ejparrott Posted January 14, 2016 Share Posted January 14, 2016 Yeah.......kinda worried that might end setting fire to the workshop!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anderzander Posted January 14, 2016 Share Posted January 14, 2016 Webs ? Just scoop them up with your hands ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheffield Posted January 14, 2016 Share Posted January 14, 2016 The plug in sort are a waste of money. The sound waves they give off do not pass through solid objects so do not disturb mice when they are hiding. Also If the mice and rats are established they will ignore the sound waves and live with it. Having fought a long battle with mice I can say that poison is the only way, Get the sort the mice can take to their nest, so you kill the lot. Although the glue is very effective it only gets a few. They don't like moth balls, but you will have to keep replacing the moth balls as they loose their smell. Block up all the entry holes if you can, as a mouse can get down a hole the size of a pencil. If you find a nest with babies give them to the hens, who will enjoy them. I started not wanting to hurt them, just shift them, but it soon became all out war, as all wars do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GW8IZR Posted January 14, 2016 Share Posted January 14, 2016 I have stopped poisoning them as they smell like mad 'till you find them and if you cant find or get to them the flies are awful. The electronic things are a waste of time, they just ignore them after a day or so. Snap trap and peanut butter is the way to go.. if you try to be humane you will just end up with a bigger problem and end up killing more of them anyway. They spread disease and tiddle everywhere on their way to feeding areas so their friends can join the party later so make sure you disinfect the access and egress points to break the trail or you will have a never ending job. A cat or a terrier is a really good solution, even the smell of a cat reduces the infestation but it is hard to get them to work out I like wild birds and dont like mice :-) As an aside I once made a mouse trap that ran them over a grid made of fuse wire, nothing less than 1Kv would kill them. Certainly 240V was infective. As another aside, in the seventies / eighties damage to railway signalling and communications cables was so bad that we resorted to brass tape armour. That wasnt to protect the cable by strengthening it - the sharp edges of the brass was able to slice their mouths up and make them unable to feed, equally effective on rats and mice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happyoldgit Posted January 14, 2016 Share Posted January 14, 2016 A layered approach is required, a combination of bait boxes and traps should suffice, live catch traps are a waste of time. Spiders are supposed to be deterred by leaving horse chesnuts around the place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve King Posted January 14, 2016 Share Posted January 14, 2016 Don't use poison if owls are around. Traps should be used - man up and deal with the mess! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ejparrott Posted January 14, 2016 Share Posted January 14, 2016 A layered approach is required, a combination of bait boxes and traps should suffice, live catch traps are a waste of time. Spiders are supposed to be deterred by leaving horse chesnuts around the place. Tried Conkers...they're everywhere....so are the spiders!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
landroversforever Posted January 14, 2016 Author Share Posted January 14, 2016 Had a chat with a mate who used to work in pest control and he confirmed a few things that you lot have said. First one being the electronic repellents are no good. Looks like traps are the way to go then. Poison no good as there are owls about the farm. I've got no attachment to rats.... But I'm not looking forward to getting the mice . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CwazyWabbit Posted January 14, 2016 Share Posted January 14, 2016 ......I've got no attachment to rats.... But I'm not looking forward to getting the mice . They're not mice .... they're baby rats .... repeat after me .... they're not mice they are baby rats and they want to eat my Land Rover! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GW8IZR Posted January 15, 2016 Share Posted January 15, 2016 They are cute and cuddly creatures that deserve to live - right up to the point that they make you re wire your house, kill your chickens and bring Weils disease to your children. When you shift the bodies remember they are potentially diseased and use protection when you get shut of them. Remember their tiddle is potentially diseased, clean it with disinfectant You cannot co exist with them, they are fine as long as you keep them away from humans I leave my mice and rats alone as long as they keep out in the field, if they make their way toward the house the last thing they will hear is one click. One last poison related thing - remember that slugs, slug pellets and hedgehogs are a bad mixture 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CwazyWabbit Posted January 15, 2016 Share Posted January 15, 2016 Hit the nail on the head there Paul Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffR Posted January 15, 2016 Share Posted January 15, 2016 I've found that noise based repellents eventually give up the ghost or become audible. Rats, especially, get used to them (bloody things is way too intelligent). Poisons work, but critters tend to go die in some awkward corner and a wee while later stink and produce way too many blue bottles. Hate to say it, but the most effective method is a good old fashioned back breaker (or finger breaker if you ain't too careful with the larger versions - go on then, ask me me how I found that one out) traps. To increase the efficiency of traps, superglue a chocolate button to the trigger, can get half a dozen rodents with the same bait. Mind you, I sorted the rats in my garage by giving them lead poisoning at about 600fps, all bar one who became rather hand tame - he and i came to an agreement, he didn't do too much damage (or bring his mates along) and I refrained from shooting him. Poor bugger died of old age in the autumn, kinda miss his company...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoggyN Posted January 15, 2016 Share Posted January 15, 2016 For rats and mice I find the classic spring traps are best. I use a hazelnut as bait on the mousetraps. The little buggers grab them in their teeth and give them a good yank to get them off the pin. Clean kill every time. On the rat traps I use bits of cooked frankfurter sausage. They seem to love it. My wife brought this little chap down from the attic... Rats seem to be quite intelligent so the rest of his mates moved out after he was killed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffR Posted January 15, 2016 Share Posted January 15, 2016 For rats and mice I find the classic spring traps are best. I use a hazelnut as bait on the mousetraps. The little buggers grab them in their teeth and give them a good yank to get them off the pin. Clean kill every time. On the rat traps I use bits of cooked frankfurter sausage. They seem to love it. My wife brought this little chap down from the attic... Rats seem to be quite intelligent so the rest of his mates moved out after he was killed. We used to live on a farm in Devon and were plagued by rats, so we acquired some pet Rats - wild rats tend to be territorial and promptly buggered off sharpish. Have two pet rats now, The Venerable Bede and Saint Cuthbert, aka Bede and Bert, real cool dudes the pair of them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanuki Posted January 15, 2016 Share Posted January 15, 2016 Electronic repellents are only good at separating fools from their money. Having had rats in the attic [and the £1500 cleanup bill to remove the loft insulation, vacuum-out the rat**** and re-insulate] for the last few years I've been "perimeter-baiting" my realm with Difenacoum-laced baits, along with spring-traps and glue-pads. In an average year the spring-traps get a couple of dozen kills [hint: Nutella's a brilliant bait] and the glue-pads another ten or so. Equally, Dog likes to dig rats out of their tunnels. When he finds an occupied burrow he goes into crazed-JCB-mode and can excavate down a foot or so in seconds. Fortunately, when he gets a rat he doesn't bite it [there's a nasty disease - Leptospirosis - spread by rat-urine]. Rather, Dog uses his front-paws to ***stamp*** on any rat he finds. Given that Dog weighs 45Kg, any rat he stamps-on is rapidly a dead rat. Question: do you know anyone with Jack Russell Terriers? They're rat-murderers of the first order! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studmuffin Posted January 15, 2016 Share Posted January 15, 2016 Completely agree. You do not want, you, or your kids, to get Weils disease from rats. You cannot safely co-exist. In my humble opinion in order of effectiveness-- Professional pest controller using bait traps. Tunnels fitted with Fenn traps Cat with attitude Good ratting terrier. Good ratting ferret. Air rifle ( Even better with night scope) Spade Deadfall trap Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boydie Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 On the subject of rat poison,and I'm NOT a greenie by any means - I shoot feral animals as a sport - however if you use poison ensure that you look for and find the carcase and burn it. 99% of poisons remain in the deceased animal's body, along comes a native scavenger, crow, rook, raven, pole cat, stoat or badger whatever and eats the dead rat and it too ends up being poisoned, remember the catastrophic effects of DDT on England's birdlife? A cat from the SPCA is far more effective, so long as it's a fairly mature male or female and has been desexed, don't let it into your house, give it a bed-box and water & food bowl and toilet tray in your shed with an opening so it can come and go and you will have a happy low maintenance mouse and rat killer for at least 10 years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BogMonster Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 I don't think anybody has mentioned that not having any accessible food in the workshop is the first step - preferably no food, because then there isn't a smell of it. If there is food, they will come, if there is not, they won't bother. Even crumbs on the floor will attract mice. If there is food, keep it in tins (old Quality Street tins are ideal) or better still the airtight metal containers that you can get for sugar etc. If you have to store a lot of dry animal food e.g. for hens, keep it in a mouseproof container - an old chest freezer is ideal! On the farm, we used to have a store room for flour and sugar for the farm shop when it still existed, and the whole room was lined out with galvanised flatiron with a very tight fitting door - the back of which was also covered with flatiron. I had one of those ultrasonic things once. I was chuffed with it until I went into the shed one day and two heads popped up out of the bin holding the hens corn about 3ft from the device, looked at me, and promptly scarpered. I also have a very sharp cat which lives outside and kills anything. It was trying to take out a fully grown adult hare the other morning, which was entertaining. The hare survived but I don't think it will try getting into our veg garden again Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mickeyw Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 CATS - end of. My mum used to have the neighbours' two cats that liked to sleep in her hay barn. She never had any rat, mouse or rabbit problems on the farm until those cats passed away. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
landroversforever Posted January 18, 2016 Author Share Posted January 18, 2016 Cat isn't really practical for me as the workshop is ~3.5 miles from home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GW8IZR Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 I agree your circumstances don't favour a cat and you have had plenty alternative solutions. I used to have a remote cat, it used to live in a barn / outhouse which was 120 miles away from my permanent residence. I saw her maybe twice a week and she was always about the place (cctv) and happy to see me when I got home. Less happy to see my dogs but... Well that's another story. That cat wasn't mine, I just inherited her when we bought the house and I wouldn't have a cat under those circumstances, but the cat decided to stay. She happily kept the mice down for me almost 13 years by which time she was 18 years old. Anyway at the end she went blind and took to sleeping in the middle of the road, it was inevitable that there was going to be a disaster. She had to have a one way trip to the vet and I was sad to have to do that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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