Disposing of rat caught in live trap!!

[Howard E]

The most effective rat trap I've heard of is the old school long spring trap......size 1 1/2. You can find them used on ebay for about $5 each. Set against a wall where they are using for a run. They hop on the pan, trap snaps shut and crushes them between trap's jaws. Some will cover the trap with a light rag.....like a shop rag......so they just see it as an object to step on......no bait is used at all.

 

[hayley3]

Not so fast. There needs to be a sequential accounting of a timeline here.

When did you move to the "city"?

Was this rat in the garage when you got there, or did it arrive after you did and after your brought in the chickens and chicken feed and perhaps other pet food as well?

There is no such thing as "a rat". Its always "rats".....as in plural. Be thinking colony and be finding out how big it is and where they are living. Seeing one rat is like the tip of an iceberg. Lots more below the surface you can't see.

But whatever the case, the usual solutions apply. Limit access to all feed....that's all feed....chicken feed, cat food, dog food and anything else they can live on? And if you feel the need, at the same time, put out poison bait blocks (in bait stations......always in locked bait stations) so that the bait blocks become the alternative food source they turn to when the other feed dries up.

PS: If that had been me, I would have plugged it with an air rifle.....but that only works if you have one. The cheap, high powered single shot springers.....like you could find at Walmart..... in a .22 caliber.......works for dispatching almost all critters you will catch in a cage trap. But so does a single shot .22 rifle with cb caps or shorts. Kills em quiet. If a person is going to set a trap....Act I......, better have something ready for Act II......the dispatch.

LOL Howard...I was living in a forest, but now I only have 4 trees on 1.5 acres and only live 15 miles from Walmart. Also the road I live on is busy so I consider it the city and in all my years of rural living, I have never, ever seen a rat, so this must be the city!

I showed everyone the big holes in my lean-to that went under the garage but no one knew what they were. My chickens killed a mole but now I know it was the rat. I believe the rats where here when I got here. There's a hay field behind me but it's mostly homes.

I do have a 22 rifle but this cage is small so I didn't want to damage it. A raccoon is also a bigger target.

I found bait stations but they are $66!!! on Amazon..wow...talking about price gouging. I put the poison bait in an automobile ramp because it has a hole just like the bait stations. The chickens cannot get to it.

And thanks for telling me that I have a colony...I didn't need to know that. haha

 

[FloorCandy]

Sticky traps work well for cleaning up babies. As far as whether it was pregnant, I would say recently gave birth is more likely. If it was pregnant enough to have naked swollen nipples like that, it’s belly would be big as well since big rats usually have many babies. It would have been easier to tell when alive because the flesh is affected by position once dead. A live rat who just gave birth usually has extra droopy skin around the nipples, often 2 ridges of skin on the underside one on each row of nipples.

I dont know if there’s anything rats don’t like, but mice stay away if they know larger rodents live in an area. Pet rats are know to deter mice, and I saw first hand that mice crossed the room to avoid my hamster cages, when I lived in a large building in the city, so I started putting pieces of used hamster bedding at entry points (like doors and vents that couldn’t be blocked) to funnel them into snap traps.

Rats are the worst, it’s hard with poultry because an easy solution is adopting a feral barn cat, or a ratting breed of dog, but these solutions are harder to manage when you have prey animals you don’t want attacked.

 

[MistyandLuna]

Drowning is not humane in my opinion.

I agree.

 

[hayley3]

Sticky traps work well for cleaning up babies. As far as whether it was pregnant, I would say recently gave birth is more likely. If it was pregnant enough to have naked swollen nipples like that, it’s belly would be big as well since big rats usually have many babies. It would have been easier to tell when alive because the flesh is affected by position once dead. A live rat who just gave birth usually has extra droopy skin around the nipples, often 2 ridges of skin on the underside one on each row of nipples.

I dont know if there’s anything rats don’t like, but mice stay away if they know larger rodents live in an area. Pet rats are know to deter mice, and I saw first hand that mice crossed the room to avoid my hamster cages, when I lived in a large building in the city, so I started putting pieces of used hamster bedding at entry points (like doors and vents that couldn’t be blocked) to funnel them into snap traps.

Rats are the worst, it’s hard with poultry because an easy solution is adopting a feral barn cat, or a ratting breed of dog, but these solutions are harder to manage when you have prey animals you don’t want attacked.

My yorkie would love to catch them. She climbs in my cabinets after mice...she is that determined!

 

[microchick]

Let me add to the excellent post by @cmom that rodents can become resistant to bait.

I'm currently finishing up a bucket of Tom Cat bait. It works but I recently found 4 fat mice that had set up housekeeping in my bait holder and were happily getting fat on the bait.

I ordered Ramik yesterday. I've used it before with good results.

About the holders. Make sure you can fasten them down so they cannot be carried off by a pet. I had a concrete block sitting on one to keep it from growing legs and a tail and walking away. My husband one morning found our Jack Russell/border collie mix girl dog in the pasture happily trying to chew her way into the trap. No idea how she got it out from under the concrete block but she did. What ensued was a call to a veterinary poison control center ran by the ASPCA who talked me through the whole ordeal. The treatment was oral peroxide which our dog was not thrilled about. It took me three ounces to get one ounce down her and the resulting volcano to make sure she hadn't ingested any poison. Gratefully she hadn't but she still had to take a weeks worth of vitamin K to prevent anything she didn't chuckup from hurting her.

We both learned a lesson. She doesn't show much interest in the bait holders and I now put them in my have a heart traps and my wire cage so she can't get them out and try to chew her way into them again.

Never under estimate the determination of a mouse loving dog or cat when it comes to handling bait. I won't even get into children and other such animals.

Also on a curiosity side of things. Do chickens eat poisoned mice? I've never seen my birds touch a dead by poison mouse. I've seen them chase down live mice resulting in me having to chase down the chicken involved and removing it from her beak but if my birds encounter a soon to be dead from poison mouse, they give out their alert danger danger call and make a wide circle around it. They can sense what is wrong, I swear! Last night I picked up a dead mouse in the bachelor run. Those boys are like Mikey, they will eat anything but they hadn't touched the mouse.

I wish our dogs were that smart!

As for humane and inhumane. Let's face it guys, death by poison isn't exactly an easy death either but it's us or them as the saying goes. As for rodent death by drowning...yeah, I've entered my coop to find a mouse swimming around their heated water dish in the winter. Do I rescue it? Nope. I turn away, get busy for a few minutes, then dump the victim and the water outside. No death is humane, nor is it humane for rats to chew the toes off of chicks or hens while they are asleep at night. They are vermin. Pure and simple. They spread disease and are the primary vector for Lyme carrying mice and Bubonic Plague.

Makes me wonder how many do a few laps in the water bowl for exercise and escape to breed another day....

 

[thepick4uchicks]

I'm sorry, do not every release a captured vermin so that it become somebody else's problem.

I have enough fox, raccoon, rats, mice, voles, bob cats and cougars around us to last a lifetime.

I would be really POed if somebody dumped their nuisance pest outside our farm gate, and in the same breathe, I doubt if you would be overjoyed if somebody did the same to you.

Amen! If you had enough of a problem with something to set out a trap to catch or kill something then you need to plan to be prepared to exterminate that problem or prize when it is trapped. It should be dealt with appropriately by being put out of its problem causing misery for you then and there on the spot or immediately there after. If you have to put it in a box or bag or other cage to take it to another area to kill it dispatch it or put it out of its misery and your hair then so be it if guns being discharged are unacceptable or if discharging a firearm in close proximity from your coop or house is too loud or too dangerous then so be it. Take the trap and it’s contents off somewhere else and then take care of business there. BUT...DO NOT make your problem someone else’s. Doing that is UNACCEPTABLE! You must exterminate and extinguish the animal and the problem. If it’s poisoned and of no use as a food product for a needy family or as a pelt for a trapper then toss it in the proper trash disposal. If it can be used as a food product in winter time safely for animals then if legal then if allowed so be it if it doesn’t cause problems for landownership. Otherwise you have to dispose of poisoned animals according to your local laws and ordinances in the trash not in the reach of children and pets- as well as wildlife. These guidelines are usually clearly stated on the poison packaging. Not always on the traps themselves but on any poison or poison bait substances.
I have two dogs. They are nothing special. They are to me. They are to my daughter. They are to my family. One is mine and one is hers. Both are ours and both are well loved by all of our extended family. If something happened not them I would be so upset. We have a large fenced in backyard. They always stay in the fence. Our chicken coop and run is also within the boundaries of this fence and the gates are locked at night with a padlock and bike chain tightly. It is not to keep real people out that want in really bad but to deter thievery of large heavy items like heavy equipment and anyone doing severe damage to our property. If they want in they know they can climb over but it would take a lot to steal something worth lots of money. Our coop has a key pad Lock and our run has another five pad lock on it and we also have ADT, Blink cameras, motions lights, and The Ring motion lights and cameras on the coop also. I’m gonna identify them if they try to steal or harm my birds! Ha! Back to the dogs- I rambled. Nothing irritates me more than people who ignore the leash law. They let their dogs roam around just wherever. Pee and poop wherever but not in the owner’s yard. You can be sure of that. They all but have them trained to go to the bathroom in all neighbors houses only not at home. We have one neighbor that thinks free range chickens means don’t feed the chickens and just let them roam all over the neighborhood until bedtime. I don’t even know that he puts his chickens up at night or if he knows where they are. They may roost in the trees. There are only 5 max. They heard my chicks one day I guess or smelled them when??? It had to have been heard right. They came over to visit but my little Miniature Schnauzer wasn’t having any of those strange big birds coming close at all into our yard. No way. They never tried to get into the fence by flying over the chain link. To visit but she saw to it that nothing was doing on that. Those big chickens were not allowed to stay and visit even for a little while. They had to go. Eventually they went home. Crazy day. I figure they will be back soon. Our girls are getting larger and louder. However, no problems belonging first to the neighbors ever need to migrate over from them to the next neighbors and the next. It usually doesn’t work out very good at all. Yuck.

 

[microchick]

I grew up in Baltimore where rats were everywhere. We used to hunt them with paintball guns and each kid would have a different color paint so we all knew who shot which one for weeks later.

I would’ve paid just to be a fly on the wall for this dramatic catch and uncertainty with how to handle post catch. My dad always used bricks, but that’s hard to do with a trap. I’d suggest getting an air rifle. I have squirrels in my attic in the winter now that I live in woods instead of rowhomes and the air rifle is perfect for post trapping.

To the hippies suggesting catch and release of pests, you clearly have not been around a city rat. They are nasty creatures and more importantly, they carry disease and reproduce rapidly.

Your post reminds me of a story one of my cousins told me. They had a raccoon get in their attic and all attempts to find it and dispatch it failed.

It finally got brazen and started chewing through their ceiling/attic floor. One morning he woke up to find himself looking up at a hole right over his bed in the ceiling and Ricky Raccoon peering down at him through the hole. That was the last straw. That night he went to bed with a flashlight and a handgun, laid awake and waited. Sure enough, it wasn't long before the beady little eyes were peering down at him but he was ready. Yep, he shot the raccoon through the skull but the resulting blast had his ears ringing for a week and he admitted that he hadn't taken into account the fact that the bullet would pass through the raccoon AND his roof.

Good thing he was a roofer by profession!

Then there was the mouse who went too far for us. We we were remodeling our bathroom before we moved to Missouri and had torn out the tub and sink in order to put up new drywall and tub surround. We kept hearing chewing sounds and since we lived rural knew those sounds could only be one thing. A mouse was at work. We tracked the sound to the bathroom and sure enough, a mouse had chewed through a weak spot in the old dry wall and was peering down at us through the hole.

DH hastily got a .22 revolver we kept on hand, loaded it with a varmint shot load. Mr Mouse was still peering down at him when DH let him have it. Mouse disappeared but we got a ladder and looked in the hole. The result was horrible to say the least. There was no way we were going to get that dead mouse out of the hole it was chewing because it was smeared over a large area. I asked DH what we were going to do and he thought for a minute and told me to hand him up the dry wall compound trowel with compound. I did and he proceeded to spackle the hole shut sealing the hole and solving the problem of what to do about the dead mouse. As far as I know he's still there....and over there, and up there and well, you get the picture.

 

[MRS Janis S]

Ok, I came up with a solution...I hope it doesn't ruin the trap.
I bought a top entry litter box (for soaking chicken's feet) which is pretty deep and the trap fit down in there. Since the litter box has a hole in the cover...I put on the cover and then filled the box with water until it covered the trap.
I hate killing things but it had to go. It was not only scaring my goose, it was digging out the gravel foundation of my garage.

They are nasty critters. Good for you for being strong to do this.

 

[Chickenclaude]

I kill rats and mice. No mercy. Don’t catch and release because it’s not “kind” to make it som on else’s problem. It’s illegal in Ct. you’re taking it faraway where it struggles to survive? Not kind. You’re just shifting the guilt. Do what you have to do to make your home safe. Be careful w those poison blocks. The nighbor used it and my cat caught a mouse that ate a block. My cat died...with a tell a tale blue lips ...on her property. Just take care of your problem, don’t make it someone else’s.