Rabbit enclosure is infested with big rats

abraeri

Overrun with beasties
Joined
Mar 12, 2019
Messages
86
Reaction score
59
Points
83
I don't know if cats were ruled out for some other reason but I'll put it in a good word for them for keeping the numbers down once you've got the main infestation is down. (I don't think they'd be as effective to get rid of a big population like you seem to have). We had two we adopted earlier that live closer to the house and one is a pretty prolific hunter. Once summer roles around we usually see her almost everyday with a rat/mouse in her mouth. We also had two kittens show up on our property and we put them to work in the barn. I don't think they've actually caught anything yet but we never saw rats again after one of the kittens dropped on one from above. The rats seem to not want to stick around where there are predators (even though the kittens at that age were still too small to hunt a rat)
 

Stephine

True BYH Addict
Joined
May 11, 2017
Messages
203
Reaction score
263
Points
218
Location
Sonoma County, California
Trouble is a) you might take out more than one predator and b) a single predator eats more mice and rats than you can possibly catch yourself. After the predator dies, the varmint population will recover quickly, but the hole the lost predator left in the system will take longer to refill. In the medium time frame that’ll make your problem worse. I have had no trouble catching rats and mice with this one, the UCatch tunneled rat trap: https://www.amazon.com/UCatch-Tunne...ocphy=9032361&hvtargid=pla-437817995753&psc=1
Works like a charm and helped me clean out my barn while we had no cats around. We have barn owls who keep the vole and gopher populations down in the fields and I would never want to take a chance on accidentally poisoning them - or our farm dog for that matter.
I would rather take the chance of a poisoned predator than the diseases that the rats carry. We poison the ones I can't catch and I do not lose a seconds sleep over it. I have had success with live traps for rats.... use a larger size, like for a raccoon... and different companies make them with different size wire so they are pretty tight.... opening only on one end. Then shoot them in the trap and get rid of them. Watch out for fleas and such off the rats.... even though we do not have bubonic plague, they carry many other diseases.... and fleas are common...
 

Latest posts

Top