[Fleecewife]

Well said Plantoid

[northfifeduckling]

when I googled it after Blonde's recommendation I found that Plaster of Paris seems quite popular in Australia - other countries, other laws and probably other sensitivities....

[SallyintNorth]

when I googled it after Blonde's recommendation I found that Plaster of Paris seems quite popular in Australia - other countries, other laws and probably other sensitivities....

To be fair - there are at least two threads on here all about how to kill rats using it.

I didn't know Warfarin would be painless, Fleecewife, so now I feel much better about using commercial poisons.  I do still worry about collateral damage though - both from birds of prey, foxes, cats and dogs eating poisoned rats and from dogs, cats, foxes, hedgehogs, badgers, squirrels, chickens etc, eating the bait itself after the rats have pulled the bait packets out from the hiding place.  (Which is why I had been reading the using plaster of paris to kill rats threads - at least the collateral damage would be less.)

Occasionally my collie dogs have blue poo - have they ingested rat bait?  (And if not, what is going on there?!)

Finally, has anyone found as much success using the nipper-type trap for rats as we mostly all seem to do using them to catch mice?  And if so, is peanut butter still the best bait?

[northfifeduckling]

we tried anything under the sun to catch rats without much success, only a few young ones got into the humane traps. In the end it's not fair driving them round the country where they will eventually find another human abode, so it's been poison for years in the house. Because mice become slow when they have ingested it the cat is not interested. But maybe your dogs have eaten one, don't know if you have neighbours who put poison out against rodents? The blue poo would suggsts that they have...According to Environmental Health, watch out for any bleeding from mouth, nose or other places, then you have to take your dog to the vet immediately to get an antidote!

[Plantoid]

Vitamin K is usually given by injection if you suspect your dog has eaten it .. blue slug bait also turns pooch poop blue .

 I used to farm small mammals in big numbers and  as part of the planning exercise I had to educate myself about terminating rats , mice and any escapees etc.
 I got hold of a free I C I booklet from our agri merchant about rodent control . I also picked up  books off the internet and purchased books from the likes of Blackwell Scientific .

Couple all this with a few weeks with a locally registered pest control operative he taught me control ....I taught him bees
 
 I'd often seen bait bags dragged out of field drains or pipes specifically placed to hold such bait bags.

 I initially purchased bagged up doses , cut the bags open then carefully poured the bait down an inverted capital letter Tee  made from 3 inch rain drain pipe which I some times capped off with the bottom end of an inverted  cut off pop bottle as like as not . The T was almost equal in leg length of 3 feet
 This inverted T was secured to a wall or a rat run along a fence line ...

Now it's no use just bunging the baited T's anywhere  best place is external corners , internal corners close to a possible point of entry where there has /is cover for the rat to hurridly move to and from .

Once you get the stations set up and running carry on feeding each station till yo notice  nothing is being eaten and then once a month empty the t and refill with a fresh dose of posion this is to pick off  any new arrivals .

 Once the stations are up and running it's got to be that you start clearing the rubbish /cover close to buildings and keep the grass /weeds shorter .... over a few months slowly expand this clear area then move some of the T's to the preimeter of the cleared area ..again  pay particular attention to likely points of entry

 I asked our resident  vet about out cats and dogs eating  posioned animals  her reply was the she'd not knowingly treated any cat or dog  because of them consuming a poisoned creature.  My thoughts about that are that  when a rat gets a fill of the posion it will take a few hours for it to take effect so the vermin will still be /fit and able to run back to it's hole . Once in it's hole the posion takes effect it goes into a coma and it either bleeds internally to the point of heart attack or it dies of hypothermia a few hours later without normally coming back out its hole so ineffect it dies underground etc.

 That said I did  see our moggy coming up from the pig farm 1/2 a mile away with a massive rat about 24 inches from nose to tail tip which had open sores along its tail  ( Oscar weighed 11 pounds which was all muscle , he was a monster of a moggy )  .

 Oscar would not eat rats , he'd  just bring the sodding things in through the cat flap into the sun lounge .
 We did feed Oscar two decent  meals a day so he was perhaps less prone to hunt to kill and eat .
 
Oscar lived till he was 15 years old , eight years after we sold up the farm , so I doubt any rat posion was consumed second hand so to speak .

 Same sort of thing with Hazel my gun dog , she lived an extra six years after we moved away from the farm

[northfifeduckling]

 I asked our resident  vet about out cats and dogs eating  posioned animals  her reply was the she'd not knowingly treated any cat or dog  because of them consuming a poisoned creature.  My thoughts about that are that  when a rat gets a fill of the posion it will take a few hours for it to take effect so the vermin will still be /fit and able to run back to it's hole . Once in it's hole the posion takes effect it goes into a coma and it either bleeds internally to the point of heart attack or it dies of hypothermia a few hours later without normally coming back out its hole so ineffect it dies underground etc.

If they live in the house it can be different in that they don't always make it to the hole. We've had a few mice doing a weird slow dance just before they died over the years but the cat just was not interested in those. Maybe they are too slow, maybe it's that they smell different. Outdoors chickens would eat them though, they even eat the dead mice they sometimes find in the ducks' water bowls in the morning before I can get to them. 

[Blonde]

 I asked our resident  vet about out cats and dogs eating  posioned animals  her reply was the she'd not knowingly treated any cat or dog  because of them consuming a poisoned creature.  My thoughts about that are that  when a rat gets a fill of the posion it will take a few hours for it to take effect so the vermin will still be /fit and able to run back to it's hole . Once in it's hole the posion takes effect it goes into a coma and it either bleeds internally to the point of heart attack or it dies of hypothermia a few hours later without normally coming back out its hole so ineffect it dies underground etc.

If  you want to keep the mice down with cats you have to keep the cats a little hungry.  dont leave biscuits out for them or meat, just feed them at meal times and keep fresh water up to them.  Put a dirt box in or a a cat flap and watch the mice disappear from the house and the sheds.  We have field mice due to being on farm not the city mice.  Ours are brown not grey 

If they live in the house it can be different in that they don't always make it to the hole. We've had a few mice doing a weird slow dance just before they died over the years but the cat just was not interested in those. Maybe they are too slow, maybe it's that they smell different. Outdoors chickens would eat them though, they even eat the dead mice they sometimes find in the ducks' water bowls in the morning before I can get to them. 

[SallyintNorth]

We've had a few mice doing a weird slow dance just before they died over the years

Creatures I have seen executing a weird slow dance this year include a hedgehog and a stoat.

I really wish there was a viable alternative to poison; can't we give them a contraceptive in their bait or something?  The odd rat wouldn't be a problem, it's the way they breed that causes the problem.

[Plantoid]

The rats on contaceptive would still cause damage and spread disease Sally , plus  because of the rats habits  of travelling around it would not belong before the rats developed a resistance to the contraceptive and thrived and bred , to produce the mother  of all super rat strains , just like the bacteriac resistance subject you posted.

[robert waddell]

they only breed if there are ample supplies of food to sustain them in there vicinity   by removing the availability of food  you make them desperate for food easier to kill
on the poison bit i was under the impression that poisoned rats/mice can kill owls

[JEP]

have any of you seen or heard the dutch way to get rid of rat
they get 7 live rats in a cage till only one left alive and all they others  eaten
then they let it go and it eats all the rats it finds then