Tweet
My brother-in-law is a pest controller. He says if you've got a compost bin or a bird table or have chickens you will have rats. Which is great for his business. Fortunately he keeps me supplied with the blue blocks which do seem to get gnawed away quite quickly although I've yet to see a rat, they are obviously about.
-
-
It's their Horrid. Naked. Tails..Uggh!!! We had one in the garage. We put down these Poison Pouches which the rat actually takes away to eat. Take- away death! Two days later finding a corpse the size of a big guinea pig in there had me peeling myself off the rafters.Originally posted by Capsid View PostWhen the Devil gives you Cowpats - make Satanic Compost!
Comment
-
Is that an irrational fear do you think? Everyone thinks squirrels are lovely but they are essentially a rat with a furry tail. Is a tail all it takes? I look on them as big mice.Originally posted by Creemteez View PostComment
-
I certainly don't FEAR rats, but I do dislike them. Pet rats, no problem, the wild ones are vermin and carry loads of diseases. I once had a turkey attacked (a full grown male, he was lame, and the confinement pen I hoped would allow him to recover turned out to be handy for the rats) and he had to be put down due to how much they had chewed him. We used to put out bait (wheat grain usually) on a concrete base where there was a handy place to lurk close enough to shoot them with the air rifles.
Do they still sell the ammonition known as 'Ballistic'? It looked, at first glance, like a normal 'round-point' pellet, but in the 'head' was a small steel ball bearing. My OH killed a lot of rats with those!Flowers come in too many colours to see the world in black-and-white.Comment
-
You see, I'm not convinced by the diseases argument; there are principally only two to concern us (bubonic plague and Weil's disease) which are both very rare.Comment
-
I wouldn't recommend such pellets for despatching vermin. They tend to lack accuracy (and may damage the gun's rifling) and lack of accuracy may send some vermin running home wounded to die slowly - which is not what we want.Originally posted by Hilary B View Post
Use a good quality round-head pellet in .22cal or .25cal such as Air Arms Field or H&N Field & Target Trophy. Those are extremely accurate and will easily stop a rat. People may quibble about spending an extra couple of quid per tin, but if you've bought a decent gun, you should buy decent pellets..Comment
-
What is a good rat poison please. I had one sat on the garden path yesterday, in full daylight. Yuk yuk yuk. I intend to place the poison undercover so that birds can't get to it. We have no other animals that would be able to get to it either.Comment
-
I bought a tin of .22 Bisley Pest Control pellets - very effective.Originally posted by Hilary B View PostComment
-
I think the NHS put the risks and potential dangers into a very good perspectiveOriginally posted by Capsid View Post
Leptospirosis - Overview - Introduction
That is not the sort of risk I want freely wandering around my garden
I need another tin of Pest Control pellets.
If cattle are at risk from rat urine - is that one of the reasons for treating milk before it reaches us?Comment
-
The incidence in the UK of Leptospirosis is 22 per year in a population of 60 million. You are more in danger of driving your car to buy the rat poison. 3000 people a year are killed by driving.
ETA: oops the article quoted says 40 per year but only 3 deaths since 1996.Last edited by Capsid; 04-03-2009, 05:04 PM.Comment
-
You are, of course, right. I don't regard myself as particularly squeamish, but there is just something about those tails and the way they seem to have a life of their own just freaks me out. Having said that, I have held a domestic rat quite happily and it wrapped its tail round my finger for balance - and strangely I wasn't freaked by it. Maybe it is just the thought of wild rats being desease carriers...dunno.Originally posted by Capsid View Post
My husband has a morbid fear of rats and - oddly enough - burnt matches. He says that if he ever came across a rat that had just lit up a Woodbine he'd drop dead!When the Devil gives you Cowpats - make Satanic Compost!Comment
-
We used Ratta - B on our problem. It comes in a "take-away" pouch which other livestock don't take any notice of. The rat takes it off and consumes it "privately" (possibly with a nice Chianti) and two days later suddenly drops deadd in his tracks as on both occaisions we've had to use it, the corpse was found in plain sight. Job done! Good-night Ratty!Originally posted by Sanjo View Post
When the Devil gives you Cowpats - make Satanic Compost!Comment
-
we get them in with the hens - the hen-run is at the moment just sat on hardcore, so the rats find a soft place and tunnel in at night.
Have spring-trapped about half a dozen over the past 2 years, but there was live one in there this morning - tried to whack it but it was in an unreachable corner, so Mr Twinkle rang a neighbour with a gun... he didn't have an airgun so ended up dispatching it with a shotgun. Rat giblets - lovely start to the day.....Last edited by Twinkle; 05-03-2009, 03:58 PM.Comment
-
I've not been too lucky with traps. Now frightened to use corn based bait because mice will move it about and I also have hens. I've found piles of bait behind flower pots so don't want hens to find it too. The blue blocks can be used inside a rat bait station so they are not removable or nailed to a block of wood and covered over with a tile or similar. The rat or mice gnaw away at the poision without moving it.Comment
-
what blocks do you use Frias ?
Could do with a better and more ongoing solution than a shotgun
I know that rats live in my compost heap despite my best efforts - we're very rural and in between a lot of farms so it's kind of inevitable.
Bait stations with fixed bait sound like a good bet as our hens free range and there's all sorts of other wildlife about.Comment
Comment