SERIOUS rat problem

[serrabou]

I have also had some success with live traps. There are few types that you can use to catch multiples in a night. They are more likely to get trapped again in live traps. I euthanize them after I catch them. Someone I know had great success with bucket log traps. He caught like 12 rats in a night.

What is a bucket trap? Also, I am more likely to “re-home” the rats in a forest nearby. Does anyone know how far you need to remove them so they won’t return? I know for mice is at least a mile.

 

[Al Gerhart]

Bucket traps are buckets one third filled with water with a rod and something like a can or bottle that can rotate on the rod. Put some peanut butter on the can and the rats can fall into the bucket. They work well at first but if you have a rat colony they will figure out it is dangerous and the effectiveness lessens.

Check your state laws before releasing rats. It is most likely illegal. Little food in a forest for rats so they would die from depredation or starve to death. Or they will ravage song bird nests and squirrel nests. Kinder to kill the rats

 

[Tib]

I've got cameras all around the place here, 25 of them. All record 4k full time locally with intelligent animal identification (deer, rodent, chicken, cow, horse, dog, cat, etc), and I scrub the outdoors every day looking for critter activity.

Right now I have an opossum who is sniffing around the coop and run, but I don't think he or she could get through 1/4" hardware cloth doubled up, plus a 2 foot apron all around, covered with lots of drainage rocks. I went all in on critter security/hardening before I ever got chickens in the coop because its war between me and those vermin. After all the cuts, pokes and scrapes unrolling that stuff, I kind of want to see a raccoon get a good handful of the wire on those creepy little hands.

If anything were to breach the run at night, the camera inside is set to trigger an alarm event that turns on my bedside table light and sets its color to red. I'm up with the pellet gun ready to do some late night hunting. After dealing with that (bird feeder a while back) for weeks killing squirrels in the day and a few raccoons at night, with a rat or two keeping the nightly clean up crews belly full I went with how to just keep them away.

Coles flaming hot squirrel sauce, which is basically chipotle oil. Birds love it, haven't tried with the chickens since there isn't any issue right now. Squirrels, rats, raccoons cannot stand it and once they get a taste they are gone never to return, its only the new ones that try it out once. The only time I'll have raccoons swing by is after a good nighttime rain.

Just to give an example of how effective the cameras are, I had a rat visit my brand new vehicle and chew through the MAF wiring sensor. I didn't see it but got the red light and upon review I assumed the cat walking around was a false alarm and planned to look into it the next day and went back to bed. The next morning the truck told me there was a sensor failure and I knew exactly what happened and once I fixed it I reviewed the footage at real time speed and thats when I realized there were two events next to each other, and the cat was chasing the rat.

The snap traps that look like industrial sized snap bag clips was placed out the next evening on the tire he climbed up the day before. Another 11PM red light wake up. It was a HUGE rat, it got him and I ended up having to kill it because the cats that roam were just looking at it squirming around squealing, it was too big for the trap to kill. Honda sells a wiring harness wrap that is laced with capsicum to deter rodents.

 

[Tib]

Bucket traps are buckets one third filled with water with a rod and something like a can or bottle that can rotate on the rod. Put some peanut butter on the can and the rats can fall into the bucket. They work well at first but if you have a rat colony they will figure out it is dangerous and the effectiveness lessens.

Check your state laws before releasing rats. It is most likely illegal. Little food in a forest for rats so they would die from depredation or starve to death. Or they will ravage song bird nests and squirrel nests. Kinder to kill the rats

Catch and release is illegal here for various critters, and it's only legal to kill raccoons and grey squirrels if they are damaging your property, livestock, pets. Trapping is only legal on your property and you have to kill it not relocate it, you can't even call wildlife to relocate it.

 

[Al Gerhart]

You have a full scale war on your hands with the vermin. No doubt who will win in the end. LOL