Looking for a rat poison that works. I don’t trust the reviews I am reading based on my own
experience. Nothing I have tried seems to work. They will not eat it. .
Have you thought about an over center “flip&slide” or “rolling log” type mouse trap upsized (6 gallon pail instead of 5) to rat sized? Either figure out how to kill them after you catch them or put some poison in the bottom and soon they will be so hungry they will eat anything.
For mice I use an ice cream pail with a lid, drill a 1” hole in the center of the lid. Smear some peanut butter on the underside of the lid a few inches from the hole. Mice try getting the peanut butter but fall though the hole down into the pail. After I catch a few, put several pieces of gorilla tape over the hole and take it to a guy who I guess has exotic pets he feeds them to.
Maybe this could be upgraded to “rat sized”?
Can’t speak to rat poison, but we had massive problem with mice at our old place, and PestNow the big pest control firm (in Maryland) did bugger all about it, they kept putting bait down and it did nothing.
Moved to a new pest control firm for a new place, after we saw a mice there, and they put down Bromadiolone and it worked straight away.
Anticoagulants like Bromadiolone are pure evil and need to be banned. First of all, the animal dies slowly and painfully. But what is worse, is that it travels up the food chain, killing and torturing cats, dogs, predators, raptors, etc,
OP- is it Rats or Mice? Many people commonly call mice = rats.
I suggest snap traps. Ecological, and much less cruel.
I do not (and would not) even bother with any poison. I trap them in a cage and then walk down a block to release them at the scarily huge rat colony near the Dumpsters there.
Rats get wary of snap traps and they aren’t always a fast kill either. I use TomCat Bait Chunx, they’re in 1 oz cubes that the mice and rats won’t touch for any reason. Then I use an old paring knife to shave them into tiny bits and I mix those bits into a combination of peanut butter, bacon grease, molasses, oatmeal and dried fruit and pack the mixture into jar lids that I’ve drilled a small hole into the side. I tie a bit of string to the lid and slide it under a piece of furniture, somewhere out of the way and dark and put a bit of tape on the end of the string so I can slide it back out easily. I guarantee you they will eat this. I usually only have to fill the baits once or twice to get rid of the fuckers that get into the crapshack and destroy stuff. I did the math and the amount of bromethalin necessary to kill a rat is nowhere near the LD-50 for even a small dog so even if a pet tried to eat the deader it’s unlikely to make them sick, let alone kill them. Dunno about the knockon effects to birds like crows who are likely to eat a dead rat but LD-50 for birds is 4.6 mg/kg so I’d guess they’d have to eat rather a lot of it.
Anyway, bromethalin is not an anticoagulant, it’s a neurotoxin and looks like cats are more susceptible than other species to it so might want to be careful if you have cats who free roam outdoors. I’m not fond of using poison on rodents but when the choice was to use it or lose a lot of money from rodent damage I reluctantly decided to use the poison. Luckily, there’s usually only one wave of late fall infestation when the sweet summer children rats get to the end of the easily available food sources and go hunting for new territory. I’ve only had to bait the traps a maximum of twice before the ones who got into the house are taken care of and subsequent bait stations go untouched.
As a general point, keeping rats out in the first place is a far better option than killing them once they’re there. I had rats in my attic, and while the snap traps worked after a fashion, it was an ongoing nuisance, and some rats seemed to be smart enough to avoid them.
So I spent an unpleasant day in the attic stapling metal mesh over every possible inlet. Every vent, every opening that led to a different section (I’m in a condo with a shared attic), every hole I could find that a rat could conceivably squeeze through. I probably still didn’t get them all, but it was good enough–the rats stopped.
I think I will try your method, I can’t buy Tom Cat in Ca. But I will figure that out.
We had a rat situation in our barn. I began catching any snakes we saw and releasing them on the barn. That led to a snake situation in our barn, as a few Central Rat Snakes reached 7-8 feet length, allowing them to get into the nest boxes and eat our hens’ eggs.
Everything is peaceful now. We leave the rats and snakes alone, except for extreme size snakes which we relocate.
I like the snek solution but I never see anything but itty bitty garter sneks here that would probably get eaten by the Norway rats, those things are HUGE.
I have given snakes a serious consideration. I live in the city where there are no snakes and I doubt they would stay where I released them.
Rats follow the urine scent trail of other rats to find their way into your home. Poisoning them is not only bad for the environment, but you aren’t solving your problem at all. You have to seal up every opening, as was pointed out upthread. I fought my rat problem for years until my exterminators finally located the secret sewer entrance and attic holes they were using. No sign of any problems for 3 years now (knock on wood).
I agree with this, The garage door is actually the entry point. Going to need to replace it to get one that seals.
Goes best with a Pino Noire.