Arbutus Peregrine
Songster
One more interesting link
https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-01...ns-birth-control-may-be-more-effective-poison
https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-01...ns-birth-control-may-be-more-effective-poison
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We have tons of rats, tried poison, they don't eat it. We have 2 ratinator traps; they are like a maze. Put bait in the center and the rats go in, can;t get back out. Record so far, 54 between the 2 traps 2 weeks ago, but you have to drown them in a tray. This reduced the population some but still keep coming. Our local feed store recommended putting honey on the bait, will be trying that soon.
I agree with Mary. I had a severe infestation in a coop. They had built nests. I use the poison bait and the Rat Bait Boxes. Nothing can get to the bait but rats and mice. I only found a couple of dead rats which I disposed of. I believe that the rats went into their tunnels and died. I had dozens of rats of all sizes pour out of a coop when I started taking out the ceiling. There were so many rats, I couldn't even begin to count but dozens came out. The bait that came with the bait box wasn't all that effective so I bought some other bait and it worked like a charm. There is a little window above the bait so the bait can be checked often and replaced as needed. I put the Rat Bait Boxes in my barn in places nothing could get to the bait except the rats and mice. My barn is behind my coops and I had seen some rats in the barn. I tried traps but there was no way I could trap all of them. I'm not telling anyone to use poison bait. This was my personal choice and it worked for me.I've had to use bait twice here; once in the barn, when rats invaded, and my barn cat figured it was my problem, long ago. then a few years ago, when rats and MANY mice colonized the (foolishly) insulated walls of my coop. Three dead pullets, and many eaten eggs later (in a couple of weeks!) we removed the insulated walls and added poison bait stations. No rats, no more mice, and problem solved! We have hardware cloth everywhere, and monitor the mouse situation much more aggressively, and are now doing fine.
We never found a dead or dying rat, nobody else got sick, and a few mice were found and removed.
Sometimes you just have to do the bait stations, because it's the only way.
In a perfect world, maybe not, but everything isn't always perfect.
Mary
what you are up against with a colony of rats, is how to deal with them. Boils down to three things...
Sanitation (and that includes limiting access to feed and water......which this rat proof feeder excels at doing....at least for most standard chicken breeds)
Exclusion......how to rat proof your housing.....
and if those two fail......
Elimination
and if you want this thing to work, it is in that order.
It persists after the body is gone I am sure.