Pet Safe Rat Poison

[CardinalFang]

I promise I'm an animal lover but...
Our little wildlife corner has a visitor. Definitely not a mouse. The area is a woodpile, with bird feeders overhead in a Mountain Ash tree, a holly bush & natural pond. The corner is framed by our neighbours fence (6ft) & the back of our garage.
So far I've:
removed the woodpile
blocked up fence gaps with chicken wire
filled in the rat tunnel under the fence
fixed chicken wire over the whole footprint of the woodpile, including the tunnel
liberally spread a mixture of blitzed veg oil, chilli's, chilli powder, curry powder, garlic, cayenne pepper etc, over the wire.

Its turning into a game of whack-a-mole. A new tunnel (& occupant) popped up in the middle of a nearby flower bed this morning. My final card to play is to move the bird feeders to a different part of the garden (removing his food source): he'll have to cross the whole open lawn to get there & apparently they avoid open spaces.

After that, what? I'm loath to kill a wild animal of any kind, but as a last resort could anyone recommend a dog-safe poison or trap? Air rifle is out of the question.

Thanks all,
CF

[Fast and Spurious]

It's wildlife. In your wildlife corner.

[Master Of Puppets]

Fast and Spurious said:

It's wildlife. In your wildlife corner.

It's also non native, destructive, and a carrier of a highly dangerous disease, also breeds like little else.

Why not use a live catch trap, and once caught take it / them somewhere it wont get back?

[Jasandjules]

We have some rats in the garden.

We have take steps to ensure they feel quite at home by providing them food each night. They share some with the fox who comes by...

[AndyAudi]

For dog safe, I’d make the poison inaccessible to the dog.

Your issues are caused by having both water source - pond
& Feed Source bird food.

My advice would be to get an all weather plastic bait box & either a spring trap or poison within & bury it under some of the log pile so dog can’t access.

They are very cautious & don’t like new things (& will potentially learn if trap kills) one of the reasons poison that doesn’t work instantly is better suited as they don’t associate it with their mates dying

[Frank Flowers]

Jasandjules said:

We have some rats in the garden.

We have take steps to ensure they feel quite at home by providing them food each night. They share some with the fox who comes by...

... which is fine if the number of them remains constaint.

But they breed like rabbits, well, like rats actually. So you will almost certainly be overrun with them as they have a plentiful food supply.

[Frank Flowers]

CardinalFang said:

I promise I'm an animal lover but...
Our little wildlife corner has a visitor. Definitely not a mouse. The area is a woodpile, with bird feeders overhead in a Mountain Ash tree, a holly bush & natural pond. The corner is framed by our neighbours fence (6ft) & the back of our garage.
So far I've:
removed the woodpile
blocked up fence gaps with chicken wire
filled in the rat tunnel under the fence
fixed chicken wire over the whole footprint of the woodpile, including the tunnel
liberally spread a mixture of blitzed veg oil, chilli's, chilli powder, curry powder, garlic, cayenne pepper etc, over the wire.

Its turning into a game of whack-a-mole. A new tunnel (& occupant) popped up in the middle of a nearby flower bed this morning. My final card to play is to move the bird feeders to a different part of the garden (removing his food source): he'll have to cross the whole open lawn to get there & apparently they avoid open spaces.

After that, what? I'm loath to kill a wild animal of any kind, but as a last resort could anyone recommend a dog-safe poison or trap? Air rifle is out of the question.

Thanks all,
CF

If the poison wont kill your dog, it wont kill a rat.

You're in to four options really -

(a) embrace them. But you will almost certainly be overrun with them as they will just continue to breed.

(b) rat trap. Humane, but surprisingly tricky to get rats to comply as they will simply eat any other food source rather than risk going in to something when they dont need to. So then you're in to the realms of removing all other food source, and finding a trap that can kill them.

(c) poison. A pretty terrible death for the aforementioned rat but they do work. You can get bait boxes like this in which the bait is held in place in the box via being on a bar. Potential risk a dog could still get to it, if some broke off and fell out. As per other post, you could load it up and bury it so the dogs cant get to it.

Cant do links yet, but seach Amazon for 'Roshield External Tamper Rodent Killer'

(d) remove / move the food source. They dont like open spaces but they will cross them if they have to, so no guarantees. Stopping feeding the other animals will ensure they move on eventually.

Also, they can smell where humans have touched something, so wear gloves when handling the bait box / traps.

No easy answer...

Edited by Frank Flowers on Friday 22 November 14:46

[TownIdiot]

Local pest control man will sort it.

It does involve death though. But if you don't sort it out a rat infestion could completely wreck what you have created.

[CardinalFang]

Thanks all. I’ve moved the food & will see if that helps.
Failing that I guess I’ll have to set a trap or poison & put the log pile back on top to prevent our dogs getting at it, so we’ll see.
Next stop rentokil. Shame, he is a handsome thing.

Chs folks.

[CardinalFang]

Fast and Spurious said:

It's wildlife. In your wildlife corner.

Thank you Chris Packham. If you could get me Michaela’s number, it would be a shed load more use than your advice.

[BoRED S2upid]

AndyAudi said:

For dog safe, I’d make the poison inaccessible to the dog.

Your issues are caused by having both water source - pond
& Feed Source bird food.

My advice would be to get an all weather plastic bait box & either a spring trap or poison within & bury it under some of the log pile so dog can’t access.

They are very cautious & don’t like new things (& will potentially learn if trap kills) one of the reasons poison that doesn’t work instantly is better suited as they don’t associate it with their mates dying

This.

I’ve put the poison inside the compost bin before. Job done. Dog isn’t going to go inside a compost bin.

To be honest though it’s pointless the only way to get rid of rats is to remove ALL sources of food and then they will only move next door.