rat problem. warning talking about killing many rodents.

[Liamm_1]

wow! that's a lot of rats! I'd feel creeped out even stepping foot in the barn lol

 

[Cass]

Neighbor of mine had 2 "rat terriers"....and lots of horses, so I assume lots of grain and hay in the barn....I think there were really Jack Russells, but we always called them "rat terriers" cuz they LOVED to hunt and kill rats. Yes, they are yappy ankle bitters, but they did the job and didn't spook the horses...

If you stop throwing the rats where the cats can get them easily they will have to hunt for supper. Add 2 dogs (cuz they are pack animals) and keep the owl and the rats will be bothering the neighbor in no time.

Get a large bucket to throw the dead rats in and take them out to the back 40....feed other wildlife that might also become a predator to the rats...at the very least you'll put the feild rats on notice that they are on borrowed time if they step in your barn.

Why no poision? There are prebaited poison set-ups that conceal the bait so nothing but rats and mice can get at it. Old farmers say that the rats eat the poison and go out of the barn looking for water and therefore die outside. (Of course I have had them die in the wall of my house, but that's a whole nother story)

Given that rats breed at 60 days of age and have 5- 10 pups per litter if you don't use poison you might never get rid of them.

And I agree with one of the other posters, you would be surprised how much feed you are losing to the uninvited wildlife....rats don't eat where they find it, they take it back to their nest and hord it. My "rat terrier" neighbor got the dogs when she lost 25 pounds of feed in 2 weeks to uninvited wildlife. And she thought that her feed bins were rat proof.

 

[dewey]

Quote:
Yep, not including the feed lost from contamination by their waste, a loss said to be 10x more than the amount they eat. Same ref site online regarding a rodent control study states that each rat eats, spoils, or damages $25 in feed yearly, not including livestock and building damages, and that a colony of 100 rats will consume over 1 ton yearly.

 

[soap&eggs]

recently seen on a animal hoarding tv show..guy started out with 2 female & 1 male pet rats..in 2 yrs time he had over 2500 over taking ruining his house. yikes !!! personally i would just poison, esp with the problem you have going on..surprised the rats have not killed ,eatten your chickens. a friend told me once how she watched a rat pull a full grown standard size hen backwards into underground hole. a old trapper friend told me once that rats only run underground tunnels every 3rd day. pour poison down the holes cover to prevent pets from getting to it. and please do not catch & release..rats are not welcome anywhere that i know of..no one else wants the dieases,problems..can you amagion a mother finding them where her babies sleep or play.?? just kill the nasty breeding varmits . as for your accrons...have heard deadly for horses..not positive if that is true..but feed to your hogs..is called marbling meats when fed them..gives the meats a nutty taste..prize winning meats from accrons. wed pick barrels full to feed the hogs.....could use a beer myself abouts right now !!

 

[RedReiner]

another poster suggested freezers etc to store grain in, many of the boarding stables around here do just that. free from craigslist chest freezers. rats cant chew through them. they store quite a bit of feed. line them up and write on the lid whats in each one. As for the cats, not feeding them will not make them hunt more, it actually slows them down. Cats like anything else domesticated need decent nutrition to stay fit and have energy. feed them decent and they will kill everything in sight, starve them and they give it up. I have a cat who is very well fed, every day he brings me something he has killed. when I moved here the abandoned barn cat would kill nothing. feed the cats, try some freezers and everything else you mentioned. some of those are really good ideas!

 

[tammyd57]

Most terrier breed dogs will hunt and kill a lot of rats. The Rat Terrier is specially bred for rats, but just about any terrier would do. With the sheer numbers of rats you are dealing with, I would consider getting about 6 (grown) Rat Terriers in addition to what you are already doing, plus steel barrels (or freezers, or what have you) for ALL the feed. You don't want to get puppies or young dogs, the rats would just eat them.