I need some opinions, please

[CMV]

To restate the above.

Also if your facility if coon tight, then leave it be. Presence of coon and high rodent abundance at this time of year is indicative of abundant food supply. Do rodents have access to feeders that have feed in them after night or spilt feed? They do not have to be self serving from bag.

Feed is brought inside at night and any spilled gets cleaned up by the dogs immediately. We are very careful about this.

 

[joan1708]

How many rats have you gotten in 1 night? I've seen these traps on you tube, but I haven't heard of the sunflower seeds. Very clever.

 

[centrarchid]

DO you have any suspicions about what might be the rodent's food supply? When we had "blooms" of rats, it was do to an overly accessible corn crib which also provided nesting habitat. Rats were so abundant that I could schoot them with rifle during daylight hours and a red-tailed hawk would catch rats flushed out by hounds no more than 20 feet away. Combined effort of me, hounds and hawk made little impact on rat abundance. Controll was achieved using up corn faster as animal feed. We could have controlled rats by use of poisons but that would have put other animals at risk. We made two modifications to grain storage. FIrst was to store as shelled rather than ear corn making to rodents could not burrow into it. Second was to elevate building so crawl space available for dogs to get at remaing rat breeding sites.

 

[CMV]

Rodents tend to be abundant around here even in slim times. Where I live is heavily forested with lots of wild berries, fruit and nut trees. There is pasture land next door, but the rest of the neighborhood is forested. We have a wildlife corridor running through the property, so our yard is a highway all the time. There is no sort of grain storage anywhere. Trash, feeders and feed are kept cleaned up throughout the neighborhood because of the bears and skunks. The one thing that keeps the rodents in check is our very harsh winters and numerous predators.

The only odd thing besides the weather is that early last winter a large doe was felled nearby by coyotes. She had been wounded during hunting season and was taken down by the local pack about 500 feet away from my house. The pack fed on her for weeks. I am wondering if because the pack was so well-fed that they didn't do as much population control on the rodents as in a normal year.

 

[centrarchid]

What are the actual species involved? Vole? Type of mouse other than house mouse? Type of rat other than Norway? You could be experiencing a natural peak in cycle like experienced by those in higher latitudes with lemmings or snowshow hare.


For me, voles dominate more natural setting based on meadow / prairie systems. Same voles benefit from harsh winter with heavy snow cover since it provides cover from predators. Lat winter extremely mild here so voles not all that abundant. Other rodent species also not as reliant on grain based forages are rice rats, wood rats and white-footed mice. Latter for me experienced a population explosion this spring but ongoing drought maybe something else is causing population to crash. Those smaller mice are abundant enough that chickens no longer target them when encountered as they are exceeding need for protein already.

 

[Achickenwrangler#1]

What follows mice rats and moles, ? Snakes do.

 

[joan1708]

I wouldn't think you would have many snakes in New Hampshire! Here in Texas we have some snakes

 

[centrarchid]

What follows mice rats and moles, ? Snakes do.

Voles, not moles. Former is much more abundant and actually eats much of the same vegetation otherwise consumed by poultry. Moles, when important will be eating same invertebrate prey.

 

[Achickenwrangler#1]

Yes, I get the subtle distinction, my spellcheck doesn't and flipped the v for a m

 

[CMV]

The mice are the regular house mice and the chipmunks are the only variety of chipmunks here. No voles here.