me don’t cause the filth bats do.
I wouldn’t count on this. A dying rat might just be too tempting, even for a cat that doesn’t normally hunt them.
I live in the city where there is an ongoing rat problem, and have a basement cat who has a cat door. (She can’t be trusted in the house - she sprays.) I frequently go down to find 1/2 of a rat on the floor - usually not really big ones, but a good bit bigger than a mouse. Apparently the shoulders and heart/lungs area are the tastiest parts. :ambivalence: [We need a “sick” smilie] Since people and the city do use poison around here (and a popular hawk was killed by secondary poisoning a couple of years ago), I am always afraid she’ll get one that’s on its way out due to poison.
If I had barn cats and felt a need to poison pests, I’d make sure the cats were somewhere else for a couple of days, and pick up any remaining poison before letting them back in the barn.
I’ve known two cases where rats burrowed through cement before it was completely hard!
Head honcho pest guy came today to take a peek around and make suggestions. Nothing mind blowing–said Terad 3 would be the way to go with poison, but tough because bait stations have to be placed where convenient versus where needed since we can’t have them in with the horses. Suggested using those where we could but also using a lot of snap traps–in trap stations for areas like the aisle. Slim Jims for baiting. Lots of prebaiting to condition rats to eat off the traps.
The trail cam hasn’t seen any rats the last several nights, but it did see rat #3 the night after Mr S shoveled the one. Have seen MICE every night on it. We did catch a mouse in a rat trap.
So, ordered a bunch of stuff and will be armed for the rodent war in 3-5 days.
I don’t know if this is still true, but if looking at rat poison, research Ramik. Back, oh, 35 years ago, NYC put Ramik in Central Park for rat control because, according to a newspaper article, they believed that secondary poisoning wasn’t a problem with Ramik.
I would definitely prefer to lock a bunch of JRTs in the barn for a few nights to using poison. Sorry, I think the risk to wild life (even with “safer” poisons )is unjustified. Make it as unpleasant for rats to live in the barn as possible , keep everything in rodent- proof containers and look at biological controls. If there is nothing to eat, it is highly unlikely you will continue to have a large population. And I would express myself quite strongly to the neighbour who is throwing poison bait into the swamp.
Sorry, vent over. Carry on.
