The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: Womble on June 17, 2021, 09:53:21 am
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We have a minor rat problem here, but after leaving traps unset but baited for a couple of weeks, we're now catching them pretty well in our humane traps. (I'll only use live catch traps now, after once catching a blue tit in a snap trap - I cried :'( )
But what's the best way to despatch rats humanely once caught?
Drowning is unspeakably cruel, and the mesh size on the traps is too small for an air rifle. Any ideas folks?
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We use an air pistol. Can't get the whole barrel through the mesh but it is easier to line up the pellet flight path between the wires.
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Sadly the mesh size on these traps is about 5mm, and I'm not that good a shot, Chris!!
(I do have a couple of dented traps to show for it though!)
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I don't think you will get a straight answer... the only rats I ever "catch" are already dead, having drowned themselves in the goats' water buckets.
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How to dispose of the living, pretty scared, cornered rat is one of the things that makes 'humane' traps inhumane.
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Yep. I do agree, Fleecewife - hence the dilemma. Is live and let-live really an option though?
I do think trapping is preferable to poison though (and no risk of also killing owls). However, after the blue tit incident described above, I won't use kill traps. If it were woodmice, like we get in the house, I'd cheerfully let them go somewhere away from houses, but I can't do that with rats.
Bugger.
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Could you snip one bit of wire to make a hole big enough for the air rifle?
We had a bloke come here with a rifle, night sights, infra red - boy, did he make a dent in the rat population. :relief:
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It's quite cheap mesh, Rosemary. I think if they could get their noses through, they might well be able to enlarge the holes?
Thankfully we're not at the night vision sniper rifle stage yet. Give it time though, I guess!
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Can't you find a moor somewhere far enough away from habitation to let them go? There's a huge one down near Paisley I'm told
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Seems a bit cruel to starve them to death though, since that is eventually what would happen?
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Thankfully we're not at the night vision sniper rifle stage yet. Give it time though, I guess!
He loved it. Ex military.
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Couldnt you simply empty the trap out into something bigger - like a barrel?
The rat wouldn't be able to get out and you would get your clean shot.
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OK, so I've not had to deal with rats and best means of their dispatch, but surely it is not beyond the wit of man to design a humane trap (avoiding killing-traps killing bycatch) that will better allow rat dispatch via an air gun/rifle (if permitted under the laws of our lands).
Business opportunity anyone ?
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Make a large comb (for want of a better word" ) that fits through the mesh and effectively traps the rat at one end. If your trap mesh isn't great then replace one side with stronger stuff that you can push the comb through and you can get your air rifle through.
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Not absolutely sure [member=24672]harmony[/member] that I can visualize your thoughts/design, but sounds sound !
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Sweet potatoes apparently turn to cyanide in their gut and kill them fairly quickly and less painfully than 'commercial poison' and are also non-lethal to other species so no risk to others from poisoned rats. I guess if you bait the trap with sweet potato... Chocolate is also poisonous to them. Google 'what not to feed my pet rat' for ideas...
Well, that's definitely put me off sweet potatoes - not that I liked them much anyway.
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Seems a bit cruel to starve them to death though, since that is eventually what would happen?
Would they? I didn't know that. I thought rats ate anything so would easily find food there
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Rats are fairly omnivorous yes, but they are also a species which is ultra cautious about new things. So chucking one out into a completely unknown environment, with no friends, would be, at the very least, very stressful for them, and yes, they might possibly starve as they would be reticent to try new foods - and it would all be new to them!
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I shoot them in my live trap or some times they escape and the dogs get them , but my mate pops the trap in a card bored box with a 3inch hole in it pops the exhaust from his 4x4 in the hole wait a few minutes and the rat just falls asleep
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Rats are fairly omnivorous yes, but they are also a species which is ultra cautious about new things. So chucking one out into a completely unknown environment, with no friends, would be, at the very least, very stressful for them, and yes, they might possibly starve as they would be reticent to try new foods - and it would all be new to them!
If the option considered would be to release them miles from nowhere (where rats are not normally in residence), my primary concern would be that those rats would find a new food source/way to survive and upset the ecology of an otherwise rat-free environment ! Don't do it - adapt your traps to enable euthanizing them and/or get yourself a few Jack Russells. Other good ratter breeds available, hopefully at a modest purchase price - especially "rescues".
(That said, I won't tell you the mind-numbing price I've been told a friend of a friend paid for a 'pet' pedigree miniature Dachshund recently because it makes me angry just thinking about it especially when it encourages amateurs to breed pure or cross-breeds just for the very many Łk they might make from each litter !!)
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Sweet potatoes apparently turn to cyanide in their gut and kill them fairly quickly and less painfully than 'commercial poison' and are also non-lethal to other species so no risk to others from poisoned rats. I guess if you bait the trap with sweet potato... Chocolate is also poisonous to them. Google 'what not to feed my pet rat' for ideas...
Well, that's definitely put me off sweet potatoes - not that I liked them much anyway.
Me neither but I've been buying some quite large ones recently... I notice you didn't say it was enough to put you off chocolate!!!
I do quite like chocolate, but I could definitely live without it if required !
A short funny story (forgive me if I've related it ont forum before): A new gardening client - "May I give your little dog a biscuit ?" Since she had a dog herself I, of course, said "Yes". Breaking off from my gardening moments later I turned around & found my little Pap' scoffing on 2 chocolate digestives !! Luckily, she proved not to be allergic to chocolate (which I had avoided giving her up to then). I still don't give either of my dogs chocolate though.
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we bait our mousetraps with chocolate .....
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we bait our mousetraps with chocolate .....
We tried chocolate and our rats weren't interested (like me - I hate the stuff); we tried Mars bars - nope; we tried cheese - no, don't eat that (unlike me, I love it); we tried peanut butter - nope (I love that too); so we couldn't think of anything else and just put grain on - they love that and we catch several. Perhaps they're just not suspicious of grain.
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The rats around here are connoisseurs of goat droppings.... but so far I have stopped short of baiting the traps with it, given how much is in the pens anyway...
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The rats around here are connoisseurs of goat droppings.... but so far I have stopped short of baiting the traps with it, given how much is in the pens anyway...
:roflanim:
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The rats around here are connoisseurs of goat droppings.... but so far I have stopped short of baiting the traps with it, given how much is in the pens anyway...
Now that's REALLY interesting because yesterday I found a whole pile of goat droppings behind the feed bins, along with a dead rat (I assumed the cats had caught it). I couldn't for the life of me work out how the goat had got in there to "dump" (quite literally) them. I wonder if they're collecting a stash for some reason?! And if so why, given that there's plenty of it around!
:thinking:
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The rats around here are connoisseurs of goat droppings.... but so far I have stopped short of baiting the traps with it, given how much is in the pens anyway...
Wait... I see a diversification business there... Making and selling goat droppings as rat bait...
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In Orinlooper fashion; are goat droppings squeezing into ice-cube moulds and frozen for 'freshness' better than dried goat droppings. Anyone tempted to experiment ?! :)
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we bait our mousetraps with chocolate .....
You might just trap a chocoholic's hand that way.
I had a friend who used to trap mink in humane traps and then drown them.
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I shoot them in my live trap or some times they escape and the dogs get them , but my mate pops the trap in a card bored box with a 3inch hole in it pops the exhaust from his 4x4 in the hole wait a few minutes and the rat just falls asleep
Any chance [member=27335]vfr400boy[/member] you could fiddle with your avatar photo so that you and your doggie are the right way up ?! Every time I see your avatar pic I just cannot stop myself bending my head sideways - I really can't help it and it would be great if you could put me out of my neck-twisting misery! :D :D
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We've had good success with peanut butter. However, we smeared it around their usual runs, not in the traps first, so they knew the scent / taste of it. We also left the traps baited but not set, to encourage them to lose their fear of them.
BTW, this is the type of trap we have:
(https://bestpestcontroll.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/live-animal-two-door-mouse-cage-trap.jpg)
I really like the double door setup - that makes it look like a tunnel rather than a dead end, which I think helps the rats to lose their fear of it. I doubt we'll clear them all out like this, but the less poison we have to use eventually, the better.
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Have you decided your best disposal method then?
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I shoot them in my live trap or some times they escape and the dogs get them , but my mate pops the trap in a card bored box with a 3inch hole in it pops the exhaust from his 4x4 in the hole wait a few minutes and the rat just falls asleep
Any chance [member=27335]vfr400boy[/member] you could fiddle with your avatar photo so that you and your doggie are the right way up ?! Every time I see your avatar pic I just cannot stop myself bending my head sideways - I really can't help it and it would be great if you could put me out of my neck-twisting misery! :D :D
Here you are - now you'll recognise it and not need to look at the avatar :roflanim: :roflanim:
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....and before someone thinks gosh that's a good idea, it's every bit as nasty as the plaster of paris murder.
My own little despatcher is currently showing his keenness by pouncing on my finger and sinking his baby teeth in, then shaking his teddy to death :dog: :thumbsup: Watch out rats :tired:
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My own little despatcher is currently showing his keenness by pouncing on my finger and sinking his baby teeth in, then shaking his teddy to death :dog: :thumbsup: Watch out rats :tired:
It sounds like my 3 yo son who says he's a baby wolf :roflanim:
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....and before someone thinks gosh that's a good idea, it's every bit as nasty as the plaster of paris murder.
My own little despatcher is currently showing his keenness by pouncing on my finger and sinking his baby teeth in, then shaking his teddy to death :dog: :thumbsup: Watch out rats :tired:
Is that humane? I've watched one of my dogs catch a rat, play with it for five minutes before killing it. I was yelling for her to stop but the killing instinct had kicked in. I've seen my cat doing the same thing.
I'm not saying dogs and cats shouldn't be allowed to catch and kill vermin but is it any less inhumane?
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....and before someone thinks gosh that's a good idea, it's every bit as nasty as the plaster of paris murder.
My own little despatcher is currently showing his keenness by pouncing on my finger and sinking his baby teeth in, then shaking his teddy to death :dog: :thumbsup: Watch out rats :tired:
Is that humane? I've watched one of my dogs catch a rat, play with it for five minutes before killing it. I was yelling for her to stop but the killing instinct had kicked in. I've seen my cat doing the same thing.
I'm not saying dogs and cats shouldn't be allowed to catch and kill vermin but is it any less inhumane?
A true ratter will catch, flip and kill a rat instantly. The instinct is either there or it isn't. My first ratter Lucy, who was a Patterdale x Cairn terrier from working ratting stock killed her first rat when it was bigger than she was and she was not much older than my new pup. She killed it instantly as above, one flip, landing over her nose, broken back and done. A dog which plays with it's prey like a cat would is not a ratter, just a dog who kills rats but not by the most effective route.
I think there are two ways to kill rats, if they must be killed (which isn't always without question the case). The first is to shoot them, first shot. The second is with a good ratter, first flip.
So yes, I think using genuine ratters is a humane way to kill rats. I searched hard for this pup and he's shaping up fine for his future job :dog:
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....and before someone thinks gosh that's a good idea, it's every bit as nasty as the plaster of paris murder.
Agreed, that's why I said I wasn't advocating it. Whilst I am willing to kill them, I want the death to be as humane and natural as possible.
I'm somewhat surprised that drowning isn't in that category as, having had a couple of friends who "drowned" as children and were 'brought back', I've always understood drowning to be a calm way to go after the initial thrashing about bit.... and no, my friends didn't know each other and haven't constructed the story between them. Both have told me that after they stopped fighting for breath and relaxed into the water, it was a serene "end". They weren't so complimentary about the 'bringing around' process although I'm sure both were glad to have survived.
It's for that reason alone that I raised the query... and I agree plaster of Paris is another nasty way to go... so why are some methods (that let's face it are fairly natural) illegal; whilst others, which are downright cruel apparently not?
I have seen rats die in the water buckets - which were put out for the livestock not the rats. I've also seen rats get into a bag of sugar beet and die from the results (again, not deliberately put out for them but someone hadn't thought to put it away in the feed bin when they got back from the feed store and the rat beat them to it later the same day).
I guess you could ask the question of how humane the sweet potato option is but - they choose to eat something that has been put out (and which the hens also peck at) and my understanding is that it turns to cyanide in their stomachs and kills them fairly quickly whilst being innocuous to other species including those that may prey on the dead rats... if that's the case, it has to be better than commercial poisons doesn't it?
I don't care if the cats scare them away or catch and kill - either is fine providing they're not here ruining the hay and bringing disease to my livestock, and potentially threatening the safety of the barn by chewing electrics etc.
Yes I know you weren't advocating it, I was just reinforcing that :)
I tend to think that if things are done as they would be done in nature with no human influence then that's ok, although it's sometimes quite gruesome - think lions killing a buffalo and starting to open and eat its gut while it's still alive. It's not logical is it, just maybe that humans should know better than to be heedlessly cruel when they can use their intelligence and ingenuity to find a better way.
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I was hoping my little mongrel would be a good vermin dispatcher (some good terrier genes in him amongst the poodles). Alas, he likes to play with rather than instantly dispatch which is quite distressing if he has captured a baby rabbit or field vole. He gets there in the end, but ....
I once read that dogs learn to dispatch their captured prey quicker if they have ever been bitten by their prey during a "chase".
Any thoughts/experiences on that ??
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Yep to your last sentence.
Most folks who work terriers work them in teams. Young dogs will catch a rat and both grab it, the rat will bite the one that's at the head end, and they learn to dispatch instantly as a result.