UKC

The other day I noticed my springer spaniel being very 'guarded' with something in the garden.  This is usually a piece of cardboard or sock he has stolen.  This time it was a rat he had killed. Last night I gave a last look out of the window and noticed another rat scurrying about the front garden.  No surprise really, they are building millions of houses on what was once farmland and playing fields close by so this, combined with winter, will force them out.  There is evidence of tunnelling under my shed so I've declared war.

Anyone dealt with similar and tips?  I'm not squeamish and OK resorting to poison.  

Shotgun?

You can get poison boxes which lock so doggo can't get in to the poison. Worth checking the garden carefully for carcasses though as you don't want the dog eating a poisoned carcass. 

Rats like cover, so minimise areas with plenty of protection. Block up the hole under the shed and try to make sure you don't have nice sheltered runs for them (hedges, behind shed etc).

Make sure there is no bird food or similar that they can get to. If you feed birds, do it from the feeders which you can hang on metal poles.

Keep an eye on the house. Rats dig and so can enter the house through a hole into the subfloor and then they have a lovely network of cavity walls and the loft available to them. Pre-emptive snap traps and poison under the floor wherever you can get access might not be a bad plan and check fairly regularly. 

We inherited a long standing rat problem in our house!

Our rat was collecting snails, taking them to a dumpy bag of logs and eating them in there,  Over a hundred snail shells I reckon.  With the bag removed and a general tidy up he soon went away.

Since my eyesight is going, so the air rifle wasn't being effective, we bought some Roshield rat traps. A bit like gm described  in that they are enclosed, they will still catch mice, I considered that a bonus. Sounds like you have a bigger problem than we did, the farm is at the opposite end of the village, those closer had to resort to poison.   

They are everywhere of course, but it is a nuisance when they start making themselves known.  I've had success with disrupting their runs - apparently they are very nervous of such changes as it signals that they have been discovered.  Just putting a brick across the path they used through a flower bed to the bird feeder worked to stop them, so I have done similar things elsewhere to unsettle their environment.  That, coupled with the cat's ability to kill them, seems to keep them away.

Mines.

May seem a little OTT but you can't be too careful.

Vermin Fawlty,  vermin.....

All:  

Plan A:  My shed is kinda fenced off (long story, but when my dog was a pup he ate a big stone (the surrounding area is gravelled) and could have died) and a bit of a dump so I will tidy up and allowing the dog to make his presence known. for a couple of days  I will then check the two holes to see if they are still in use.

Plan B:  if still evidence of rats, poison trap.

Few years back we noticed a rat carrying some young to its nest under the shed.  The dog went totally ballistic and we never saw the rat again (frightened it off I guess).  In nicer weather he will sit in the garden all hours, he would sleep there given a chance (he would in bad weather if we let him) and his presence must deter them.

GM's advice is all good although the pest control man told me the plastic box bautvtrsps weren't very effective.

Chuck some poison down the holes under your shed then block them up.

Do the same for any other holes or cents you have around your property. Taking the dog for a daily walk about might also help frighten them off.

Be sure to put traps/poison in something with a smallish entry hole so you can be sure you won't be murdering birds or hedgehogs.
Mostly the wisdom seems to be get rid of any food and they'll move out.

Just had a bit of modern warfare with some mice over the christmas period.  Everyone was telling me it could be rats but i was certain mice.  Reckon they have similar habits though.  The reason for them thinking rats was we also live near a new build site and there have been reports of loads of rats.

Anyhow, other than a few scrapes on my scalp from smacking roof joists i have defeated them.  7-10 traps, about 2-3 weeks of setting bait consistantly and disposing of successful traps.  IMO they are creatures of habit.  I managed to work out using the traps and the bait where they were coming from.  Mine were clever mice who could clean all the traps without setting them off (Chocolate spread).  But whenever they set a trap off it was always a line of cleaned traps first so i could follow it back.  Anyhow, i have had all the traps set for 2 weeks now and no further incidents.  I live in a barrett house with paper thin plaster.  You can hear them as soon as they start moving about.  I have just left the traps up there set just in case.

I dont like the idea of poison and them rotting in their nest.  Rather just snap their neck.  Which is all good until one had a mike tyson neck.  I picked the trap up and it wrapped its tail around my fingers.  Thats when i smacked my head on a roof joist

Good luck

In reply to geode:

I’d like to but don’t, partly for this reason. 

Similar battle here although not in the house, fortunately.
Someone nearby has chickens so there's an infinite stream of mice fanning out into the neighbourhood. I tried to be nice at first but there's just too many trying to move in to our log store and eat everything we plant. Also read from various sources including RSPCA that rehoming them is less humane than just using snap traps.
My strategy was to live-trap a couple first to make sure it was what I thought it was, then put out traps housed in various pots from the recycling. That serves to a) keep the birds and hedgehogs off and b) keep the traps out of the weather. I later discovered you need to put copper tape round the hole to c) stop the traps becoming slug feeding stations.

Just been to my work and saw a bloody rat in the car park! First in over five years! I’m quite close to the river Douglas where they’ve built a flood/dam scheme so could have flooded them out. 
Thats me that is...
 

If you had an enclosed area then a few terriers would be handy.

We used a killing trap in a box when we had rats in our garden. They are available on Ebay

We did not want to use poison because a rat on the way out might be eaten by a cat or fox.

It needs to sited carefully to stop other animal sticking a foot in and getting caught but we had no problems.

In our garden the adult rats were too wary to get caught but we caught seven young.

At the time we put out fat balls/cakes for the birds. These were attractive to the squirrels and they destroyed the feeders and the fat fell to the ground. We think, but obviously don't know for sure, that the fat was attracting/attractive to the rats - a good bit of food that could be carried off and consumed somewhere safe.

Since we stopped using fat balls and since the young were caught we haven't seen any rats - fingers crossed.

As already mentioned sorting out there refuges is a good idea. I have read rats are sensitive to disturbance(though I reckon most wild animals are)

Good luck

Dave

Yep the modern phenomonon of people keeping chickens in domestic dwellings is a real headfcuk for me, especially in bloody housing estates.

How many have you caught?  Do you reuse the trap (I havent got the balls to remove a dead mouse from a trap)

Averaging about 1 or 2 a day, with no end in sight. They just keep coming.
Yes, I reuse the traps. I'd be skint if I didn't. Got some really good ones that make it super easy just to tip them out and reset without really touching them. Still wear gloves though because they seem to manage to piss on things they haven't even been near.
I bought some cheap knock-offs of a similar design first but they turned out to be feeding stations. The ones in the link are awesome.

https://www.ffx.co.uk/product/Get/Pest-Stop-Prcpsspt-5014055001047-Sure-Set...

Lurpak spreadable (other brands available) pots, laid on their long side with a hole cut in the end are perfect housings for these.

(Sorry for the hijack OP, not really gonna work for rats, but principle is probably the same.)

Yes they were similar ones to those recommended to me when i complained about my super mice being able to clean 7 traps of chocolate spread.  The ones you have have a plate which the mouse has to step on to reach the bait.  Mine are just the tom and jerry style.  

OMG 1 or 2 per day would drive me insane.  

It's not so bad since the sustained trapping campaign has driven them back to the far end of the garden. Haven't caught one up near the house for a while now. As long as it stays that way I can live with it. See how things go as it warms up though. We'll be planting seeds and they'll be more active so I might have to step it up.

Edit: re those traps - if you make them crawl through a little hole in a lurpak tub straight onto the trigger they don't really get a chance to do anything clever. But yeah, only those exact ones really work. All the other ones that are *like* them are a bit crap. I found with all the other makes I had to half-press the trigger after I'd set them to make it more sensitive.

I found this quite interesting when it popped up in my FB feed last week (warning, not for squeamish) youtube.com/watch?v=r98aCvZ-7l8&

We had rats in the back garden last summer, we'd see them come out at teatime. I got a couple of snaptraps and would put them out after tea where we saw them wandering (perimeters mainly) and take them in at dusk to avoid catching hedgehogs unless I heard them go off earlier.  I'd catch a rat about 50% of the time they were set off.

They go down the beaches here at night at low tide and flick limpets off the rocks with their teeth before returning to the beachhead to eat them - in the cool of the night limpets hang off the rocks instead of clamping down hard like they do in the day.  We find piles of limpets shells created in this way.  I've also seen one digging up sandeels buried in the sand at low tide, that was seriously eye-opening.

We had a few visiting under the bird feeders when we moved into our house a couple of years ago. not surprising as we live by a stream. Anyway some well hidden poison took care of a few and the ones that were a bit dopey i shot with the air rifle. After that the cat took care of any youngsters that came to visit 

A few months ago I had some large rodent in the loft. I do not know if it was a rat or a squirrel, never managed to catch it in the act and their footprints look pretty much the same. I put down traps and poison. Whatever it was it ate or otherwise transported out of the loft 9 whole sachets of poison...!

Best vid ive seen on UYC makes my efforts with an air rifle tame even at 30m

We've had a problem with rodents at the rental property we're in on Speyside - a converted farm steading surrounded by fields.  We have dogs, our neighbours have cats so poison wasn't really an option - I also once worked in a building where a rat died under the floor and stank the place out in summer and didn't want a repeat. Rats were burrowing under the floor in the house and we could hear them in the wall cavity. Our landlord told us as the problem "wasn't structural" it was ours to deal with. Going out at night and there would be 4 or 5 of them on the bird table. Firstly, we removed the bird feeders overnight. Simply blocking / refilling the hole was useless - they'd just dig their way through. What did work was pumping in some aerosol foam, ramming in some steel wool and then using Postcrete to cap the holes. Might take a couple of attempts as they would dig another burrow, but after a while it stopped. I also noticed a stoat around the property which may have persuaded them to move on. We also had a mice infestation in our attic. We put in a couple of humane traps in the attic and were catching 3-4 a day at times - I'd release them a couple of hundred metres down the road. Eventually, we reached a tally of 56 after a couple of months before it stopped. I suspect they were climbing the walls and coming through the eaves, but don't know where. Been quiet now for a couple of months. 

If you're not squeamish search .177 incinerator. Now this isn't an air rifle. This is a .50 bmg round necked down to .177, described as 'the ultimate varmint cartridge' the bullet exceeds Mach 5 and carries enough kinetic energy to vapourise a rodent or rabbit.  This might solve your problem.

Would one be enough or should I get two?

Had a rat issue a few years ago (got hens) we tried and have successfully been rat free since;

• traps (heavy duty ones) and make sure they are fixed to the ground other wise rat and trap may disappear  
• Shooting (air rifle/Scotland/license required) got a few this way
• remove food, water, shelter they are using
• plug in anti rodent sensors - got three around the house/sheds - seem to be doing the trick
• Poison - if you go down this route be prepared to break into your wall cavities where they will crawl into to die and rot - didn't use poison 

best of luck! 

Hi tried a search and nothing turned up, could you give us a clue please? Cheers

Whatever you do don't set up a camera trap to see how they do it.

I did and found out we had the mouse equivalant of an EOD technician living in the shed:

"Hmmm, looks like a modified Aspatria Farmers Mark 4....I'll just check the tension on that bar...nasty blighter. Not a pressure plate, looks like lifting that bit of plastic to get the peanut butter triggers it. Gently does it...."

The guilt....

Sorry try .177 incinerator cartridge http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2017/04/17-incinerator-ultimate-varmint...

Too add, that link is for the unsqueamish.

Edit also to add that that might be fake news judging by the comments and the article date!

Very funny.  We were getting close to setting up a camera.  We almost decided that we were feeding them up so they were heavy enough to set the trap off.  I ended up doing what someone on here did setting them on the end of the bar to make them more sensitive.  Had a few go off just placing them on the floor

Living in the sticks, I have an ongoing rat problem. My house is built into the hillside with an open sump surrounding the basement providing easy rodent access. 

My solutions are bait traps where there are obvious rat runs and nesting sites, no food stuffs at all in the compost bin bait trap in here also. I refer to the bird food the Mrs puts out as rat attractant, but to no avail. If you find a nest, burn it if you can, this seems to prevent re use.

Friends with land keep outdoor cats to control the rat population.

There are some very cruel and illegal country ways to deal with rats, anecdote tells me they are effective. I could not/would not do it myself and you will have to ask elsewhere about them. 

Deffo fake. The cost of producing the ammunition, let alone rebarreling and chambering a rifle to take it, would put off even the most ardent hillbilly varmint hunter.

One more thing to add, it is worth getting a pro in first time. These guys will identify the runs and nesting sites for you and place bait in appropriate places. After this buy your own traps and bait and follow their lead. 

The council will come out for a fee. However the guy told us they will always come back. 

Bird feeders attract them.

Well its put me off apart from the date   1/4  thanks for the link