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Compost heaps and rats
CazzieT
Posts: 74
I recently spent a fair bit on a timber double compost bin thinking I could do my bit for the environment as well as grow my own compost. I have been merrily chucking appropriate kitchen waste, dead flowers, bits of brown cardboard etc. on it for several weeks but have just come across the fact that rats like veg peelings. Not sure how I missed that one but am now paranoid that I will get the little beggars in my heap. It's at the bottom of a fairly large garden so there's not much action down there and I go down every couple of days with waste. It looks as if a lid would be a good thing to get, as well as to line the bin with heavy duty wire mesh. Is there anything else I should do to make sure I don't get rats in there?
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It's just one of those things, you live in the country, you get rats. They don't like disturbance so if you can go out everyday and bash the sides they may not stay. Put the whole thing on small mesh chicken wire. Helps a bit.
Rats like potatoes (my brother is a potato farmer so I should know
) particularly in the winter when they need carbs to keep warm. Potato peelings at this time of year shouldn't attract them particularly when there's lots of other stuff around and the weather is warmer - I just don't put potato peelings on the compost heap in the winter if I've noticed rats about - but it's not worth getting stressed about.
If you discover that rats are nesting in the compost then it's probably too dry and not being turned enough. Keep it slightly damp, turn the compost regularly and as Lyn says, give the sides of the bin a good bashing with a spade or stick from time to time - it gives them a headache
Last edited: 20 February 2017 10:05:18
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I've had great success this year, by accident, really, when my ferret disturbed a number of rats under the shed at work. They've not been back and it's three weeks plus now. (Ferrets hate rats, but I never deliberately use mine against them, because it makes the ferrets nasty and can be dangerous for them, too). Anyway, I tested the use of ferret bedding in a couple of locations. One, a roof space where squirrels were causing a nuisance. Sorted, they've not been back. Second test was again in a roof space, where rats had got in via an ivy clad wall. Again, it seems to have worked because there's been no rat activity at all since. I know the use of predator dung and bedding isn't an unknown thing, but I was a little surprised by the result and the length of time the effect's lasted.
H-C