Rats

[henchy3rd]

... not to mention cane toads -- hopefully they find a way to control them soon... (interestingly they're native in my current location but i've so far not found out what keeps them under control)
i've come across feral camels just beside the road on my way to Uluru -- fortunately in broad daylight and on visible ground, my faithful Ford "festiva " was definitely smaller (friend of mine hit a brumby with his car, fortunately no serious injury but the car wasn't in a good shape afterwards...); the butcher in Humpty Doo (NT) makes some awesome camel curry sausages btw. ....

A roo jumped out at dusk on the way to the Ningaloo coast, hit between the back of the truck & the trailer with tinnie( boat). They must be as hard as nails as it just hopped off into the bush. so many memories & dreams.
Even traded bushcraft tips & stories with aboriginals, even showed me how to make a fish knife with a shell & twig glued together with kangaroo poo/charcoal & tree sap.(it sits proudly on my chest of draws).

 

[Robbi]

Even traded bushcraft tips & stories with aboriginals, even showed me how to make a fish knife with a shell & twig glued together with kangaroo poo/charcoal & tree sap.(it sits proudly on my chest of draws).

we really need a photo of that please

 

[gonzo_the_great]

If no-one else has suggested....
Possibly contact your local BASC group and ask if they have any airgun shooters who would like to help. I would be surprised if they didn't know a few who would would be interested. They get the sport, you get your problem solved.

 

[FerlasDave]

I live in a very close boating community, the cats are killing everything.. kestrels, rabbits, voles, green woodpeckers, young water fowl, pigeons, to name a few.
Please put a double bell on the cats neck & don’t assume yours does not kill.. it’s in the nature.

There was an article I read not long back about the problem with feral cats in parts of the US and how it was a far bigger issue than people thought. Some states were dispatching them, others had intiatives set up to get the females speyed.

I’ll try and find the article.

 

[FerlasDave]

I found the article for those who are interested...

America’s War On Feral Cats

Scott Farver doesn’t have anything against cats. When he found a box of abandoned kittens on his north Texas property a few years ago, he nursed them back to health and took them to a local no-kill shelter. But he also understands the dangers that adult free-roaming cats pose to native wildlife...

www.themeateater.com

 

[ianpatt]

Find where the rat runs are and bait them with Peanut Butter and a humane shot to the head with a sub 12lbs air rifle. There is a country wide problem at the moment and the only real of keeping them down is shooting, poisoning will not only kill other species but the Rats can take a long while to die which imo is not acceptable.

 

[gibson 175]

I am a qualified pest controller, you can message me for advice...obviously no charge for bushcraft buddies I am not doing pest control in a professional capacity at the moment anyway..just like to use my knowledge and experience to help if things crop up for friends and find this sort of thing interesting. I am not a full member, as far as I can see I have limited access sending personal messages etc

 

[Toddy]

I am a qualified pest controller, you can message me for advice...obviously no charge for bushcraft buddies I am not doing pest control in a professional capacity at the moment anyway..just like to use my knowledge and experience to help if things crop up for friends and find this sort of thing interesting. I am not a full member, as far as I can see I have limited access sending personal messages etc

@gibson 175
Hello and welcome to the forum.

That's a kind offer
If you post a few more times then the forum permissions will open up for you. It's just a kind of anti spammer feature to help the Mods.

We get rats in the big dalek shaped compost bins at times. We usually bait them these days. That said, I've emptied the big compost bins and am just using ordinary black plastic dustbins just now, and the rats haven't gotten into those at all (touch wood).

I would really like a bait that kills the blighter pdq. What we have been able to buy seems to take ages to kill them. Is there anything that you could recommend ?

Airguns are licenced up here now, and we gave ours away. A quick shot was most effective though.

 

[gibson 175]

Do you have any idea where the rats are coming from? Is there a particular source that you suspect eg a broken drain, or somebody else's property. Maybe you are not sure? Am I right in thinking that you live in a rural area? What are your site characteristics and history? What is the extent of the infestation? Is there a history of bait shyness?Where are the harbourage locations? Have you tried clearing the area of any debris/vegetation to create a clear perimeter(rats don 't like the open)
Professionals don't always use the strongest poisons;they act quickly and if the rat survives an initial nibble it will learn to avoid that product. If you were in a resteraunt and immediately became ill you would blame the food. However if you didn't get ill for a few days which of your meals would you blame. Sometimes we want a slow acting poison so that the rat carries on eating the poison and eats enough to kill it.
Different products are used in different circumstances.I must be careful about advising particular products because you can have the 'best product' in the world which will kill a lot of rats but it won't get rid of the infestation . It's also about proofing(difficult to do outside), removing food/water sources and harbourage, housekeeping and lots of other things-as I am sure you must be aware ,as you have had some success..but I would say I have seen amateurs have success with stuff bought from B and Q which is basically the same stuff professionals use but at a lower concentration.
Look at the active ingredient on the packaging ,what does it say? Here are some active ingredients:
Difenanacoum(seen this in various shop products) or bromadiolone are 2nd generation acute rodenticides that were inroduced to overcome resistance from warfarin.
Brodifacoum(seen this in 'amateur' products in shops)-highest toxicity, also a 2nd generation rodenticide.
there are others but only available to professionals.
How and where have you been baiting? in the open, in a rat box? have you been using pasta type bait,grain,blocks? I would be curious/nosey as to what measures you have taken. If you need a professional use the BPCA website to find one. Here is a link to some advice on DIY pest control..
https://bpca.org.uk/a-z-of-pest-adv...-of-and-prevent-rats-bpca-a-z-of-pests/188991
happy to waffle on more if you have any more questions-keep em coming( not the rats though)

 

[gibson 175]

Toddy-when you say it takes ages to kill them. How long? from when you put the bait down? what is your time line? is there a gap between your baiting or are you baiting continously?

 

[gibson 175]

difethialone is another active ingredient of the stronger and later 2nd generation rodenticides and is available in products available to the general public.

 

[Toddy]

We live alongside a nature walk that runs alongside a burn.






Our garden runs along the right hand side of the path in these photos

 

[Toddy]

It's an overgrown single track old mineral railway line. It went to the old Victorian gas works, and the path is mostly based on clinker. The tree lines are the grown up hedge that used to run along side the railway.

Other than that, everyone's very clean about not leaving out any food that would attract them. The compost heap apart. We're vegetarian, and I garden, so the compost heap is a right mix. We're on heavy clay soil, and if I don't constantly add organic matter, the garden is a slippy clay mess.
There's a lot of wildlife around us here, so to some extent the rats are part of the background I suppose, but I don't want the blighters to get settled, iimmc ?

Using the sealed bins (with very small drainage holes bored in the bases) seems to be a better option than the big dalek shaped ones that sat open based on the ground, but I miss the ability to stuff so much into those.
I did try setting them on big paving slabs, but when I lifted the slabs the rats had tunnels under them, so I scrapped that idea.

We tried the snap traps, and they worked for a while, then the blighters got fly to them. So now we have bait boxes tucked agin the fence line where we think they run. They certainly eat the bait, but they seem to do so for weeks on end until they don't. I don't know if that means they've gotten wise to it, or they're deid, but I haven't seen any so far this year, and I'd rather keep it that way, and be able to use the big black compost bins again.

Thank you for your advice on this, it's appreciated.

 

[gibson 175]

looks like you know what you are doing. 1 further thought- keep moving things around in your garden/bin area,will hopefully unsettle them,- rats have a fear of new objects and don't like it when things are different...make sure your presence is always felt by them

 

[Toddy]

The compost bins are next to the fence line, and beside my 'boneyard' of interesting bits and pieces hidden behind the greenhouse, from roof tiles to bits of trellis.
I'll take to shifting stuff around a bit and see if it puts them off

 

[Aneirin]

I recall ages ago reading somewhere that garlic or household ammonia will deter them.

Poisoned dead rats are likely to be eaten by scavenging fauna, the poisons will build up in the fats in the animal/Bird and cause poisoning in itself over time.

But then i haven't had to live with the consequences of a rat infestation.

Just an idea.

 

[Toddy]

I admit that poisoning them bothers me, but the stuff in the last batch was basically warfarin, and it just makes them leak inside kind of thing. It breaks down too.

I don't have a rat problem, but I really really don't want to have a rat problem, iimmc ? so I'm keeping on top of it as best I can.
Living as we do right next to the nature walk, the woods and the burn, I suspect that like the deer, the foxes, the badges, the squirrels, weasels, hedgehogs, newts, toads, bats and birds, etc., that visit the garden on a regular basis, that the rats are just part of the whole ecosystem now. It's how to keep their numbers so low that they never become a health issue is my concern.

M

 

[saxonaxe]

A little yarn about Rats... In the early 1960's I joined a Tramp Ship in the West India Dock in London. The Dockers loaded a Rolls Royce car onto the after deck alongside number 4 Hatch. It was deck cargo to Hong Kong for the then Governor of the British Colony. Rolls Royce provided a kind of fleecy lined car cover to protect the paint work and we covered it with Tarpaulins, the same as we used to cover the Ship's hatches in those days. All covered and properly lashed down the car came with us via Suez and places the names of which have long since changed. Aden, Bombay, Colombo in Ceylon, Singapore and up to Hong Kong.

A representative from the Governor's Office came aboard with the Shipping Company Agent to watch the car being unloaded. We stripped off the tarpaulins and light cover ready for the car to be craned ashore.
A great wailing started coming from the Chinese Company Agent when he looked into the car .
I had a quick decko and saw that there were great holes eaten in the real leather seats, back and front, in places the seat springs showed though the holes. Ratty had also been up on the kind of parcel shelf at the back of the rear seats and had eaten part of the fabric roof lining.

I think the Governor had to wait for a few weeks until Rolls Royce sent men out with new materials to patch the car up. We never did see the Rats, they probably jumped ship when we first docked in Hong Kong..they obviously wanted a run ashore and a change of diet.

 

[cbrdave]

I had a shooting perm with rats, me and a friend did every night for a week, thinned them out a lot, had a week off to do the rest of our perms and when we went back it seemed busier, they seem to get used to poisen and can breed an immunity to it, it is a full time job unfortunately.

 

[Aneirin]

A bit of a weird question I suppose, but has anyone here ever eaten a rat?