A few years ago I saw a thread that reccomendd the Pro-Ketch mouse trap. It's a live catch trap that can catch several mice in one go. I told my dad about it and he decided to buy two of them off Amazon. A couple years later and it's more than paid for itself. We have a problem with mice living in our walls, which of course means our cats can't get to them. I hate the idea of poison because then we'd have quite a few bodies in our walls where we can't dispose of them. We actually got one trap for the house and the other for the coop, but we have a rabbit living under our coop and no mice or rats (praise God) so we just keep both traps in the house.
The first time the trap caught a mouse it was actually a mother and her litter of four. Since then I've caught many more mice and played around with the bait to see what worked best. Recently I've caught 9 mice in three nights, and I know there's at least one still in the wall which I plan to catch tonight. I love this trap and highly reccomend it to anyone else with my problem.
Tips I've learned:
-Find a hotspot. In our case the mice go under our bathroom sinks, specifically mine. I could tell because of all the mouse droppings. If you have a cat they can tell you which bathroom the mice hang around.
-The best bait I've found is chicken food mixed with cat food, with the cat food making a huge difference(my cat food is Taste of the Wild. It seems to work better than the old Purina I used to have, though the Purina also helped remarkably). Peanut butter stuck to the trap and didn't catch mice very quickly.
-Check the trap everyday, even if you don't think it caught a mouse. Jossle it a bit. Mice have a remarkable ability to hide even when you can see everywhere in the trap.
-Try to put the holes where the mice get in against a wall. I learned this from BYCers who explained mice tend to run along walls. I've found this to be true.
-If you need to trap a mouse in your coop, take your chicken food away for a day and force your chickens to eat up the leftovers (this works best if it's not crumbles). Keep the food away at night and put chicken food in the trap. Put the trap where the mice are used to getting food.
-Don't let your cats play with the trap! I put the trap temporarily where my cat could get to it (I was filling the bucket of water) and my cat played with the trap. Unfortunatly she accidentaly let the mouse out, and it took me three days to catch it again (mice learn!).
-When dumping the mice, be sure they are in a corner and after you dump them, jossle the trap. Sometimes one will grab on and you don't know it's there until the others are gone and you shake it loose. I once dumped a mouse thinking it was the only one and almost released the other when I went to go clean the trap. Sometimes tapping on the trap works better.
-Don't dump live mice in the toilet! I did this once (I figured it drowns them faster than a bucket) and the mouse almost jumped out.
-Don't try to flush more than one mouse at once. I flushed two at once the other day and they clogged the toilet... needless to say it was gross and a little disturbing (they were already dead).
Question:
-Is there a faster, less frightening/painful method to killing mice other than drowning in a bucket? I hate the idea of poison because it isn't instant and I can only imagine the pain. Drowning is the only method I can think of, but sometimes it takes a while to die and I don't want the mice being frightened all that time. Mom recently thought about getting stacking buckets and puting one on top of the other (the other has the mice and water) so they die faster, but we'd really like to know a less frightening way to kill the poor things.
---------------
Please no telling me to release them alive. I've read several times that mice can find thier way back up to 5 miles away, and we are not going to waste precious gas to release live mice who will slowly starve to death or else become someone else's problem.
The first time the trap caught a mouse it was actually a mother and her litter of four. Since then I've caught many more mice and played around with the bait to see what worked best. Recently I've caught 9 mice in three nights, and I know there's at least one still in the wall which I plan to catch tonight. I love this trap and highly reccomend it to anyone else with my problem.
Tips I've learned:
-Find a hotspot. In our case the mice go under our bathroom sinks, specifically mine. I could tell because of all the mouse droppings. If you have a cat they can tell you which bathroom the mice hang around.
-The best bait I've found is chicken food mixed with cat food, with the cat food making a huge difference(my cat food is Taste of the Wild. It seems to work better than the old Purina I used to have, though the Purina also helped remarkably). Peanut butter stuck to the trap and didn't catch mice very quickly.
-Check the trap everyday, even if you don't think it caught a mouse. Jossle it a bit. Mice have a remarkable ability to hide even when you can see everywhere in the trap.
-Try to put the holes where the mice get in against a wall. I learned this from BYCers who explained mice tend to run along walls. I've found this to be true.
-If you need to trap a mouse in your coop, take your chicken food away for a day and force your chickens to eat up the leftovers (this works best if it's not crumbles). Keep the food away at night and put chicken food in the trap. Put the trap where the mice are used to getting food.
-Don't let your cats play with the trap! I put the trap temporarily where my cat could get to it (I was filling the bucket of water) and my cat played with the trap. Unfortunatly she accidentaly let the mouse out, and it took me three days to catch it again (mice learn!).
-When dumping the mice, be sure they are in a corner and after you dump them, jossle the trap. Sometimes one will grab on and you don't know it's there until the others are gone and you shake it loose. I once dumped a mouse thinking it was the only one and almost released the other when I went to go clean the trap. Sometimes tapping on the trap works better.
-Don't dump live mice in the toilet! I did this once (I figured it drowns them faster than a bucket) and the mouse almost jumped out.
-Don't try to flush more than one mouse at once. I flushed two at once the other day and they clogged the toilet... needless to say it was gross and a little disturbing (they were already dead).
Question:
-Is there a faster, less frightening/painful method to killing mice other than drowning in a bucket? I hate the idea of poison because it isn't instant and I can only imagine the pain. Drowning is the only method I can think of, but sometimes it takes a while to die and I don't want the mice being frightened all that time. Mom recently thought about getting stacking buckets and puting one on top of the other (the other has the mice and water) so they die faster, but we'd really like to know a less frightening way to kill the poor things.
---------------
Please no telling me to release them alive. I've read several times that mice can find thier way back up to 5 miles away, and we are not going to waste precious gas to release live mice who will slowly starve to death or else become someone else's problem.
