Us vs. The Rats

[lazy gardener]

over the summer/fall, it became apparent there were rats stealing our chicken feed. We have had chickens for seven years and never had a problem with rats. I tried trapping them, and while I was pretty successful, only the live traps worked. it is such a slow way to eliminate a population, and we all got tired of killing the rats we trapped. We don't want to use poison because of a fear that the chickens could somehow get the poison, or that a poisoned rat could stagger into their reach and they could eat the rat. (Chickens are crazy AF). We have been bringing ning in the food every night and putting it out in the AM but it's quite a lot of work and doesn't really work with our schedules.
At the feed store recently, someone told me to buy bulk corn gluten and mix it into small balls with peanut butter and drop them into the rats holes.

I doubt that the PB/corn gluten approach will do anything more than give them a snack. Live trapping is most likely not eliminating them as fast as they are breeding.

I think the mix you may be looking for is peanut butter and plaster paris. Theory is they eat it, can't digest it or pass it and it kills them via intestinal blockage. Some say it works, others say it doesn't.

In the annals of most of the rat wars, about all that seems to reliably work is rat poison. Chunks and place it in bait stations well away from the birds. Normally, rats eat it, then crawl off to their tunnels to die.

Trapping may get a few. Dogs and cats may get more than a few, but not all of them. Remarkably, nature's best rodent killers are weasels. They can go into the tunnels and kill just about everything in sight.........but won't hesitate to do the same to your birds. In fact, a lot of weasel issues seem to crop up due to heavy infestations of rats and mice, which draw in these nasty predators.

So long term, best solution is a rat proof feeder to cut off their food supply, in conjunction with poison bait chunks protected in bait stations.

I read a study re: the plaster of paris/PB. They stated that all the mixture did was give the rats a serious case of constipation and hemorrhoids.

Howard, do you have a particular bait station plan that works well for you?

We had been using peanut butter and cheese and caught nothing. The minute we switched to FF, which was what they had been enjoying in the chicken yard, we caught dozens and dozens. I'm also zealous about storing food in tight containers and trying to minimize left-over feed in the yard.

Good to know that the FF was successful.

If I had a rat problem, I personally would not kill them. I would trap them and release them somewhere away from most houses, at least five miles away from my house. I don't like the idea of killing animals just because they want something to eat.

I am thankful that you are not my neighbor. If you are releasing rats 5 miles away from your house, you are releasing them to become some one else's infestation.

 

[sylviethecochin]

I am thankful that you are not my neighbor. If you are releasing rats 5 miles away from your house, you are releasing them to become some one else's infestation.

x2.

I hate killing animals too--especially juveniles. But dropping them off is not really the answer. If there aren't rats where you're dropping them off, then you just produced another infestation, or the area wasn't suited for rats anyway and he'll starve/freeze/move right over to someone else's house where they'll try and kill him. If there are rats there, then the existing, rather territorial rats will try and kill him.

Just hit him over the head with a shovel and bury the body. It's far more humane.

 

[Stephanie_VA]

I think the mix you may be looking for is peanut butter and plaster paris. Theory is they eat it, can't digest it or pass it and it kills them via intestinal blockage. Some say it works, others say it doesn't.

Actually, they might very well have said corn gluten. There is a product available for rat control that has as it's main ingredient corn gluten. In reality, the product is completely safe around kids and pets. You COULD eat it without harm, if you chose to do so. Supposedly, rats are unable to digest corn gluten since they lack the enzymes to do so. Death is supposed to be caused by starvation. While reviews I have read are highly mixed, I have tried 2 bags of the stuff with my rat problem and have had zero success. From what I understand it works IF it's the only food source. The rats do eat it readily. But, if they have access to other sources it won't reduce the population. I had limited success with snap traps. Rats are smart and will learn to ignore them. The best control I've had is with poison blocks. It wasn't exactly pleasant when several died in my attic. However, being as cold as it is it wasn't intolerable, and the smell only lasted 3 or 4 days. At one time I would regularly see up to a dozen at a time at my bird feeder at night. Right now, I'm down to only a couple. Trouble is they're in the house. I'm still putting out poison. I'll win this war!

 

[Star and eclipsa]

I am thankful that you are not my neighbor. If you are releasing rats 5 miles away from your house, you are releasing them to become some one else's infestation.[/QUOTE]
I said AT LEAST 5 miles and AWAY FROM OTHER HOUSES. Probably in a forest or something, away from where people live.

 

[JaeG]

Whenever the rats turn up so too do red mites in my coop. We tried the live capture traps (no other sorts are large enough to catch the huge rats we have round us, and there are no predators, other than the odd backyard cat who'd be crazy to take them on, to kill them in New Zealand). Drowning them isn't fun and we only ever caught a few. So we now use a poison that makes them thirsty so they seek out water (rather than hanging around in your roof to die and stink). I love animals but after they started pulling/attacking/eating my quail through the half inch hardware cloth, and even having a go at chewing through it, we had to do something! They are an introduced pest that is decimating native animals so they have no place in our backyard.

 

[rosemarythyme]

I said AT LEAST 5 miles and AWAY FROM OTHER HOUSES. Probably in a forest or something, away from where people live.

The reality is very few people live in an area where they could release rats 5 miles away from any other house.

I've had plenty of pet rodents and love them and precisely for that reason I have no issue killing wild rats and mice, which can easily spread disease to the domestic variety.

 

[lazy gardener]

I am thankful that you are not my neighbor. If you are releasing rats 5 miles away from your house, you are releasing them to become some one else's infestation.

I said AT LEAST 5 miles and AWAY FROM OTHER HOUSES. Probably in a forest or something, away from where people live.[/QUOTE]

I challenge you to find any place that you can actually get to that is 5 miles away from other residential areas.

 

[Morrigan]

Agree with the above posters. Although it's a kind-hearted thought to live trap and release, when you're talking about relocating an infestation of dozens, if not hundreds of rodents, it's simply not feasible. Even if you could find some idyliic place, miles from other humans, the logistics of moving the rodents, many of which carry deadly diseases like hantavirus, is challenging to say the least. Plus, the relocated rodents will most like die after being denied their preferred habitat. There is a reason you don't see the kind of explosive rat populations in the wild that you do in human settings where there is an abundance of food, water and shelter available.

 

[Mama Runner]

Ok, Please don't judge I'm not a bad person. We use smoke bombs. At 4 of July I bought three cases. Because I was sick of snakes, moles, rats and had just had enough. See if I was evil I would do it with a smile on my face. So I put my College Degrees to work.

1) find the whole
2) I put three lite smoke bombs in the whole
3) make sure they pop and start smoking.
4) before smoke bombs finish fill in whole with dirt, Pat down and repeat until Whole is full.
5) do to each whole you find.
6) say bye bye to underground problems.

This works three main ways
1) the chemicals they use in smoke bombs leaves a residual in the whole that burns animals and snakes. This causes them to not try and dig the same way
2) You close and lock the critters out and basically lock the door
3) It chases them out of hiding so you can dispatch as soon as they pop their heads out. If they are in the whole.

Last but most important, it looks so cool to see your yard smoking in a bunch of colors.

 

[WildCHILD400]

Use the bucket tarp you can Google it on youtube. Basically you fill a bucket half way with water and put a stick leading up to the bucket and put some bait at the bottom and at the very tip of the stick so it runs up the stick and is to heavy and falls in the bucket. Use peanut butter dog food or orange slices they are the best bait for mice, rats, chipmunk and coons. Put 3 or 4 buckets around the area and u can also put some havahart traps around with peanut butter and nuts as bait.