Spotting When Rat Bait Is Needed and Using It To Best Effect

It is often said that the first line of attack is defence.  When businesses involving aviaries, catering, farming, food production and distribution, shipping and zoos are at stake, the first common sense step towards rat control is prevention rather than cure.  When working in any of these types of businesses, rat control is likely to be included in your health and safety policy.  However, besides obvious health and safety issues that rats create, they also cost businesses in loss and wastage.  Use of high caliber rat bait is a great secret weapon in your war on rats and other vermin, long before you are obliged to take knee jerk action when spotting unwelcome signs that they might be at large on your premises.

Naturally, your adherence to expected standards of hygiene is your first necessary step towards preventative rat control.  Feed on farms, food and waste products should not be left lying around, offering open invitations to scavenging rats.  If your premises is surrounded by fields or waste ground, do your best to keep your surrounding areas clean and tidy.  Any scrap metal or old machinery should be put in to storage away from any of your buildings that provide potential sources of food and water to rats.

Even if you have never suffered rat problems, it happens to thousands of others in similar lines of business, and it can happen to you at any time.  Keep a close eye on dark and little used corners, in roof spaces, in storage boxes containing old paperwork, and in wall cavities.  Rat bait can be used in all of these areas, plus many, many more in order to deter rats from attempting to infiltrate your premises, and eliminating any that do. 

However, should you spot any rat droppings; you need to be ready and able to switch in to comprehensive rat control mode quickly and effectively.  If allowed to take hold, rats congregate in nests of between 300 – 1000.  Failure to eradicate the first wave with hard working rat bait could cause you a multitude of problems that probably make you cringe at the very thought.  Follow the trails to try to ascertain where they are gaining access from and might be setting up home.  Place wrapped parcels of rat bait on their trails and in other relevant spots, including high places if you suspect you might being playing unwilling host to roof rats.

Ratblitz is multipurpose rat bait that is most commonly used on farms and at other food related businesses, whilst also being available for domestic usage.  It was formulated, and continues to be manufactured to this very day, by Ruth Consolidated Industries Pty Ltd in Sydney Australia.  It is accompanied by comprehensive instructions and complies with rules laid down by the Australian Government in relation to rat control and the control of other vermin.                    

date Thursday 27 October 2011
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Harnessing Rat Bait To Avoid Paying Invisible ‘Rat Tax’

Amidst a global climate of economic fragility, many businesses of many different sectors and sizes are increasingly squeezed harder to improve their profitability and viability.  This is equally as applicable amongst the farming community and, if you fall in to this category, you could be annually sacrificing hundreds of dollars worth of profit due to rat infestations.  Farmers have long since waged wars against rats and the problems they cause, and you might be losing your battle simply because you are failing to use the most effective rat bait.

Whilst unsuccessful rat control might not seem to cost you tangibly, it does lumber you with a hidden or invisible ‘rat tax’.  You might understandably underestimate how much feed you lose to rats each year, as the losses are relatively small on a daily basis, but mount up considerably when sustained.  It has been calculated by scientists researching rat control that an average rat eats approximately 30-60gm of farm feed per day, resulting in a daily feed loss of 60-90gm per day including spillage and spoilage. 

Reducing this to the most conservative of estimates, if a rat is losing you 40gm of feed every day throughout the year, you are likely to be paying ‘rat tax’ of approximately $4.38 over a twelve month period for a rat to dine out, based on a tonne of feed having cost you $300.  It becomes even more pertinent for you to get to grips with your rat control programme when you consider some even more worrying data.  Rats are estimated to nest in groups of 300.  It hardly takes a mathematician to work out that your annual ‘rat tax’ may be somewhere in the realms of $1314 during a twelve month period. 

In order to avoid such costly and unwelcome losses, you need to use rat bait fast.  But not just any old rat bait, as all rat baits are not created equal.  In your quest to reduce and totally eradicate your annual ‘rat tax’ payments, it is advisable that you carry out rat control efficiently, humanely and with long lasting results. 

Ratblitz is a well respected rat control product that has been used for many years by farmers and industrialists.  Its strengths lie in a number of different areas.  It is highly attractive rat bait, ensuring that vermin are actually tempted to eat it, rather then continuing to eat your feed.  It works progressively over five – seven days, ensuring that it wipes out as many rats as possible in one fell swoop.  It is manufactured by Ruth Consolidated Industries Pty Ltd, which has been producing algaecides, animal feed supplements, biological and veterinary products in Sydney, Australia  since 1957.  This ensures that its rat bait is formulated and manufactured with Australian Government rules on pest and rat control at heart.  

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Choosing The Best Rat Bait When Undertaking Rat Control

When involved with not only farming, but also aviaries, catering, bunkers, ships, zoos, or anywhere else where grain and food is stored, you may have had experience of a very common enemy – rats.  Whether rats have been a past problem, are a current problem, or are a problem that you have not personally faced but wisely endeavour to keep on top of, rat control is of imperative importance in many environments.  Furthermore, it is equally important that you choose rat bait that eliminates vermin as effectively as possible, in as humane a way as possible.

As far as your business is concerned, rats can cause untold amounts of damage, resulting in detrimental effects to the health and safety of your operations, plus your bottom line profits.  In the absence of top quality rat bait, it is not only your livelihood that is literally eaten in to.  Rats are also notorious for consuming buildings, electrical wiring and insulation.  On aviaries, farms and zoos, they present a clear and present danger to unhatched eggs and chicks. Therefore, befitting rat bait can be a great ally in your rat control mission.

When choosing rat bait to best suit your requirements, a useful tip is to look for one that does not have grain in its list of ingredients.  Rats are well known for being extremely clever creatures.  It stands to sense that they probably will not be tempted by grain based rat bait if they have a veritable banquet of grain and other attractive foodstuffs to dine on.  Hence, you need to be just as smart and incorporate enticing rat bait that appeals to their senses of taste and smell in to your rat control efforts.

It is also worth considering rat bait that offers you long term rat control success, rather than a quick fix that will simply see the problem recurring again within a short period of time.  It is a known fact that rats nest in groups of approximately 300, and they are quick to identify unexpected deaths and symptoms of poisoning amongst their rank and file.  The most effective rat bait on the market works over a period of five to seven days.  This results in a higher chance of eradication of an entire nest, rather than just a few quick deaths that alert other rats and make them rat bait shy. 

Ratblitz provides your overall solution to effective, humane and sustainable rat control.  It is a tried and tested product manufactured by trusted Ruth Consolidated Industries Pty Ltd, based in Sydney, Australia, and is the first choice rat bait used by thousands of farmers and other industries.

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Proper baiting—the secret to controlling rodents

Rats and mice are a constant problem on farms and in aviaries.  In these situations there is always plenty of feed around in the form of grain and seeds.  Yet most rat and mouse baits use a grain base. Why would a self respecting rodent eat a poisoned grain when there is plenty of attractive clean untainted grain and seeds available on a farm or aviary?  They don’t! That’s why farmers complain of a poor response from many commercial rat baits.

The secret to eradicating rats and mice from farms and aviaries is to use a unique bait which tastes nicer to rats and mice than grain or seeds. That’s where Rat Blitz comes in. It was designed to be used on farms and was developed on a poultry farm by a farmer.  When Rat Blitz is the bait of choice rodents will eat it first. It’s their first choice and their last. Once started they’ll keep eating the bait, provided the simple steps described below are followed.  Because it is a non violent bait taking at least 5 days before death occurs, other rats are not warned, as they are with instant kill baits, so the whole nest will continue eating until they are ALL wiped out.

To achieve real success follow a few simple steps. Make sure all spilled feed is swept up. All silos and storage areas are properly sealed. Get rid of as much rubbish as you can, mow around sheds and animal houses. Have a blitz on possible nesting sites. Don’t leave bags, paper, boxes and other materials in dark corners or cavities and make sure roof spaces are clean. The less food and water lying around the less the rodents will be attracted. Where pot holes are filled with water fill them with gravel, make sure there are no dripping taps as water attracts rodents.

Before you lay any bait make sure you know where rats and mice are congregating. Usually a trail of droppings is a good indication but if you find it difficult to determine put some flour or limestone near some of the droppings and next morning let them show you by following their tracks. Once you are sure of their route then the baiting with Rat Blitz can start.

One of the first mistakes made is to put the bait out in big dollops. That’s a major error because rats and mice in their own community are fussy animals. They will not eat bait on which previous rats and mice have urinated or defecated. Who would!! If the rat bait is in big dollops it’s a certain bet that it will soon be tainted by droppings etc.

The next step is to make sure the bait is fresh. Look at it this way—why would you eat stale food when all around is fresh grain and seeds.  So lay the baits on a daily basis to ensure the rats and mice will return and continue to eat.

How to do this with least effort? Simple. Get a bucket and fill it with baits prepared in the following manner. Use thin paper, old telephone books are ideal. Wrap no more that a tablespoonful of Rat Blitz in half a page. Fill the bucket with these wrapped baits. Now you are ready.

Each day put some of the fresh wrapped baits along the rodent tracks, toss the baits down holes, put them in roof spaces and wall cavities and any place rats and mice are likely to be. The advantage of the wrapped bait is that previous rodents cannot soil the bait and following rats will continue to eat. It takes about 5-7 days for death to occur and they will go away to die. There will be no dead bodies  to frighten other rats away from your carefully laid baits.

It’s very important that the baits are out of the way of children’s prying fingers as well as dogs, cats and other pets.  So put the wrapped baits under sheets of iron, or cut off lengths of plastic pipe, of sufficient diameter to allow rats in but too small for cats and dogs to reach. Put the wrapped bait inside the pipe. Make sure to keep using Rat Blitz. It will not control the rodent population unless rats and mice continue eating it for 5 days.

Rat Blitz is very attractive bait and for this reason care must be exercised in baiting where there are children and domestic animals. Make an effort to put the baits in places they cannot reach.

Dogs and Cats have to eat a large quantity of bait to be affected but the possibility of secondary poisoning from ingestion of dead rats should not be overlooked. Make sure dead rats are quickly disposed of.

Pigs however are affected by Rat Blitz and care should be exercised when laying baits in piggeries. 

date Thursday 23 June 2011
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Take another Look

Farmers who believe their farm or aviaries are rat and mice free should look again. Research shows that even unseen rat and mice populations can number in the hundreds.

As a rule of thumb, if a producer never sees rodents scurrying around but notices signs of them then the likely population in that area is around 100 rodents. If they are seen occasionally at night then the likelihood is the population ranges from 100 – 500 rodents.  If they are occasionally sighted during the daytime and often at night then 400- 1000 rodents is the likely number.  If they are sighted quite often during the daytime then there are at least 5000 rodents around.

Where do they all come from?  Rodents are prolific breeders. Females average 6 litters with 9 offspring per year. Under really ideal conditions it is possible to get 14 litters per year. That means the babies from just 1 pair of rats can be responsible for 3.5 million more rats over 3 years.

So what is the best way to achieve farm rodent control?

First, understand their habits.

Mice need only a 60 mm opening to enter a building or cage. Rats need not much more than the size of a 20 cents coin.

Mice only roam within a 3-9 metre (10 -30 foot) radius from their nest, rats are more adventurous roaming often 45 metres – 400 metres ( 150 feet up to a quarter of a mile).

All rodents are highly suspicious, have outstanding senses of hearing, smell and touch, but relatively poor eyesight and therefore roam close to walls.

This means rat baits are best placed close to walls

Rats can climb, jump and swim. In fact rats have been known to swim for 3 days without drowning.

Livestock operations located close to farm dams and ponds are a big attraction for rodents. Farmyard puddles should be filled with gravel to eliminate drinking sources.

An integrated rodent control management plan should always be implemented. This includes eliminating food sources by cleaning up spilled feed, keeping feed supplies secured in silos and using attractive baits such as Rat Blitz.  If rats have no other food source they will eat their young. 

Attractive baits are important. On farms and in aviaries there is usually an abundant food supply so unless the bait is more attractive than the available food rodents will not eat the bait. There is one golden rule to remember “if the bait is in the belly the rodent will die”.

Rats and mice are very wary So a proper baiting programme is very important. One of the big problems with baits that kill instantly is that surviving rats become very suspicious and will not eat the bait. That’s why Rat Blitz is the bait of choice. Rodents are not aware they are being poisoned and the bait is more attractive than the food source. With Rat Blitz the bait will always “be in the belly”

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Farm and Aviary rat control is a science

“They fought the dogs and killed the cats”
          R Browning
“The Pied Piper of Hamelin”

One pair of rats under ideal conditions can generate a potential colony of 5000 rats in one year. A rat or mouse eats 10% of its body weight daily. That is roughly 30 g per rat at 1.5 g per mouse.  If we convert all their feed requirements into grain equivalents, we can calculate that the combined offspring of one pair of rats will be consuming grain at the rate of 75 tonnes per annum. Expressed another way this would feed 600 growing pigs or 7500 laying hens for 100 days.

Since recorded history man and domestic animals have been accompanied and pestered by the rodents. Eating much the same feed as man and his domesticated animals rats and mice devour and spoil huge quantities of feed each year. They damage and destroy property, wander and scavenge widely, contaminate their whole environment and are carriers of the worst known diseases of man, plague, typhus, jaundice, and a whole host of parasites. They also play a part in the spread of foot-and-mouth disease.

In devising rat and mouse control programmes, it is important to understand the behaviour and biology of rats and mice.

The individual members of most species remain within a restricted area for most of their lives. This is known as the home range and may be defended against members of the same species when it becomes known as a territory. Territories may also be defended by groups within the territory. The rattus species is known to be a very social animal amongst its own group. Most individuals quickly learn their place in the pecking order and avoid fighting. In dry sparsely vegetated and poorly populated areas, rats tend to form themselves into big groups, live communally, build and fortify nests as a group, and co-operate in caring for the young. Perhaps not surprisingly, in wetter areas where there tends to be an abundance of food, rats usually live singly or in small groups.  

Although Mouse and Rat traps are still used, the major tool to control rodents in recent decades have been poisons. One of the greatest breakthroughs in the design of s to control and eradicate rodents can be attributed to those compounds which when ingested decrease the coagulation of blood and induce capillary haemorrhage (internal bleeding).

Using these compounds the symptoms of poisoning do not appear suddenly and death follows 5-7 days after feeding commences. Therefore, unlike baits that cause an instant kill, rats and mice do not develop “bait shyness” and continue to eat - even though they are slowly dying. This allows the whole colony to be eliminated as none of the colony becomes suspicious of the bait.
RCI’s product RAT BLITZ works exactly in this way. This is because grain based baits aren’t much good on farms where there is already plenty of feed around anyway. Rat Blitz contains specially formulated , which is so attractive to rats and mice it must be packed in (rodent proof) plastic buckets for transport.

Rat Blitz is attractive to children and dogs and cats and care should be taken when placing baits. It is lethal for pigs and should be placed in areas not accessible by pigs.
Fresh baits are much more attractive than old baits. For best results it is recommended that baits be changed daily.

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