*&%# rats

Not the rug rats but field rats. Since cold weather is just around the corner they making a home in a concrete block building at the farm. They are chewing up anything and everything and making living quarters.  I have an old refrigerator with a large storage drawer on the bottom and they have just about filled it up with chewed up rags, plastic bags, paper, old bath mat, and even new dryer sheets. Mice may not like dryer sheets but these rats do. And they have drug things like screw drivers, wire brushes, sand paper sheets, bolts, zip ties and other stuff in there. Cleaned it up yesterday and put out an ample amount of Tom Cat mouse bars and granular mouse bait, going to get some Tom Cat rat bars tomorrow which are supposed to work on the tree rats also. Guess in the spring I will have to rebuild one end of the building so I can seal it up and keep the out. Thanks for letting me vent.

Pack Rats. We have been at war for years. Lately I haven't seen any. Probably regrouping.

Some of the pack rats get darn near as big as a cat. Had some good cats around mice and gophers were petty well under control,but they never did much to chase rats away. Maybe mice and gophers taste better  .

Go thru the rat & mice problem every fall, the cold air and the combine must chase them to the buildings. Spend the $$ for bait boxes and keep bait in them. Used to have to do it year round when feeding hogs. Now, I've got a bunch of bait boxes set near entrances to buildings. I refill them with bait when the corn starts to ripen. I clean up grain around bins when filling or emptying and No hay fed or stored within 1/4 mile of buildings. I'd get 2 brands (type of poison) of bait in case the sobs get resistant to a poison.

I had a round livestock water tank sitting outside upside down, one day was gonna move it, and the whole undernieth was rooted up from rats. I put one of them smoke bombs that are sposed to kill them varmits under there and sure heard a lot of squealing going on, then everything was silent! a couple days later I picked that tank up and there was about 20 dead rats up under there!

Two different brands and two different sites.

Edited by chaskaduo - 07 Dec 2018 at 5:43pm

Thanks for the link to the smoke bombs and for the tip on fastening the bait down. Maybe I can start thinning out the bastards when I go back next week.

My mother used Dcon bait for years and I told her the rats and mice were immune to it! After she passed away I took over baiting the barn and used Tom Cat bait. Next year there were dead mice and rats everywhere! Now I change to the blocks every other year to keep them interested.

I got a call from an older farmer. He had a flat on the left front of his JD 4400 combine. He was wanting to combine oats. I went out, jacked up the combine, dam rats had chewed a hole in the bottom of his drive tire, about 3" across.. Oats were ready to run, he decided he didn't have 10 days to wait on a section repair. I put him on a new tire.    Old gal used ta get them in the barn, feed bin had a cement floor in it, Just outside of the barn was a water tank that was heated. They apparently lived under it all winter. I cleaned out the darn tank one spring, tipped the tank over, the darn rats had even drug bars of rat poisen under there.

Edited by HD6GTOM - 27 Mar 2021 at 10:43pm

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