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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