[GBov]

Some people have success with a dry plaster mixed with hot chocolate powder, small amounts into plastic baggies, and poked into runs.  The plaster activates with the stomach liquids and sets hard.  A horrible way to die but nothing else that eats the dead rat will die of it, like they can/will after eating a poisoned rat.

Live traps work sometimes, then either drown or bag up/whack the rat.

A bucket trap is always fun but I usually only catch young rats that way.  28 in one week at my mum's last house.  The best set up I had was a metal dust bin with about 12 inches of water in it and a 15 inch flower pot upside down in the middle.  I fed the rats on the pot for about a week and then put a smooth metal bowl over the pot with a few grains of food on it.  They would jump in and slip right into the water.  To me a better way to die than poison or plaster.

I have heard - not tried yet - that, if you can get your car to where rats are digging in and living, take a hose from the exhaust pipe and shove it well into the rat tunnels.  Let the car run for a good long time for the gasses to build up nicely under or in the shed or compost heap.  First remove all livestock to safety and BE CAREFUL, carbon monoxide is dangerous!

Anywhere you stand you are less than 20 feet from a rat, I remember reading that somewhere.  Not sure if it's true but dang, it sure feels like it!

Inch by half-inch, 16 gauge cage wire is what I use to make my cages, hutches, night quarters.  Just somewhere to be safe at night for chickens and for the rabbits to be totally out of reach of rats, and where they can't reach baby bunnies to carry them away to eat later.  Even so, I have had does make a nest where rats could reach the underside of the cage and pull all the bedding away from the babies and start to eat them piecemeal through the wire.

Yeah, I hate rats! 

[Fleecewife]

Some people have success with a dry plaster mixed with hot chocolate powder, small amounts into plastic baggies, and poked into runs.  The plaster activates with the stomach liquids and sets hard.  A horrible way to die but nothing else that eats the dead rat will die of it, like they can/will after eating a poisoned rat.

Oh please don't do this.  I too detest having rats around because of the damage and disease they can cause, but there is NO excuse for such out and out cruelty.  Rats are highly intelligent creatures.  There is no doubt that rats can feel fear and pain every bit as much as humans can and this must be an AGONISING way to die.  I repeat, please don't do this.

[GBov]

Some people have success with a dry plaster mixed with hot chocolate powder, small amounts into plastic baggies, and poked into runs.  The plaster activates with the stomach liquids and sets hard.  A horrible way to die but nothing else that eats the dead rat will die of it, like they can/will after eating a poisoned rat.

Oh please don't do this.  I too detest having rats around because of the damage and disease they can cause, but there is NO excuse for such out and out cruelty.  Rats are highly intelligent creatures.  There is no doubt that rats can feel fear and pain every bit as much as humans can and this must be an AGONISING way to die.  I repeat, please don't do this.

I am not pushing this method of control but from having watched rats die from poison, this at least would be faster and not kill any cats/foxes/birds of prey that ate the body, the way poisoned rats do.

We almost lost a cat to a poisoned rat.

Nothing will get rid of every rat, ever.

I speculated once online about birth control as a method of reducing the population, if the females make no pups, rats don't live long but someone went for me so aggressively for even suggesting it that I never went there again.  A looooong time ago now that was.

Electric traps seem to work well for some people and not at all for others.

[Fleecewife]

I think birth control is a wonderful idea, I've no problem with that at all.  What was your aggressive person's reasoning that it was wrong?


Truly I'm not being in any way aggressive about your mention of the plaster method, I just want to point out that it is actively cruel because it causes so much pain.  I agree that some poisons may also be painful, and we should be aware of that before choosing to use them, but I don't think that the use of Warfarin-type bait which causes bleeding is painful.  I once very nearly bled to death myself and it wasn't painful at all, just like falling asleep - it was also caused by Warfarin!


We are stumped here with our overdose of rats, which seem to arrive in waves from a neighbouring farm, where they are removing some buildings, presumably previously the rats homes.

[GBov]

I think birth control is a wonderful idea, I've no problem with that at all.  What was your aggressive person's reasoning that it was wrong?


Truly I'm not being in any way aggressive about your mention of the plaster method, I just want to point out that it is actively cruel because it causes so much pain.  I agree that some poisons may also be painful, and we should be aware of that before choosing to use them, but I don't think that the use of Warfarin-type bait which causes bleeding is painful.  I once very nearly bled to death myself and it wasn't painful at all, just like falling asleep - it was also caused by Warfarin!


We are stumped here with our overdose of rats, which seem to arrive in waves from a neighbouring farm, where they are removing some buildings, presumably previously the rats homes.

They said it would get into the water systems and cause all kinds of problems with endangered species.  There was also quite a bit of effing and blinding and, well, you know the kind of thing.

It seems as safe as anything else to me and should work pretty well. 

Never have liked the plaster idea but poison is so dangerous to wildlife, second hand, as it were.  Wouldn't it be lovely if one could get a small, killer robot to be a rat killer?  Now THAT is a product I would buy, a 24/7 rat killer.

I mainly try to have rat proof cages and housing for my animal's safety, keep the food in rat-proof containers, and keep things as tidy as possible.  Not because it deters or drops the numbers at all but so I don't get blamed for there being rats!  It makes me mental to be blamed for a problem that is ever-present.

There are always rats!

In Florida, I would find stashes of baby bird bones stuffed into the roofing on my rabbit cages.  The death those poor birds suffered being eaten alive.....

Just horrible.

I don't know if it is better than the other options but the rats in the water trap didn't seem to suffer much, they just swam a bit, got cold and sank.  But even killing so many didn't make a dent in the problem.

Shame the UK has no nice big rat snakes, now those are good for getting rid of rats! 

Nice to know that bleeding out is not too bad, I can add it to my friend telling me all about when she drowned and how lovely it was.  Living and learning, I love it.

[Fleecewife]

Clearly the delivery of a birth control drug to rats would have to be targeted very caefully, and would have to take into account the high intelligence of rats, and their natural aversion to being tricked.  Nano bots could be the answer, and perhaps once we have passed the worst of this human virus then the researchers might settle on rats as suitable subjects for interest.
The argument that hormones would get into the water system is all too true, but it's not restricted to rats - human birth control hormones are found throughout the river systems of the UK and probably throughout the world, and do affect aquatic life unnacceptably.  All pollution is one of the factors endangering the future of life on Earth, so invention just has to take that into account and find ways to avoid it.
It is horrible to be attacked by invisible internet users, who seem to find it OK to act towards other users in such aggressive and shameful ways.  Don't let it stop you saying what you think though.


Actually I'm quite pleased that Britain doesn't have nice big rat snakes - I think I might rather have the rats 

[GBov]

Thank you Fleecewife, you are nice!  I learned long ago to only go where I can find the help I need and that is an open ideas place.

This is one, so helpful and, now I have gone from the subtropics to Cumbria, help is sometimes needed.

Ratsnakes not your thing?  I had a big one get into a cage, through an open J-feeder, with a doe and her 10 eight-week-old kits that was one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

Rabbits say hello by bumping their foreheads against the face of who they are saying hi to so each one of the kits was bouncing up and face bumping the snake's nose while it was trying to figure out who to eat in the milling mass and every time it drew a bead on a target another rabbit was in its face saying BUMP HI!

I just lifted the snake out of the scrum and put it on the top of the cage roof so it could find somewhere to calm down. 

Given full access to unlimited rabbit and chicken food, rats will still choose to carry off baby rabbits as a superior source of protein.

[Fleecewife]

That's a lovely tale - who would imagine friendly bumping rabbits could reduce a snake to total confusion.   I know snakes are not really so bad, and I discovered when I was young that big scary spiders were far more scared of me than I was of them, after watching a big one on our kitchen floor, haring off, banked over like a bike at the races, all 8 feet scrabbling frantically.  I have lots of spiders in my house, far nicer than the flies they catch for us.


Not only will rats take your baby rabbits but also chicks and ducklings, even pulling them down through wire mesh covering the floor. My little, late terrier Lucy got that particular big momma rat when she was just a tiny puppy, almost smaller than the rat - flip, crack, dead rat.  She was the best