Oh fairy girl, love the snow but here in the South not a single flake fell and I was so looking forward to playing with the pooch in it. In fact Holly the dog has only seen snow once when she was a pup she's 4 1/2 now!
Will see if I can get some humane traps for the rats and put them on their run, bit worried about the poison for the doormice and other furries eating it, thanks for recommendation Lynn.
Husband in his new "man shed" at the moment, Holly asleep after a lovely walk in the sun along the coast. I will think about extermination later.
This is a Holly the gardeners friend, if you want it dug!! No good with rats though.
kathie51d says:...I run a "open all hours" restaurant. Now the last visitors I am not too sure about but do keep us amused attempting to climb the pole to the bird feeder.See original post
This is obviously the source of the rat problem - restrict their access to the food. Same with the squirrels - it's really not responsible to be boosting the local population in this way.
Caught a rat in a gutter downpipe. It run into it. I upturned the end piece and put a block on it and filled it with water. Waited 20,30 minutes, unblocked the pipe. Rat came out with the gushing water, scrambled around like a drink man, scaled a concrete wall and got away. They are survivors for sure. Funnily I thought he deserved to get away. Not seem a rat since here
I wanted to say just that Verdun, the only way is drowning, you've got to drop the whole cage in a water butt, it's not pleasant and they scream like hell.
I know poison is not nice either but at least it kills them and you won't see them.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
Having just had our second visit from the rat man.. I can say that getting rid is not easy! The little blighters we have are busy undermining the barn, it's amazing how much dirt they can shift, and they have no trouble digging through concrete. We have ducks and chickens so trying to starve them out is hard, and they flatly refuse to eat the poison, I did read that some areas of Denmark including mine have had a 80% increase in rats over the last three years. I wonder if that has anything to do with new poison regulations that came in...
Rats can't climb up a overhang, think old fashioned saddle stones, so you could make your bird table into something similar so that you don't get more after these are gone.
The kindest option for the rats is probably to stop putting out any bird food for a month or two, and make sure there's nothing edible in the compost heap if you have one, and disturb wherever they're living. That's what I did last winter when rats turned up and they were gone after a couple weeks. That said, I did see another one this winter, apparently they're more common at this time of year when food is scarce and they're seeking warm places to hide. I didn't want to poison either as we have a sparrowhawk who eats the mice and i'd hate to see him eat a dead poisoned rat and die
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Oh fairy girl, love the snow but here in the South not a single flake fell and I was so looking forward to playing with the pooch in it. In fact Holly the dog has only seen snow once when she was a pup she's 4 1/2 now!
Will see if I can get some humane traps for the rats and put them on their run, bit worried about the poison for the doormice and other furries eating it, thanks for recommendation Lynn.
Husband in his new "man shed" at the moment, Holly asleep after a lovely walk in the sun along the coast. I will think about extermination later.
This is a Holly the gardeners friend, if you want it dug!! No good with rats though.
Kathie
Last edited: 04 March 2017 13:09:43
have you ever caught a rat in an humane trap. Not an easy task, they go mad, you cannot let it free, what would you do with it?
The reason you see old pictures of farmhands with binder twine around the bottoms of their trouser legs was to stop the rats "runnin' up 'em"
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
This is obviously the source of the rat problem - restrict their access to the food. Same with the squirrels - it's really not responsible to be boosting the local population in this way.
I wanted to say just that Verdun, the only way is drowning, you've got to drop the whole cage in a water butt, it's not pleasant and they scream like hell.
I know poison is not nice either but at least it kills them and you won't see them.
Having just had our second visit from the rat man.. I can say that getting rid is not easy! The little blighters we have are busy undermining the barn, it's amazing how much dirt they can shift, and they have no trouble digging through concrete. We have ducks and chickens so trying to starve them out is hard, and they flatly refuse to eat the poison, I did read that some areas of Denmark including mine have had a 80% increase in rats over the last three years. I wonder if that has anything to do with new poison regulations that came in...
Rats can't climb up a overhang, think old fashioned saddle stones, so you could make your bird table into something similar so that you don't get more after these are gone.
The kindest option for the rats is probably to stop putting out any bird food for a month or two, and make sure there's nothing edible in the compost heap if you have one, and disturb wherever they're living. That's what I did last winter when rats turned up and they were gone after a couple weeks. That said, I did see another one this winter, apparently they're more common at this time of year when food is scarce and they're seeking warm places to hide. I didn't want to poison either as we have a sparrowhawk who eats the mice and i'd hate to see him eat a dead poisoned rat and die