The best mousetrap ever

[txchickie]

A 1 gallon bucket half filled with water

I have 3 guineas that are younger and much smaller than my others, so they will stay locked up this winter. Their unheated poultry waterer is a pain to refill when it's frozen, so I use a 1 gallon bucket for them because I can just dump out the ice block easily and refill.

We have mice like CRAZY out here, and each evening the bucket gets down to about 1/2 full and I don't refill until morning. Mice crawl in the bucket after dark and fall in, can't get out because the water level is so far from the top, then they drown and freeze and in the mornings I have a block of ice with 4-6 mice in it

I have caught SEVENTEEN mice this week alone! 17!!!! I am amazed each morning when I find more mice, so gross, but sort of neat!

LOL

 

[wildorchid053]

you need to show your guineas how to eat mice /cicles. wait till the thaw it will be feast time

 

[CheerfulHeart2]

mice cicles ... that's a new one. I might try a bucket. Thank you for posting. Very interesting.

 

[little_grey_bantam]

Another good mousetrap is a rat terrier.

We've had a many (rescue) and they LOVE killing mice and rabbits and rats!
Remember it's a big decision though.

I like terriers better than cats, because cat urine will destroy everything (or their urine stink will make you turn your nose); they also can piss at a lot of strange and sadly too many angles - terriers just life as high as their legs go lol

We have mice and dead rats everywhere with one of our rescue rat terriers...
Our newer rescue eats them lol, so we have a much cleaner yard! lol

Another thing we do is throw snakes into the barn - no chicks out there, so no one gets hurts. Keeps population control down well

 

[strawberryfields]

I am going to try the bucket of death as soon as the deep freeze out my way melts a bit. LOL

The only concern I have though, is if younger birds, or bantams, might fall into that bucket of death as well... When they are trying to get water, and stretching to reach it, they could also fall in.

Any thoughts?

 

[little_grey_bantam]

...
I wouldn't put that out of my mind...

Last year I cut watermelons in half...

well, one of my favorite banty hens jumped on it and it plopped over her... two hours later, she was dead... we didn't know until we went looking for her and were cleaning out the pen... :-/ She was full grown too and the watermelon half wasn't that big!!!!

I don't know what you'd do to protect your birds from that though... O.O