I fought with the little pests all autumn long to keep them out of the chicken coop (rats were even worse). They'll chew through EVERYTHING to get to the food! Then two weeks ago I found droppings in our bathroom cabinets and drawers, they had eaten our toothpaste and chewed through boxes of band-aids and crapped everywhere. THEN!! Our car fan/heater stopped working in this siberian cold, it made a terrible racket and vibration so today DH brought the car to the dealership, it's under warranty EXCEPT for when there is a MOUSE NEST in the engine's fan!!
Death toll here stands @ 17 fortunately they can get no further than under the kitchen sink. So far anyway. Plain old wooden trap baited with stale peanut butter. good luck
Oh, baby! And there have been so many posts just today about how a chicken will catch, kill, and swallow a mouse whole -- quick, before her flockmates can wrestle it away from her! I lived with mice in one house I had years ago! I decided to heck with traps. I bought a big ol' bucket of "mouse candy" in the handy little throw packs, and I tossed them everywhere the dog couldn't get to them. I love critters. But not mice!
I found out that I'm alergic to mice about a month ago. I actually think that they are cute. Had pet mice when I was young and a pet rat when I was older. But living in my house unwantedly and chewing on everything and making nests anywhere.....No thank you! We had one make a nest in one of our snowmobiles a couple years ago. Didn't know why it was smoking and stinking until we found the fried mess in the engine a couple miles down the trail. P.s. Why won't they cover it if it's an act of God?????
Every night I put poison bait out and they gobble it all up (one dose = they die) but still they come in droves! $162 to fix the car and we're lucky the engine didn't catch on fire with all the crap they pulled out of there
We had a horrible rat infestation here, outside of course. They were so bad! My neighbor came to me and suggested that my chickens were bringing the rats and the rats had chewed thru the wiring on her car....I find that hard to believe....why would they chew thru the wiring?? Anyway, I set out poison in an area only the rats could get into and we killed some 30 odd rats that summer and they were STILL everywhere!! I rehomed my chickens in late fall and am going to test my neighbors theory and see if she was right. I hope not, cos I want my chickens back!!
We live out on developing farm land and every autumn the field mice (voles out here apparently) come running into our neighborhood to nest in our garages, landscaping, compost piles, under our basement stairs...all kinds of places! We had a BIG problem in our garage a couple years ago...until we let one of our cats out (she QUICKLY decimated the local population), the neighborhood has a few outdoor cats now AND we have a garden snake in OUR yard which I "respect" from a distance! My hubby put out some kind of poison that STILL kills um 3 years later! I hate mice as well! I feel for all of you! We'll hopefully never get an indoor investation as we've got 5 cats INSIDE the house! (They BETTER earn their keep if need be!!!) If you can't do barn cats/outdoor (and even indoor cats)...the peanut butter baited traps work really well! Growing up we had rats always getting into the crawl space (attic area)! They'd run from one end of the house to the other and we'd say "the rats are playing football again"! My mom was always mortified when they'd do this when we had company! After our dogs died, the rat population EXPLODED and we never got any ripe mangoes off the tree in teh backyard anymore (the rats ate them all!) You could hear them running around and screeching at night....it was SOOOO gross! Good luck with all your infestations!
Did I tell you I caught a fat grey rat red-handed in the chicken coop last October? Sat there in the corner looking at me, face full of chicken food In broad daylight! The NERVE!
Quote:The rats come to the wasted chicken feed. Will do the same with cat or dog food, even other animals feed. Its the grain they want, not chicken or eggs.
The fact that we don't have a mice/rat problem is probably the only reason I let the cats live after I stepped on that nasty present they delivered to the back step last summer!
