Squirrel or Rat?

[pamonarch]

@ Pamonarch ... I did buy one of the Tomcat rat bait boxes and the first night I had no success, but I also didn't put a trail leading to it,maybe I should try that, Thank you for the ideas.

Last night I had the Tom cat bait station, I also had 2 regular Victor wooden snap trap rat traps... then I also had 2 glue traps. I use gorilla glue to glue the bait on. One trap has some dry cat food and the other I had glued some seeds I got out of my spaghetti squash on. The morning I checked on it the rat had gotten 2 of the seeds off the seed trap and that one didn't snap, the other one I found upside down but all the cat food was still stuck on it and no catch.

The glue traps had wood chips on them but no rat or any other animal. Last night I set out the same thing and if that doesn't work my plan is to buy rat poison.

I haven't checked the camera to see how they got away but I look forward to it.

It takes a while to get them..they are smart...my traps were out there for a week or two with no action..then i put the trail of chicken feed to it and WHAM!! it even says for stubborn/smart rats to put traps out wiht bait and not set them...they get used to getting food off them without harm and then one night set them... another WHAM!! GOOD LUCK TO YOU! its a great feelilng to know you have them gone, or at least somewhere else...lol!!

 

[pamonarch]

Just reading about all this makes my skin crawl

i understand...made my skin crawl looking at all of them on the cam at night in the coop with my girls..thank God they were up on roosts and asleep, but then i worried about rats going up the ramp and attacking my girls if they got hungry enough...nothing bothered them, thank God!!!

 

[pamonarch]

What do you think? Squirrel or rat, haven't found any droppings just holes

@SnowyChickenMomma ..i saw about 5 holes inside my coop...never thought rats..ughhh..and because i didnt see any droppings, but with the dirt, chicken poop, hay and pine chips it was hard to see them. I finally got a flashlight and started looking closer....sigh...lots of huge "turds"i was mortified! I ordered a cam on amazon Imega, and set it up the very next day..i was again mortified to see how many i had in there...so i set out to seek and destroy !! and i cleaned out the coop as best i could in this cold weather, took out all food and water at night, put out TomCat bait boxes,and set about 6 traps...took a few days, but im confident i have killed most of them and discouraged the others to live elsewhere. Thank God!!

 

[SnowyChickenMomma]

Me I must be German. I use smoke bombs Gas em flush em out and shot the son of a b itch Very entertaining this one the rat and the squirrel I'm not biased all varmints around here abouts get fed a balanced diet of low fat lead

What kind of smoke bomb do you use, and also what kind of gun a BB gun? I will go to the store and do this on my one day off which is Sunday. See that's what sucks I have no time to even get rid of the rats but my one day off will be productive if I can get the right tools. How much money am I going to drop on rats and chickens as apposed to my 2 kids OMG!!!

 

[kwhites634]

It's my understanding that for rats, A Jack Russell Terrier is by far the best rodent dog there is . Had a vet with one that would go all over my barn looking for them . I shoot rats and mice because I don't like poisoning them .DD and DW have cats. They help a lot . When it's time to cut hay, the last thing I need is chewed wires on farm tractors . Even had mice bite the water line to the refrigerator. Changed it to copper . And the washing machine was flooding the kitchen. Turns out they had bit a hole in the tubing going to the water level pressure switch . Fixed that buy using a metal braided sink supply line . This house is old I don't even know how old. If you have chickens or any type of animal your going to have rats and mice .Just dealing with them can be a pain. Rats and mice like pipes . Four inch black corrugated pipe makes good cheap bait stations .For mice even smaller PVC pipe . cut lengths about two feet long and cap one end put the bait at the capped end .Put a little feed with the bait . Ravaynscroft told of a rat bucket and I made one of those . She uses a five gallon bucket, with two small holes with a can on a wire, at the top of the bucket . the can has to be able to spin on the wire . She then spreads peanut butter on the can . When the rat or mice jump on the can it spins and dumps them in the bucket .Which is filled about half way with water end of rat .It works I made mine out of an old non working shop vac .Just not at the rate I like them dead . But shooting them is a hundred percent .Oh and the fact that these rats are coming out in day light ,means there are many.

Hey! Imagine finding you over here. I made one of those bucket /can traps. Coons ate all the peanut butter before the rats had a chance to get at it. Also, my rats came out only during the day; had a game cam set up that proved it. I filmed them during the day coming out of the burrow, heading straight to the feeder (through several chickens). They'd pull themselves up to the opening, grab a little, and run back to the burrow. I shoved a piece of Just One Bite down the entrance of the burrow, covered it up so the birds couldn't get to it, and haven't seen sign of them since. I did give one a lead sandwich just inside the entrance.

Oh, BTW, capping the mouth of the feeder every night was a huge help, I suspect; nothing to eat.

 

[pamonarch]

What kind of smoke bomb do you use, and also what kind of gun a BB gun? I will go to the store and do this on my one day off which is Sunday. See that's what sucks I have no time to even get rid of the rats but my one day off will be productive if I can get the right tools. How much money am I going to drop on rats and chickens as apposed to my 2 kids OMG!!!

i have a hubby that would love to shoot the rats, but how do you do that when they only come out at night? I can not smoke them out, because the garage is attached to the coop and the rats are in the coop and burrow under cement garage floor, i have not seen any during the daytime, so it would be hard to get them.

 

[Howard E]

On the issue of traps, many of you are confirming what is pretty well known, most rat traps are ineffective on the larger brown or Norway rats. They are too big for the trap to catch them. Rats are also super cautious around anything new.......traps, baits or poisons, so that makes it doubly hard to catch one using traps. And even when they do work, traps never catch them all, so while you may be able to thin the herd, mostly you only get the dumb ones. The smart ones survive to repopulate the colony.

And even with bait stations, they will not just walk in and start munching. It may take several days or even a week or so for them to get comfortable with something new. Best way to overcome that is to limit all access to other feed. Once they get hungry, caution goes out the window.

 

[pamonarch]

Hey! Imagine finding you over here. I made one of those bucket /can traps. Coons ate all the peanut butter before the rats had a chance to get at it. Also, my rats came out only during the day; had a game cam set up that proved it. I filmed them during the day coming out of the burrow, heading straight to the feeder (through several chickens). They'd pull themselves up to the opening, grab a little, and run back to the burrow. I shoved a piece of Just One Bite down the entrance of the burrow, covered it up so the birds couldn't get to it, and haven't seen sign of them since. I did give one a lead sandwich just inside the entrance.

Oh, BTW, capping the mouth of the feeder every night was a huge help, I suspect; nothing to eat.

that is what i read....starve them out...they are food oriented .. so they will move on to whre the food is...yayyy!

 

[pamonarch]

On the issue of traps, many of you are confirming what is pretty well known, most rat traps are ineffective on the larger brown or Norway rats. They are too big for the trap to catch them. Rats are also super cautious around anything new.......traps, baits or poisons, so that makes it doubly hard to catch one using traps. And even when they do work, traps never catch them all, so while you may be able to thin the herd, mostly you only get the dumb ones. The smart ones survive to repopulate the colony.

And even with bait stations, they will not just walk in and start munching. It may take several days or even a week or so for them to get comfortable with something new. Best way to overcome that is to limit all access to other feed. Once they get hungry, caution goes out the window.

i totally agree..i have killed around 6 large rats...and several mice and moles....two of them on the poison...and the rest in traps..havent see any rats or mice in three days..but i will be diligent about keeping traps set and poison bait boxes out daily..its my only defense!!

 

[pamonarch]

i totally agree..i have killed around 6 large rats...and several mice and moles....two of them on the poison...and the rest in traps..havent see any rats or mice in three days..but i will be diligent about keeping traps set and poison bait boxes out daily..its my only defense!!

oh, and no food left overnight in coop!!!!