Ratty in the garden.

[sapper]

I have some rats in my garden and wifey is not happy. I saw two under the bird feeder this morning. I don't want to stop feeding the birds, I would rather live and let live, but if wifey sees two at one time I suspect that she will be very displeased and insist that I do something about it!
Can anyone recommend a rat poison?

[MJ224]

I used to have that problem, and have recently caught a rat on the trail camera. You could try a humane trap, then drown them in a tub. But they are pretty cautious about these traps. Otherwise, poison is the last resort, I just bought some from the local garden/hardware store. Certainly solved the problem for me, but you must be careful that the birds can't get at it. Were your rats there after dark?

[sapper]

No, there were two of them out bold as brass this morning.

[Walti]

At our previous house we had rats set up home in the garden and the tipping point for us was several juveniles playing chase around the garden and climbing trees to drop down onto the bird feeders.

we had no choice but to stop feeding the birds and get the rat man in.

The poison he used was in little plastic sachets and he liberally distributed these in the places the rats were going but especially around their burrows.

The rats tear the packets open and consume the food (they’re suspicious of opened one apparently) all went well until we ended up with rats performing their last throes of life in the middle of the lawn. A process so gruesome it turned our son vegetarian (seriously!)

So be careful how you approach this and if they are visitors then poison will get rid of them and they’ll die in their nest - if they’re resident see above!

[sapper]

I think that they are resident. I saw a few juveniles in my compost bin today. I will keep turning it with a fork in the hope that they will move somewhere else.

[BDennis]

Sorry to hear about the rats. Poison is a last resort I think like Mark said.

We have the same problem. I have temporarily reduced the amount of bird food we put out and stopped putting a big plant tray full of water on the ground for the birds moving it onto an upturned plant pot higher up as the fresh water was attracting rats too - I saw them coming for a drink of the fresh tap water I put out. You can try catching the stuff that falls off the feeders with a big plant tray / dish or upturned dustbin lid and clear it up so as not to attract them.

After talking with our neighbour we found they had them in their garden nesting in a raised flower bed which they are now sorting out and the chap next door is using a trap and also dispatching them with a gun - I hear the odd bang when he gets home from work! This is reducing the numbers. We think they got displaced by some work on a garden shed nearby at the end of as local garden bordering both of us. We had a look and there were rat run holes along our shared fence line so it might be worth having a look around so see if they are coming into your garden from elsewhere.

I am reluctant to use poison bait as this can cause secondary poisoning for predator species like Barn Owls and Kestrels - many Kestrels are found to have rat poison in them. It can also be a problem for Red Kites and I am sure other species like Hedgehogs. It is ironic as over use of rat poison reduces the natural predators through secondary poisoning. The pest control chap did use poison a few years ago when we had them in the loft - it was inside the house so not a big issue for other wildlife and peoples pets like cats. The problem is the poisoned rat probably went off to die somewhere and I was concerned for any wildlife that ate it.

If our problem gets worse I will probably get a trap and relocate the caught rats to the local countryside. I’m thinking of getting a wildlife cam as well to see what is going on!

Worth a read here for advice https://www.barnowltrust.org.uk/haza...r-rat-control/

[MJ224]

Ref my rat infection several years ago, I used humane traps The young rats were not savy enough to resist the bait, so they were trapped and despatched quickly. The adults were too savy to go into the traps.They burrowed from next door who has chickens. One of my ploys was to squirt that expanding foam into their tunnels. But the limit came when I was looking down into one of their holes/tunnels and the bleeding rat was looking back up to me. Poison then was used, and that problem went away...:-))

I guess those boxes with poison bags might work, but I am unsure were the rats go once they have a severe tummy ache. You will have to some serious searching around the garden to find any corpses, and either bury or dispose of those safely...:-((

It is a hazard of bird feeding, as Bill says, there will always be dropped food waiting fo some little beastie to use it...

Good luck.

[Shaw]

We occasionally get them in the byre, and because of our dog, we don't use traps or bait, but they sometimes visit the bird feeders, and my solution is this, which does work:

[BDennis]

They are b*ggers when they get in the house, that is when you want to get pest control experts in. We had some in the roof a while back and I got pest control out to sort it - he used poison and advised me to clear a load of ivy off the wall where they might be climbing up, so I did that. Last year we had one get back in the loft and it was chewing the rafters above our bedroom keeping us awake nights. I reckoned the rat was getting up to the roof by climbing up between the gutter down pipe and the wall. Before shelling out another £100 to get the pest control guy back, I took the desperate measure of spraying some copious amounts of WD40 over the down pipes. I also put an ultrasonic repeller thing up in the loft. I have no idea which of these measures worked or if the rat met its demise but one hasn’t been back so far.