Vermin advice please.

[Angeldon]

Trouble is you get rid of one and another will take its place. I've been gardening for nearly 40 years and have had the odd encounter but that's one of the few downsides of working outdoors. Providing you don't store stuff that they are attracted to such as bird or dog food and only put veg matter in the compost bin they won't cause you a problem.

[mrjarraman]

So would you advise not to put eggshells in compost. Maybe this is my problem.

[Babru]

I wouldn't have thought eggshells would be all that tasty to rats? I've been putting them in mine so far.

[Nicos]

Rats will eat almost anything!

As students we had rats in our attic and they would somehow get into the bathroom during the night and eat the soap

We put egg shells in our compost, but tbh if you have a major rat problem then I would avoid putting them in - they are after all a superb source of calcium-particularly for a pregnant/lactating rat.
Just keep turning your compost-they really do hate being disturbed.

I'm less stressed about having rats around me these days. They seem to be part of country life.
'They' say if you have rats then they keep down the mouse numbers, and in the town you're never more than 6 feet away from a rat.
Not so sure about the second 'fact' but between Hibou and the rats, we hardly have any mice. Mostly voles in the garden!

[DannyK]

It's easy to rid the heap of rats. Just get rid of the slugs, snails, and worms!

I've not seen any slow worms for a few years. I wonder if the rats are attacking them.

Slugs seem to be eating the poison , perhaps they are mistaking them for large pellets.

[Starch]

Used to be a problem when we kept chickens on the allotment as they used eat the corn, on several occasions I opened the back of the chicken tractor to feed them and they ran up my arm and down my back to escape. I went up one night with my wife and she asked why I made a lot of noise on my way in, I told her it was to frighten the rats off before I fed the chickens so after that she stayed in the car. If it gets too obvious and they become a problem I put pasta based poison in narrow tubes under bricks so pets and birds can't get at it.

[cptncrackoff]

Burnie knows.. you just cant buy decent rat poison anymore. Perhaps this is a good thing.. maybe not.

If you have a friendly farmer they can still buy and site rat bait if they are part of the 'red tractor' assurance scheme or have a certificate.

If not and it's just a compost bin.. water it, water it a lot, very regularly.. the rats will leave!

[Mark_Riga]

Logunner suggested a mixture that should work particularly if other food is scarce:
'Baking powder, hot chocolate powder, flour and peanut butter' mixed in the ratios given

https://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gr...ml#post1681636

[Nicos]

*mod note....
I think you need to consider that if that method ^^^^^^ isn't gusrenteed to work you could be inflicting a lot of pain on another living creature -vermin or not.
It's a bit of a grey area using homemade products.
Unfortunatly , as a forum, we can't condone this potential cruelty on wildlife....
Sorry