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Rats?

I’ve been off the forum for a while, so I thought I would check for the latest and greatest. We have horses in 2 small barns and rats in each. We’ve been here 5 years and have been using Terad3 Blox. For the last 3 years, I’ve been mostly out of state taking care of my sister. Now I should be back full time.
What’s strange is that she has a barn and I used the blox. The next morning they were all gone. I ordered more Terad3 and it came in a new formula. After that, the rats wouldn’t touch it. I welcome snakes in the barns and the last 2 years, we haven’t had any (makes me sorta sad). I tried the 5-gallon bucket with a roller and 1 rat. I also tried snap traps with food and didn’t set them; when I finally did, I hardly caught anything.
We have a tractor which isn’t at the barn, but sits behind the house. It sounded funny and we took it to the dealer. He said what in the world happened - bad diesel? No, it turned out to be rats chewing the wiring to the tune of $541. My husband is not happy.
Any thoughts/ideas? I’m willing to try several ways at once. I just really need to get rid of them. Besides the tractor, we have 4 other pieces of equipment back there.
Thanks in advance!

Not popular on here but I used the Decon pellets when my chickens were overrun with rats . It was a foreclosure we bought and I had several chickens killed by them so I needed drastic measures.

I just picked up and disposed of their bodies as I found them. I had secure wire cages covering the pellets and placed them at their tunnel entrances. It took a month or 2 but I got them all.

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Rats are smart. They figure out that the bait makes them ill, and they stop eating it. You can buy fake (not toxic) bait to teach them to eat it again.

Do you have you bait in boxes?

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I am with @candyappy. I always have Decon out (safely protected from feral cats and house dog). I had rats one time 10-15 years ago. Subsequently, we put a new floor in the tackroom (maybe 5 years later), and found desiccated rat carcasses neatly lined up between the floor supports. Occasionally I have evidence of mice --but again, DeCon (or Tom Cat) takes care of the problem. Frankly, with the only predictors being the over-fed feral cats who are not allowed in the barn (if they can come in, the raccoons find a way to come in too), I would be over run by mice/rats. So to keep mice/rats in check: Decon.

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In a chicken house setting where food is available all the time I usually have to use Tomcat in the fall for mice. I usually have black snakes but once it gets cold they go elsewhere and the bait is needed.

No matter rats or mice they populate so fast. I have never had smart ones @Simkie they eat until they are all gone.

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Resident barn cats.

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Leave hoods up on vehicles… no enclosed spaces for rodents. Yes, they will chew wiring etc. Other than that, set live traps, baited with something nice, not poison. Each rodent you catch, you take it down the road a number of miles, nearby someone’s place who “dun you wrong” or who is simply an arsehole, and turn them loose. Drive home without them. This practice ticks several boxes, not just rat removal.

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I’ve got a rat in my new barn and could hear AR15s all weekend. Need to figure out those neighbors and trap and deliver my rat as a gift.

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I think that’s actually illegal. For good reason. Rats go where rats want to. You can’t control what the rat is attracted to and they can travel. You might drop them at an enemy’s farm and they could cross the street and kill some little kid’s beloved pet chicken. That’s not how karma works. Drown the little creeps, if you have to, but please don’t send them down the road to terrorize another farm. It could be my farm and my chickens.

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I found putting a small bowl of water out in the open attracts the rats, then the owls catch them for me

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I wouldn’t actually trap and relocate an animal. Haven’t ever done that and it feels wrong. It all feels wrong including having a rat at all. Ugh.

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I have them in my barn and cannot get rid of them no matter what! Ughhh I literally pulled back stall mats and unearthed a nest of babies they had pulled out my grooming gloves and taking one and added it to the nest! I dumped rat poison pellets down in the hole and then covered it with sand and covered it back up with the stall mat and they still came back. I have just learned to live with them and hope to God snakes eat them at this point!!! It is not too bad anymore since I do not keep my feed in the barn, it is locked up in the garage in a metal trash can but still. Stupid little critters I swear…blah!

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I’ve dropped Tom Cat pellets down their holes and covered the holes with rocks. Poisoning them has worked for years at a time. I’ve only successfully trapped a rat once. I used to date a trapper and he said rats are really hard to trap because they are too smart. The other thing he taught me was to never handle the pellets with anything that smells of human. Wear leather gloves when handling the plastic wrappers, cut with a blade that hasn’t been handled, break the poison and maneuver into the holes with a stick.

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A terrier.

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Bait should always be in boxes, and not just dropped into holes. For a few reasons:

It’s illegal to not use bait boxes

Rats will move loose bait. Often, they’ll just stash it in their dens, and not eat it. Sometimes, they’ll kick it out, which puts it at a very high risk of being consumed by a non target species.

Bait boxes pin down the bait so it’s actually consumed, and prevents it from being picked up by your dog, or your kid, or by that beautiful fox that just had her babies.

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There are folks that will come hunt the rats. Some have packs of terriers, some even have trained mink.

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This has never failed us with rats or mice.
They don’t learn about it because first time they use it, they are dead.
Put only about 4" - 6" of water on the bottom.
Dump daily if there is anything caught in there, add peanut butter when is getting thin.
Set it close to the wall they travel by.
We have two in a 40’ by 80’ quonset barn, one at each end.
No poison involved.

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I’ve never, as in not once, had a bucket trap work. And that’s not uncommon, according to the pest professional we use, who recommended baiting the top in a way that doesn’t drop the rat into the bucket to teach them to trust the trap. Although he also didn’t expect that to be very effective and advised Terad3 and the black plastic snap traps (with pre baiting) instead, if I really wanted to solve the problem.

Rats in an environment where they see a lot of different eradication methods are quite a lot harder to get rid of than rats in very rural environments where they see none. Sure, bucket traps might be worth a shot, but for savvy rats like the OP describes, are far from a sure thing.

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Our pest control professionals are the ones that advise these traps, they work here.
We use the Therad3 in the bait boxes in some places where we may not be looking regularly, like attics.
We had a terrible infestation of rats several years ago and we were initially getting 30+ a day in the buckets, since then only the rare rat and more mice and no more damage from them, thankfully, they are very destructive and attract rattlers big time.

Whatever some want to try, the bucket method is one more way, that’s all.
I was in a hurry and forgot the bucket trap picture.
This picture from the internet, we put wire in the middle and use two boards, one on each side:

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Yeah, they’re a tool to have in the box. Just awfully far from a “works every time” solution.

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