The Poultry Keeper

Nursie · Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 162

Annie, give the local council a ring and they will send the 'rat man' round to lay some bait.

I discovered rats a few months ago and did exactly that and within a month of him coming every week, I was rat free (well, they weren't visible anyway!)

The good thing is with the professionals is that they can use much stronger bait than we can buy over the counter and they know exactly where to lay the bait for optimum effect. My rat man is a really nice guy and although he cannot come free of charge any more, he pops by every now and then and swaps industrial strength bait for a dozen eggs!!

The thing to remember though is to keep up the baiting even when you see no evidence of them. As Knobby says, you might not see them, but they are still around! Shocked

sasha.p · Joined: 04 Sep 2005 Posts: 499 Location: gwent

we had a rat problem and this was before we even had the chooks i used to feed wild birds and a bloke who had chickens near us moved and they all came to my garden! like you Jan i caught a robin and was totally devastated as it was so tame and to see the poor thing in the snap trap really gutted me.we tryed poison i watched the rats and set up a camcorder to record their habits and behavior as i found their nest and well sure as anything the rats came out and they took the poison into the tunnel leading to their nest but never bothered to eat it!
i bought a humane trap and baited it managed to catch one rat but never caught anymore
so i looked on e-bay for solutions and came across glue traps and well they are great!we bought a few within one night we had all the baby rats we placed them under a board where birds or other animals were not likely to get caught they smell of peanuts to attract the rats i know its not nice but it worked and we got every single one of them definitely money well spent

summayah · Joined: 14 Apr 2005 Posts: 4289 Location: luton

I've been doing a bit of research on these and this is some of what I've come up with.
The RSPCA has apparently condemned the use of these. The rats are not killed by getting stuck and the baby rats scream and thrash about trying to get loose and get themselves even more stuck by their fur, eyes, etc and have to lie like that all night until someone comes to despatch them. It's also important to despatch the rodents correctly to. Drowning them is not an option as apparently it is illegal.
So I think if you use these you have to know that you will still have to despatch them yourself humanely.

I used eradirat last year. It looked like there were some taking up residence in a shed extensions (the previous owner ~ he was a good heathrobinson type ~ the shed extension has insulation fibre between it's wooden clad walls!!!) There was a pice of wood broken away at the bottom and the stuffing pulled out. I put the eradirat in the gap for some time until it stopped being taken.

The main instructions was to make sure there was no other access to food so they wouldn't eat that in preference to the eradirat. I did my best on that score ~ chickens are messy girls aren't they? But eventually the rats were cleared and haven't returned as far as I can see.

I personally couldn't use the sticky things if it meant I had to bop them on the head in the morning or whenever I found them. Which why as a coward I take the coward's way out and use eradirat.