Dealing with rats

[CarpCharacin]

That's hard to say. It does seem like it kills them quite a bit faster than the anticoagulant. How far away from your neighbors are you? The more secluded you are the quicker you can kill off the colony. The biggest problem is that they multiply SO fast. If they're safely breeding in the neighbor's garage you're gonna have a harder time killing them all off.

I have neighbors which are pretty close, I'm on only like 0.22 acres.

James,
For real. I have had mouse issues here. I had a brooder with 1/4" wire in the coop with the kid open. One night I went in to close the coop, there were 5 mice in it. I closed the lid.
Gruesome but I wanted to know how long it takes for the warfarin based poison to do em in. A total of 15 blocks over the course of 6 weeks.....no water source and no food in the brooder....finally they died at 6 weeks. I assume from lack of water.

Cruel? Maybe. Educational? Definitely.

So should I just go ahead and order some of the bromethalin based poison?

 

[chrissynemetz]

You may have already answered this and I missed it, but are the rats a new problem, or has this been an ongoing thing?

 

[CarpCharacin]

You may have already answered this and I missed it, but are the rats a new problem, or has this been an ongoing thing?

They have been there for a good while, but I don't think they've always been there.

 

[chrissynemetz]

I would order the bromethalin. It's nasty but it works quicker. I would definitely keep looking around your yard as often as you can for dead rats. When I've used the stronger poison I almost always found bodies on a daily basis.

 

[21hens-incharge]

I have neighbors which are pretty close, I'm on only like 0.22 acres.

So should I just go ahead and order some of the bromethalin based poison?

Your lot is similar size to mine.

The stronger poison. not sure with neighbors so close.

I would call a few local pest control agencies and ask a lot of questions.
Yes there will be ones that try hard to sell you their service.
Use carefully worded questions to avoid some of that.
"Can you tell me the active ingredient in the rat poison your company uses?"
"I have other pets as do my neighbors. What are the risks of secondary poisoning?"
Yes they will still try to sell you their service.
All you would be out is a bit of time by calling around.

James I have only ever seen ONE rat here. I got the warfarin poison. 2+ months later I found 1 rat dead in front of my big coop door.

 

[CarpCharacin]

I think the poison that I'm using now uses diphacinone, not warfarin.

 

[Acre4Me]

The good thing is they are entering the boxes and eating the poison. So either they have no other food access and/or these bait bloc taste good to them. So, this likely means you’ve done a good job with food elimination from other sources like your chicken feed.

to help mitigate danger to your dog, you should walk your yard where he has access to remove any dead rats before he is let out. Rats are most active at night, so doing this should really help mitigate that risk.

before buying any further poison you could research the different poisons you have available to determine how they work. I’ve read a little bit, and remember that some use poisons that degrade more quickly than others.

so far, we’ve only had to deal with mice. We used Tomcat initially. We had some mice coming into the house in the fall and this took care of them -no concern with secondary poison bc house is far enough from the barn. The mice were also using the barn as shelter thanks to previous owner careless with dog food and random candy in the barn. We used Tomcat in bait boxes there bc we have a cat in the barn and chickens behind the barn. This year we saw activity in the run, under their feeder. Although we remove food at night (into metal cans), and the birds don’t bill out much food bc we hang the feeders at back height, there must have been enough to support the small appetites of the mice. We put bait boxes in the run with “Just One Bite“ bait. we remove bait boxes during the day. This seemed To work for us. We found 1-2 dead bodies removed before animals let out in the morning. However we don’t think there was a big colony, we think it was just beginning as the weather was getting colder at night.


good luck with your battle!

 

[cmom]

I haven't found any dead rats. I do think that the stronger poison would definitely be more effective when it comes to eliminating the rats, but I don't want my dog to be poisoned if he finds a dead rat and eats it.

This is what I use and I haven't found any dead rats laying around. I had a coop that was infested. I renovated it and pulled out several rat nests as well as dozens of rats of all sizes poured out when I first started tearing it apart. I have seen what I assume is rat tunnels around the coops and think the rats have gone into their tunnels and died which is good because then I don't have to deal with them. I kept the bait boxes loaded and eventually less and less bait was eaten. I have bait boxes with a little window over the bait that I can check as often as I want and only the rats and mice can get to.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/dealing-with-rats.1339327/page-3#post-21929729

 

[cmom]

I just checked the bait boxes today, and all the poison was gone again. There were some leaves and stuff that the rats had brought into the boxes, which I removed, but one of the wires which holds the poison blocks was also gone. I found it outside of the bait box, and put it back in. I'm starting to wonder if I should get some of the stronger poison with the neurotoxin. I still worry about secondary poisoning, though.

The only critter that had gotten any rat bait prior to getting the bait boxes was a possum. After doing some research I discovered they are immune to it. The baits kept disappearing so I put up a camera in my barn where I had some baits. I don't know how the possum got the bait so then I bought the rat bait boxes. Problem solved.

 

[Chris-n-Kate]

Has anyone tried cannibalism? My friend who breeds pet rats claims if the feed runs out they fight to the death and eat each other, and after they have eaten another they have to be culled because they like the taste so much they will eat each other even if feed is present instead of breeding. If you could catch some and cause them to become cannibalistic and then release them back to eat the others, it would be interesting to see if it would.