Exterminator questions re Rats/Mice

If the mice stop eating the bait, it may be because their water source has dried up. Put a couple jar lids full of water near the bait. Black licorice also works well as a bait if tied to the trigger with thread.

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Dear Math, it is time you grew up and solved your own problems.

Black licorice? What does that do? Did you mean to use it in a trap?

The place we are working does not have any food nor pet food around! It is a part time home and the family are not there but a few times a year. I think the rodent problem got out of control since there is an abandoned trailer nearby and the owner of the house thought it would be enough to just set out one or two small trays of DCon but that was not enough. Now...the rodent population exploded and will just take time and effort to get things under control and cleaned up.

We are taking the advice from above and setting out more bait and different types. We had put out too little bait. We will also put some water out but I don't think lack of water is the trouble but it won't hurt to be sure water is available.

We are using three types of bait now: The plain ole DCon in pellet trays / the solid Tom Cat chunks secured by a heavy board / and another solid chuck that had a hole in it and we we secured it by stringing it on coat hangers. We have not checked it for almost three days and so we will check today and see what happened.

We are cleaning the whole place tomorrow with Clorox solutions and also starting Peppermint oil treatment. Will keep checking back since we appreciate all the good ideas and tips.

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Sealing up andall that doesn't work on the farm, outdoors, etc. Our house is rodent proof. I built it that way and it really is. Outdoors there are rodents.

Dogs, cats and ferrets are another control to add to the arsenal of traps and poisons.

For the poison getting ingested by dogs, what I have read is Vitamin K1 is the antidote.

Cheers,

-Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
ButcherShop | Sugar Mountain Farm

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Yes, put it in traps. Mice have very poor eyesight but they can smell very well. Also, keep any dead mice picked up because there is nothing mice like better than chewing into the back of a dead mouse's head and eating its brain. They also operate on smell and have a slight sense of radar like a bat. That is why you will hear them squeal when running along a wall. The sound bounces back to them and tells them how far they are from the next wall.

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I have a house that is on a raised foundation. The house is sealed from rats but the underside got infested. I have cleared out the insullation that was under the house and the underside has been sealed anywhere there was a small opening. There is rate feces and urine. I am wondering what I should do about that? We are working on the building today and tomorrow. Let me know what you think. Thanks

I accidentally had a chipmunk get caught on a glue trap. I was able to get him off by dousing the board with vegetable oil and "helping" him along. LOL Talk about a bad day for him.

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I am having real issues with either field mice or wood rats...Those vermin eat the wiring in our vehicles! They destroyed the wiring in our Ford Bronco, and we didn't notice the damages until we started and drove the thing...It shorted out the ignition system and the cost was well over $200! As a last resort ( after a trial and error of all kinds of traps and baits) we used Decon..Bad mistake! Caretakers' dog found a dead rat/mouse, and ate it. $3,000 and several vet visits later and the dog still died.
I know we have the problem from the first day up north, as I was worried about the possibility of them being a "white footed field mouse", that can carry the HANTA virus.
So far they all appear to be some sort of big rat....They are destructive and now we have to rewire our water tailer lights...I had left a 5 gallon bucket about 1/4 full of water outside and overnight after setting up a temporary outdoor shower ..
The next morning we had 6 drowned rats in the thing!
I had brought up some various cacti and aloe vera and other plants in an attempt to see what would "take" up north. Well, they lasted about 15 minutes....They were ravaged by a hoarde of vermin, just as soon as the sun went down!
I am researching some ideas, one was the easiest, uisng 1/4 inch hardware cloth to put around the buildings to keep them from chewing their way inside...
But that won't work on vehicles!
So, I am designing a hot wire fence, with pvc pipe ( schedule 40, 3/4 inch x 21 inches in height.) I am drilling holes ( 1/16th inch) starting 9-12 inches up from the bottom, ( for burying) at 1/2 inch intervals...that continues up the pipe until it's about 6 inches from the top. Then I'll string electric fence wire thru the holes, and use as many as I'll need figuring about 1 pole for every 6 feet, and enough to cover a 24-30 ft long area (5-6 each side) and at least 10-12 feet in width, ( 2 on each end). Then I will wire in a fence charge controller, alternating the positive and negative connectors, where they will be no more than 1/2 inch apart. Now why I am doing this is due to the nature of the soil and it's moisture content. Far too dry to carry the shock current to do much at all. We tested it with an 8 ft copper ground rod and it was almost useless! By having the wires connected in that way, any rat or mouse ( even snakes) will get ZAPPED when they try to go thru the fence lines.
Using an el-cheapo ( $60) fence Charger, I chose to use .030 aluminum welding wire for the fencing. It carries the voltage a LOT better and much HOTTER than any steel or galvanized wires! The voltage is about 6-8 Kv. And the chargers are supposed to be rated to cover a single wire fence for up to 5 miles... on such a short run, it will be quite HOT, that should stop some of the vermin!
Biggest problem is making a pvc gate, to be able to open and close the area/s off....
Should be interesting!
Any ideas welcomed!
Bill

dragonfly: Good luck! I do not know what to suggest. We used DCon and the solid chunks on the property where my sons are Care Taking. But, there are no dogs and no cats around so it was safe to use the DCon.

After someone above suggested we might have not set out enough bait trays, the boys went back and put DCon and solid chunks in every room of the house and in the crawl space. The DCon was eaten (again - for two weeks nothing ate DCon for some reason) but very little of the solid chunks was eaten.

There was an old barn building near the house. It was infested too and I think what really finally worked was that the boys treated the barn too. It was an old trailer building with rooms and so they put both DCon and solid chunks in every room. Again, same as the house, the Dcon was eaten quickly this time but only a little of the solid chunks. They continued to set out DCon until it was no longer eaten.

Now, they rotate DCon and solid chunks to be sure the problems does not return.

I think you are going to have to get rid of the rats/mice all around the place or they will just keep bothering your vehicles. I am not sure but I bet a rat or mouse can get through or under most any electric device rigged up? Not sure. Maybe someone else here has made something similar.

Are there any more dogs on the property? If not , try the Dcon and see if you can get rid of them.

Can you get a couple of Barn Cats?

Good luck. It is a frustrating and expensive problem.

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You have pack rats. My house in NM gets them as well.

Use LOTS of 5 gal buckets about 1/3-1/2 full, as the rats will try and drink and drown.

Snap traps & pnut butter work great for the deer mice, which ARE carriers of the Hanta virus.

Plan on doing it the rest of your life.

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PVC pipe melted when we tried to use it as insulated pipe. Just so you know before you put in all the work... Your experience may differ.

Also, Clorox wipes don't remove all the urine odor. Vinegar will. It neutralizes the proteins in the urine.

DCon is worthless to me. I can put it out all year round and not kill anything. Might as well use a piece of bread.
Just One Bite bar seems to work good. They eat it and I see dead rats within 2 days.
I have to repeat it for a while as they eat it up. It works good for me.

Talk with a local exterminator about using a liquid poison.

We had an infestation in the past and the exterminator used liquid poison that worked like a charm.

Jim

I haven't read the whole thread, so sorry if this is a repeat. But Dcon is like cotton candy to mice and rats in my experience. You need some agricultural stuff like bar bait that you use in barns and other feed areas. Go to a feed store and get the stronger stuff.
http://www.stockmens.com/images/products/29378.jpg

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At the job where my son's worked, they tried DCon and at first nothing would eat it. They used the granuals from Ag Store and it was eaten but then, the rodents stopped eating it and went back to the DCon! Next they stopped eating the DCon and went to the solid chunks. I think these were the Tom Cat chunks. Just when we thought that was working , rodents stopped eating it and returned to the Dcon.

They are leaving two types out at a time and moving it every week. So far, things are under control now but it took two full months to kill them all.

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I am going to tell you straight up what we did.

When we bought this old house, it had a mouse problem. Snap traps were not effective. In fact, they were a joke, catching just enough mice to let us know we still had a problem! So after consulting some old-timers, here's what we did.

1. We devised a trap out of a two-gallon bucket with 3" of water in the bottom. We took a tin can, folded the lid back down and punched holes in each end. We threaded a coathanger wire through it so it would spin on it, and laid the wire across the bucket. In the middle of the can, we smeared a strip of peanut butter. Last, we added a board so the mice could walk up it, across the wire, and onto the can. We placed this trap in the least trafficked part of our house, the laundry room.

2. Next, we visually went over every aspect of the outside of the house, from the dirt to the peak of the roof, and sealed every single crack, crevice, hole or gap we could find. It is amazing how thin a crack a mouse can get through.

3. Next, we put out D-Con Rat & Mouse bait in two locations under the house and also a chunk in every room of the house. We carefully monitored and replaced the baits as they were consumed.

4. Next, we put every single items of food like bread, pasta, cookies, beans, etc. in sealed containers or glass jars. Bread was stored in the microwave. The idea is to force the mice to eat the bait only.

Here is what happened:

1. Every week, we had between 3 and 5 mice drowned in the bucket. At first, it was a lot more than that.

2. Our crevice control kept mice from coming in during the fall when they seek warmth.

3. The baits were eaten fast at first, but then gradually less and less was consumed.

Because food was scarcer, the mice were starving so they ate the baits. Within 6 months, we had only the very rare occasional sign of a mouse. At 10 months, we were mouse-free.

It's been 4 years now since I last saw a mouse in the house. We still keep the baits in each room, hidden behind furniture. We are not totally mouse-free, because occasionally a bait will be nibbled, but we have had zero actual sightings, no pilferage or ruining of food and no dropping problems. We continue to replace bait that is consumed and to monitor the outside of the house for cracks and holes, which we repair quickly.

Maybe this will help you. My only other suggestion is that if you have animals you feed outdoors, do not feed them near your house. Feed them as far away as you can. Their food attracts rodents.

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Sweetpea Farms
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CarolT..
Why did the pvc pipe melt?
Mine only has a pulse every other second and never gets warm....
Now looking at using 1/4" hardware cloth as a screen, above and below at an angle so they nearly touch at the rear but opened at the front about 3 inches...the bottom will be the ground connection with the upper being the positive (hot) side...
Any critter that enters and tries to get thru gets zapped.
They are separated by 1 x 4 pine boards at an angle, on each side.
Time to get down and dirty on them RATS!
Bill

This is a good reason why you should never use Orkin for any type of pest control issue. There are several things wrong with what he told you. The spray foam thing is the funniest though. A mouse or rat can chew through almost anything, and the spray foam wouldn't even slow them down. Steel wool however, works quite well to seal up gaps and cracks.

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And just so you know, the smell of dead rats and mice will go away in a few weeks. It can get stinky. Thats why i prefer not to use "baits". Well that and after my experience with ants and "bait"

The one problem with "bait" is that you are "baiting" the mice and rats to come to you. Basically they think your feeding them so they call in all their buddies. I prefer snap traps or other dead kill devices so that way you can dispose of the bodies and you know they are dead.

I had a mouse problem for a while here, i went out bought a dozen snap traps and after about 6 months of sealing holes, cleaning up, checking and resetting traps I have been rodent free for years. They also sell rat snap traps (be careful they are strong)

It may seem like your fighting a loosing battle but for every dead rodent you haul outta there it is one less one to have babies (and you will have problems with them as they grow up if your truely infested.)

As is true with any pest if you get rid of their home they will move on to better grounds. so try to find where they are bedding at and clean it up and make it inhospitable to them.

I know it will be hard to do as your not there all the time but to properly rid yourself of them it takes time and effort (usually not as easy as just setting out bait) but it will be well worth it because once you have rid yourself of them they will stay gone unless you invite them back.

Edited to add: Just for everyones info. NEVER "bait" ants in Florida. after a few weeks of "baiting" them I coulda made a Steven King movie called "Ants"

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Dragonfly, as another poster in NM said, it's pack rats you have. They're the bane of rural and suburban homeowners all over the SW, particularly for their persistent and repeating damage to vehicles parked outside. They don't explore house interiors especially and seem content to feed on normal food sources outside like mesquite and palo verde tree seeds but they also build a series of smaller nests radiating away from primary "midden" colony areas. All of those will be defended with chunks of cholla cacti in particular so you can suddenly find yourself jabbed when reaching into what you thought was a neatly organized box of stuff left stored outside or in a storage shed, or brushing at a "dusty" area on top of your vehicle's engine block or air filter. My neighbor across the way just had to have over a $thou$ work done repairing his parked motor home's gas tank pump wiring as well as engine compartment damage. He had even left it jacked up in the front with several big fluorescent lights on underneath it constantly. Running lights like that to a couple of places on a parked vehicle not being driven daily seems to be the most effective deterrent, along with putting a couple of socks full of mothballs in the engine compartment and/or leaving the hood up overnight.

Since the pack rats are completely native critters, they'll just keep propagating and coming around house edges exploring and starting up new nests, I suppose as a chain of "safe rooms" from coyotes and other predators during nighttime food gathering. I have trouble with them getting at container-grown veggies overnight as well as general fouling of any boxes of "stuff" casually stored along a side porch and open breezeway as well as in sheds, garage, and an old travel trailer. At least not trying to kill off things like big gopher snakes in particular, as well as owls, coyotes, and even bobcats should help keep open brushy areas in a natural balance. Poisons probably kill off those beneficial predators as well as being a pet danger so I avoid using them for pack rats although have used DeCon a few times for interior storage shed problems. Mostly, I put out Hav-A-Heart live traps baited with bread along house edges and out into the brushy area when I notice droppings or veggie damage overnight. The trap helps keep them still enough for a clean later head shot with a pellet rifle. DW keeps telling me to "take them out in the desert" and release. Riiight. I'll do that. Not.

Edit add: Having outdoor cats won't work well in the desert areas for pack rats since coyotes, bobcats, and owls will kill and eat even the most savvy housecats eventually. The average lifespan for cats allowed outdoors around here is around 3-4 years but 15 or so if indoors only. If you value any smallish pets you do NOT let them out even into a fenced backyard during daytime, much less at night, not in the desert.

I wanted to bump this up, its good information.
I killed Master splinter, and he decayed in my wall....ewwwwwwww
Now, all the mini minions have taken over my farm.
I woke up this morning to another death smell and I havent set out any posion since the last death. So I am assuming they are eating the dead one and dying from it?

I had one Mob boss, now they are everywhere, I am at war!!!

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