Please help me decide which of these methods to use for RATS

[myback40]

I. Miscellaneous background info:

At night I can see half a dozen rats crawling around our run in the beam of my flashlight. Between my dog and me we've scared a fair few but they persist.

I have tried: snap traps, electronic trap, cat, and various products from predatorpee.com. These rats are smart, suspicious/cautious, determined, and very numerous!

With 7 beautiful tomato plants in the garden we got zero tomatoes this year- all eaten before ripening. We have a "chicken moat" around our garden and I have dug into several rat holes so I know they are living all over the place. I also found a nest of babies in my compost pile a few months ago. Uck.

II. My objective: to have an ongoing rat control method since it's likely to be a chronic problem out here. Rural, with near neighbors reporting they get rats too. I am not interested in any method that is only practical for a minor rat presence.

I also really want to avoid cruelty!!

III. The alternatives we are now considering:

1. Bottle/bucket method. They go after the peanut butter on the bottle held sideways on a wire over a bucket of water, fall in ,and drown. How fast is this? Do they try to tread water for hours? minutes? until, exhausted, they succumb. How humane on a scale of 1 (torture) to 5 (quick death).

2. CO2 method. Catch rats by luring into a bucket with a lid, small hole in the lid and bait inside -- they drop in to eat and cannot get out. You attach CO2 tank (such as used for paint ball) and slowly gas them. (Alternatives: baking soda vinegar method or dry ice method.) Questions: I understand the CO2 level is critical for painless death. How hard is it to achieve the right level? Refilling the small paint ball tank costs $4.50 -- how long would that much CO2 last if I am exterminating every day for a week and then maybe once a week thereafter. Has anyone used this method in a farm situation? Cost effective? Has anyone here tried this?

3. Plaster of paris mixed with food. How much do they suffer while the contents of their bellies harden? I know they are pests and I hate having them here, but I cannot help wanting to be humane.

4. Shooting with air rifle or air pistol. We're not spending the night in the chicken yard, so how hard would it be to use a weapon on trapped rats, such as in the first step of the CO2 method? Is it hard to hit them? Do they generally die right away?


I know some here will be annoyed by my concerns about humane treatment and what will be viewed as "wimpy." I apologize for taking your time. I just want to hear practical suggestions and opinions please. Thank you very much for reading my questions!

 

[Howard E]

While you are working on a way to trap and kill some of these guys, may I suggest an additional step? If rats are in your run, most likely they are there for the feed, plus they probably have built tunnels beneath it.

If the infestation is that bad, perhaps consider capping the run surface with tight fitting concrete pavers (or even concrete) to create an impervious barrier for them. Then find a way to tightly and securely store your feed so they can't get at it, and perhaps use the bucket feeders or some such that tries to minimize waste on the ground. In other words, starve em out. Not easy to do and there will be some who hang around and you work on those as you can.

Interesting that when you read through the poultry husbandry books from 100 years ago, about the only predators and such they mention are rats, parasites like mites and lice, and hawks. Rats were the headliners. Their solution was to use concrete or rat proof wood floors in coops and to keep yard dogs and rat terriers around to be on the constant hunt for them outside of the coops and houses. Once upon a time, almost every farm had a dog or two running around outside and they were not pets. If your dog wasn't a good ratter, you got rid of him and got one that was.

 

[Flock Master64]

I've tried method one and it works very well

 

[carlf]

I just keep Decon-type bait out almost 365 days/year. Put it where pets & chickens cant get it but the rats can. Switch up brands from time to time. This has always worked well for me.

I have never heard of using plaster of paris, I don't understand why rats would eat it???

What are you baiting the snap traps with? Peanut butter is best. You're using rat size snap traps right?

Shooting them with a pellet gun works if you can catch them in the open and are a good shot. If they are in a trap and you shoot them in the head with a pellet gun, death is instantaneous.

While I hunt, trap, fish and cull my birds for meat, I do not support inhumane treatment of any animal. Any animal we kill, whether for meat or to protect our flock deserved as quick a death as possible, even rats.
But your concern for which method is more "humane" for rats is kinda misplaced.
They're vermin. No matter what legal method you use, your justified in protecting your flock and your harvest.
And any legal method is much more humane than a "natural" death from disease or being squeezed to death by a snake or having its head ripper off by a weasel.

 

[Flock Master64]

No i don't know how long it takes sorry

 

[Wickedchicken6]

Hi! I'm feeling your pain with the rat situation. We've been receiving more precipitation than normal for a couple years and we were flooded in 2014. It seems that it drove all the rats onto our yard site...lol.

If you have lawn...keeping the grass trimmed and short 100% of the time helps keep them exposed, which they don't like. It works wonders with keeping mice at bay. But it still doesn't get rid of either species.

We've used the snap traps; my husband has had moderate success with those. I've had moderate success with the smaller catch and release traps. Between the two of us we've caught over 30 rats. Now it's a competition to see who's going to catch the most.

I've been purchasing the two pack traps and didn't know what to use the small ones for but set them with marshmellows. To my surprise I started catching rats! The trap is 24X7X7. Unfortunately it catches only one at a time. But I've caught 3 rats in one day in the same cage just by emptying and resetting.



I plan to make some multi-catch traps, based loosely on the multi-catch sparrow traps/multi-catch rat traps which are very close to the same thing.
I just haven't got my soldering gun out yet.

You can check them out on you tube.

Of course with my method, one has to deal with the rats after catching them. My preference is the pellet gun, one shot how I do it...so very quick and they don't know what happened. I don't want them to suffer unnecessarily either. On the odd occasion I may have to hose down the trap. That's it.

Personally, I wish they'd just go live happily in the fields. They aren't a problem out there.

 

[jools2014]

I have the same issue-no problem catching them at all in my humane trap (they can't resist snickers bars) I have even caught a couple when the trap wasn't even set or baited! There is a back way into the trap, basically one rat gets into the trap, eats the bait and brings the trap door down-then other rats are supposed to go in the back way because they see one rat in there-works as I have caught 3 at once sometimes. Anyway, either this rat could still smell the snickers bar in there so went in, or it just went in because I have it right against the wall where they always run along. i catch more than i ever used to, not sure if this is because they have gotten used to the trap being there so are not suspicious of it, or since i baited it with Snickers which they just love.

i had to let that one go because i have not figured out a way to kill them yet. As I already posted about in another thread-I am wanting to use an air rifle but it is not working right now (possibly I'm not using it right) I did consider drowning but people said it was inhumane (I had same issue as you-wanted to pick the most humane death)-I had pet rats and I hate to kill any creature, but there is nothing else that can be done with rats-it's bad to release them elsewhere, bad to not do anything etc. etc just can't win! Anyway, drowning is apparently not an acceptably humane method here in the UK so I think it might even be against the law, but I don't understand how poison can be allowed-surely that is far more inhumane? Wouldn't a drowning death be over in 2-3 minutes? Not pleasant but then what death is? Anyway, if i get the rifle working I will use that and let you know how it worked out-it seems like the best option.

 

[Howard E]

If you have rats living in tunnels under your run, that is almost the perfect setup for them. They can get food and water from the feeders and don't have far to go to get it. Just pop up and go to work, and inside an area protected from owls, dogs, cats, etc. to boot! Just about perfect.

So pavers, concrete or some type of impervious surface prevents them living under there and forces them out into the open where predators can get at them. If you also keep a wide buffer zone mowed down tight....the wider the better......there is nowhere for them to hide. They have to venture out in the open and run the predator gauntlet to get to your coop. Owls would be hanging in the trees like Christmas ornaments.

Not sure what cleanup you are talking about, but if I had pavers, I would still use an inch or two (not deep enough to tunnel in) of wood chip litter to keep the floor clean for the birds. Swap that out every month or so?

The 5 gallon bucket feeders with 90* pvc elbows are about as leak proof as anything I've seen. They really do seem to work to keep feed up off the floor/ground. A rat might get in one and still get feed, but they won't get much off the ground. Hung on a hook, wire or something, you can take that in at night when the birds have gone to roost. Take it back the next morning when you let them out or go out to collect eggs?

 

[myback40]

...

Not sure what cleanup you are talking about, but if I had pavers, I would still use an inch or two (not deep enough to tunnel in) of wood chip litter to keep the floor clean for the birds. Swap that out every month or so?

..

Thanks again, Howard. I look forward to exploring some of your suggestions. Here are some pictures of my set up, with the chicken moat. The run is covered with wire on top throughout, and with roofing over the corner where their food, water and coop entry are. The garden is inside the rectangle of chicken run area, and the human entrance goes over a tunnel where the chickens can pass through, so we can leave the gates open if we want. Deer won't jump a double fence and rabbits can't get in. But nothing to stop rats from eating our crops! The whole thing is about 55' x 30' I think. The fence has hardware cloth on the bottom portion, going 18" into the ground. So you can see how the rats would figure out to stay in the hawk-proof chicken are. (Pictures are a year old. Some improvements have been made and new feeder added.)

 

[myback40]

If you have rat runs all over your 11 acres the you have a huge problem. Pussy footing around with ineffective peanut butt drowning traps, while they might make you feel good about the death of the rat, are not enough to deal with a huge rat infestation. You must eliminate food sources and use an effective eradication program.

If you don't deal with the infestation it will spread to your neighbors, result in wasted feed and possible depradation on your fowl, along with the greater liklihood of disease and parasite transfer to your animals. I understand that you don't want to cause prolonged agony for the rats and the slim chance of poisoning of wildlife, but there comes a time when you have to draw the line.

It's not like I see a hole every 10 yards, but I do find them here and there. Just as often, I find owl pellets under trees. The worst thing I could do in my opinion is to poison the very creatures that are helping us keep the rat population down.

I don't understand how you can think secondary poisoning is a "slim chance." It seems like a certainty to me. And besides the owls, there are dogs and cats who come across our property. As I have mentioned twice already in this thread, a neighbor's champion border collie, whom he needed to work his flock and who cost $2000, was killed down the road last summer by secondary poisoning (vet confirmed). My neighbor's cat hangs out in our yard on a regular basis and would probably love to find a "free meal." Indeed, our own precious dog may walk freely (i.e. not on a leash) around the property when we are out working because he will never go out of sight of us.

What do you think happens to all those poisoned little rat bodies? Out of sight, out of mind - and out of existence? I am not "pussy footing around" sir. I am being responsible and doing the best I can.