At our old house, the rats chewed through the brickwork, the house was stuffed with polystyrene balls they used way back, came home to find a huge pile of the insulation on the garage floor.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
Get a proper pest control firm in. Rats carry leptospirosis which is spread in their urine which they dribble as they visit your garden. When I was a child a boy in the next village died because he caught the disease from rats in his garden. And yes, rats will attack small animals and birds.
I encourage wildlife into our garden but I grew up on a farm and have a pragmatic approach to rats ... get rid of them ... there are plenty more out there but we need to keep the numbers down to stop the spread of disease in our homes and gardens.
You cannot ‘keep them away’ ... my brother is a potato farmer and has evidence of rats gnawing on concrete to get into potato and grain stores.
We have rat holes gnawed through breeze-block to get to a store of feed. I agree, it’s either remove the attraction, or traps.
Carmarthenshire (mild, wet, windy). Loam over shale, very slightly sloping, so free draining. Mildly acidic or neutral.
I think @Jennym83 will either have solved the problem @nick615 , or has had the house eaten by now They'll certainly cause problems in all sorts of ways @pete.zellienf-IQ9fv , and are often displaced by other nearby works like house building, or renovation/clearance of their home sites etc. You've done the right thing. Using a trap/bait station, which can't be easily accessed by other wildlife, is the best solution. Stopping feeding for a little while is always a nuisance if you like doing that, but it helps get on top of it quickly. I've only ever had a problem once, and it was a couple of years ago. A neighbour across the way was having some shrubs/climbers etc cleared in his plot, and I think that's probably where it was displaced from. I was able to place a container against the hole dug by the shed foundation, where it was mainly accessing the garden from. Took a little while, but eventually...no more ratty, and no sign of any since then.
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I bought a baffle which fits onto the upright of my feeding station. It is made of metal. looks like an upside down ice cream cornet. Very easy to fit. Worked immediately. My neighbour has free range chickens so there is not much I can do about rat attractive food not being left lying on the ground. She also has a couple of horses in the field behind my cottage so I am on a hiding to nothing. Poison tied in plastic bags and pushed into holes and crevices in my stone walls seem to keep the worst of them down. The cat also catches a few young ones but Poppy is now 17 so her hunting forays have decreased in frequency, although she did leave me a young stoat in the greenhouse recently.
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Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
They'll certainly cause problems in all sorts of ways @pete.zellienf-IQ9fv , and are often displaced by other nearby works like house building, or renovation/clearance of their home sites etc. You've done the right thing. Using a trap/bait station, which can't be easily accessed by other wildlife, is the best solution. Stopping feeding for a little while is always a nuisance if you like doing that, but it helps get on top of it quickly.
I've only ever had a problem once, and it was a couple of years ago. A neighbour across the way was having some shrubs/climbers etc cleared in his plot, and I think that's probably where it was displaced from. I was able to place a container against the hole dug by the shed foundation, where it was mainly accessing the garden from. Took a little while, but eventually...no more ratty, and no sign of any since then.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I use blocks of bait placed under a roof tile on the motorway - and there are several "on ramps" so that cats can't have access to the stuff.
My neighbour has free range chickens so there is not much I can do about rat attractive food not being left lying on the ground. She also has a couple of horses in the field behind my cottage so I am on a hiding to nothing. Poison tied in plastic bags and pushed into holes and crevices in my stone walls seem to keep the worst of them down. The cat also catches a few young ones but Poppy is now 17 so her hunting forays have decreased in frequency, although she did leave me a young stoat in the greenhouse recently.