Topic: Rats !

[Susiebelle]

Now I know we are always being told we are never more than 6ft away from a rat at any time - but I draw the line at opening my front curtains and finding one looking back at me from the lawn I moved to the back of the house and there it was again on my patio - which means it had shot down the side of the house over the wall and round onto the patio.

Now I know I have always had a 'thing' about these orrible vermin but I seem unable to do anything at present, I keep all my pots and trays at side of house and just can't bring myself to rummage around there and yesterday I was in front garden with garage door open for tools etc but I store my veg in there, now just how easy is it for them to gain entrance there especially when I have the door open!

Called the Council but what else should I do and will this feeling ever go away :'( :'(
!

[markfield rover]

The council do a good job and yes the little swines do go away,you will get your garden back.

[Ellen K]

Sometimes, if you are seeing rats, it is a sign that there is a problem with your drains.

Certainly, our rat problem continued for about a year in spite of poison boxes everywhere but a soon as we realised that the mains foul drain was blocked and got it sorted, our problem disappeared literally overnight.

Not too difficult to lift a few manhole covers to check.  Worth doing if just to rule it out.

[goodlife]

Yes drain problem and/or they've got some food source nearby..is any of your neighbours overly keen of feeding birds..or does somebody keep rabbits or chickens? It doesn't take much to 'send invitations' for rats for them to start hanging around..over spilled bird feeder..bread left for birds etc. Where there is food there is mice and rats..unfortunately..

[Robert_Brenchley]

Or has a nearby rat population been disturbed, by building work or floods, for instance?

[Susiebelle]

Thanks for all your posts.
Well Council contractor came, not too concerned  ::) said it's the two weekly refuge collection (tell us something we don't already know) but also gardeners putting more house hold waste on garden before completely composted.

He kindly checked out my garage (veg. Store) and said nothing to be concerned about.  Advised taking in bird  feeders for a 10 days or so to force any visitor to visit bait for their food source and would be back in two weeks to check thing out.

Still feel very uncomfortable in garden and leaving garage door open in case something gets in without me realising.

[Obelixx]

We live in the country so rats are just a part of the garden.

However, this summer they've been raiding my greenhouse and eating freshly sown seeds as well as raiding the bird food I store in the garage so it was WAR!

I have moved all bird feeding up off the ground and now have only suspended fat ball, peanut and seed feeders.   The garage store is all in buckets with lids and suspended from the ceiling.  I've put out sachets of poison which kills and dehydrates the corpse so no smells.  Some went in the greenhouse, some in the garage and some in a long drainpipe tube near the bird feeders.

This lead to several corpses for me to collect and also one live one caught and killed in the garage by Rasta doggy.    We'll always have rats in the garden and nearby fields but they're not in my imediate space any more so that's OK.

[Unwashed]

What poison did you use Obbelix?  What did you do to search for carcasses?

[Vinlander]

Thanks for all your posts.
Well Council contractor came, not too concerned  ::) said it's the two weekly refuge collection (tell us something we don't already know) but also gardeners putting more house hold waste on garden before completely composted.

I thought there were rats digging in my compost heap but it turned out it was grey squirrels after the worms!

Our rat problem is the railway line and tunnel nearby...

[Obelixx]

Unwashed - I'm afraid I've run out so can't tell you the name till new supplies come into the shop.  I don't go looking for corpses.  They're just lying there in front of the greenhouse or on the path or, once, on the lawn.  I assume there are more corpses lurking under the rhubarb and in the pumpkin patch.  No doubt I'll find them when I clear these up for winter.

[Duke Ellington]

We had rats behind our gararge this summer....and our next door neighbour keeps chickens. They also throw their garden waste and lawn clippings in a heap on their side of the fence adjacent to the back of our gararge. We bought rat poison from B&Q i think it was £9.99 a tub. I used to watch them appear each evening....feed on the poison and run off again. One even ran across the lawn towards the greenhouse. It took about a week and then they were gone. My OH cleared everything we had stored behind the garage  pots,seed trays, logs etc but found no bodies.  Hopefully they ended their days in the neighbours garden ;).

Duke

[Unwashed]

Unwashed - I'm afraid I've run out so can't tell you the name till new supplies come into the shop.  I don't go looking for corpses.  They're just lying there in front of the greenhouse or on the path or, once, on the lawn.  I assume there are more corpses lurking under the rhubarb and in the pumpkin patch.  No doubt I'll find them when I clear these up for winter.

What did the product label say about searching for carcasses?  If the poison was a second generation anticoagulant like bromadiolone then the label would have told you to search for carcasses.  This is because of the problem of secondary poisoning - that's where a carnivore eats the carcass and gets poisoned itself.  It's a big problem for red kites because they eat a lot of rats, but it's a problem too for foxes, owls, stoats, and of course cats and dogs.  Estimate is that half of the red kite population has a near-lethal body load of anticoagulant.

Rats range quite far so you need to search for around 200m around where you've been poisoning, and you need to look every other day because you have to get to the carcass before the predator does.

Failure to follow the product label is an offence under S.16 Food and Environment Protection Act 1985 which is enforced by local authorities and the HSE.

Poison isn't a very effective way of controling rats because it doesn't stop new rats coming in to fill the niche.  You need to remove the food source and open up the environment so predators can get in.

[beanie3]

I also live in the country and have chickens - i am doomed!!!!

We use rat traps.  We don't use poison as we have cats.  The cats also get some which is handy!?!

The rat traps are basically like a mouse trap but bigger and harder - we put some peanut butter in the trap and they set it off - and its instant death (which i prefer - i hate the thought of poison and any animal slowly suffering).  We got ours from ebay - very reasonable.

[Obelixx]

I live in Belgium where Elf and Safety officiousness is almost non existent.  The label simply says to keep away from children and pets.    It's intended for the annual invasion of rodents into house spaces for the winter so the dessicating feature is important.  Nothing like the smell of a rotting dead rodent under the floorboards.   

We have no red kites.    There are buzzards, but they hunt in the fields, not in my garden, and sparrowhawks who like live birds, not dead rats.    If there are corpses in the undergrowth, I 'll find them in teh autumn clear up and deal with them safely but fo rnow they're invisible to me and predators.

[Digeroo]

Rats in the garden you should be so lucky.  I used to work for a company that cleaned drains and when the streets were cleaned they sometime escaped by jumping out of the toilets and we frequently got irate phone calls.

Sometimes it was very difficult to sound sympathetic whille at the same time laughing.  There should be a rat prevention system in your drainage system but some properties these are missing, so if you see someone down your street clearing the drains it it a very good idea to close the loo and put a weight on top.

There used to be a lad who habitually walked round Cheltenham with at least one if not more on his shouder.

How come the Elf and safety is non existant in Belgium I thought it came from the EU in Brussels?

[Mr Smith]

Suisibelle,
                  Don't panic
 and cool down we have had a similar problem to you, it is not your rat but the neighbourhoods  rat, rats travel about so what you have to do is get your self a bait box and a good rat poison from your country store look down the sides of your garden that the rats might be using for a run and put the bait box there, take it from me they will disappear withion a week, :)

[gp.girl]

Well Council contractor came, not too concerned  ::) said it's the two weekly refuge collection (tell us something we don't already know) but also gardeners putting more house hold waste on garden before completely composted.

Amazing all the drains worked, no one fed birds, kept chickens, rabbits or had an untidy garden before we had fortnightly refuse collections  ??? ??? ??? ???

I can't see the connection did the weelky refuse collectors offer extra drain servicing on the side? Perhaps they provided enforcement of byelaws which no one as ever heard of ie the one that says you must not feed birds in a stupid manner that attacts rats....... No didn't think so.

[Obelixx]

Hello Digeroo.

The Brits are well known for over interpreting EU rules, especially by Jobsworths, in every field, not hust H&S.   Belgians and French use more common sense and have weekly markets and shop delicatessen displays which would make a Brit Elf and S inspector have apoplexy and yet there are fewer cases of food poisoning and so on here because customers expect higher standards and bette, fresher food.

The French speaking community of Belgium does now have something called AFSCA which is the French speaking association for safety of the food chain and it was set up about 10 years ago after dioxins got into the farmed poultry food chain and thus into eggs and chicken.   AFSCA imposes rules and issues  licenses for the standards of food items being exported, imported and produced here but they're not yet as numerous or as officious as in the UK.