For several hundred years, humanity has been waging a war, which it is ingloriously losing. This is a war against rats. During the fight against these rodents, many ways to exterminate tailed pests were invented, including the creation of the so-called rat wolf. But long-tailed rodents continue to exist next to humans. This is a synanthropic species of animals that has perfectly adapted humanity to its needs. The question “how to get rid of rats in the house” is asked by all, without exception, owners of private houses. Especially those with livestock. But no one has yet succeeded in completely eradicating rats. The destroyed rodents are replaced by new rats born in another territory.
Even in cities there are 10 gray rodents per inhabitant. The fact that they are not visible only means that the pest control service is doing a good job, and not the absence of rodents. These animals are nocturnal, and if rodents are noticed in broad daylight, this means that the spotted individual is sick. Or the number of rodents in a given area has exceeded a critical mass.All that a person can do is to reduce the food supply of rats and control their numbers.
Food supply for wild rodents
Owners of decorative pet rats are deeply convinced that this rodent is a granivorous animal and does not eat meat. Moreover, animal protein is harmful to rats and shortens the already short life of the rodent. Perhaps this is exactly the case, but wild rats do not read websites on the Internet and have no idea about useful healthy food. But they are well versed in delicious food. Wild gray rats are actually omnivores, and rodents compensate for their short lifespan with high rates of reproduction. Moreover, in fact, animal proteins are vital for the gray rat precisely for high productivity.
In a private home, long-tailed rodents will always find something to eat. Animal feed, food waste, manure, chickens and rabbits - everything is suitable for rats to eat. These rodents can even eat the hooves of large animals.
Reproduction of gray rats
In a house with an abundance of food, a rat can produce up to 8 litters per year. Moreover, each litter will have from 1 to 20 rat pups.
In nature, the rate of reproduction in rats is significantly reduced. These rodents are able to reproduce only in the warm season, so they can produce no more than 3 litters per year. You can compare the difference in the reproduction rate of animals living in the house and in the wild.
You won't be able to keep rats out of your house forever. Young rodents that have grown up in another territory will leave to look for a new living space and will inevitably find your home. To completely get rid of these rodents, it is necessary to completely exterminate the entire population of these animals, at least on the mainland.Then people will have time to live a quiet life until the rodents reach the cleared space from other continents.
In part, humanity should be grateful to the rodent for this. Larger and stronger, but less susceptible to bubonic plague, gray migrants replaced a weak competitor - the black rat: the main carrier of plague in cities.
Even though the gray settlers stopped the plague, these animals are still unwelcome guests in the house, since rodents also have other diseases that are dangerous to humans. Over the centuries of coexistence, humanity has come up with many ways to get rid of rats. True, all of them turned out to be not very effective, but they allow you to control the rodent population.
Ways to deal with rats
All methods of fighting rodents can be divided into:
- mechanical;
- chemical;
- electronic;
- biological.
In a private home, the most effective against rodents will be a mixture of mechanical and chemical methods.
How to deal with rats. (Personal experience)
“Mechanical” methods of rodent control
Among the tips on how to get rid of rats in a private home, you can find a recommendation to mix flour with plaster and place water next to this mixture. It is believed that the rodent will eat the flour, become thirsty, and after the animal gets drunk, the plaster mixed with flour will harden in the rat’s intestines. In fact, rats will only eat flour if they are starving.
A more effective way to drive rats out of your home is to find and concrete all rodent holes.Moreover, it is not sand that needs to be mixed into concrete as a filler, but crushed glass. Sooner or later, rats will even gnaw through concrete (or make moves in another place), but a certain number of rodents will die from crushed glass.
Rat traps are not as effective as we would like. At first, the rats successfully get caught in them. Then the rodents understand that the free piece in the rat trap is intended for the second rat, and they stop crawling under the striker. The situation is similar with a trap made from a bucket of water and a board on it. The first rat gets caught, the rest of the rodents will begin to avoid such an invitation to dine.
Glue for catching rodents is even less effective than rat traps. Even mice quickly stop getting into it. In addition, you will have to remove the corpse or still living animal manually. And compared to a rat trap or poison, anti-rodent glue is more expensive and the consumption is very high, although, at first glance, the packaging of anti-rodent glue is cheap.
Therefore, the most effective remedy for tailed rodents is still storing food in packaging inaccessible to rat teeth. In particular, animal feed is stored in chests lined with sheet iron. It is also important to maintain cleanliness in the house, when rodents simply have nothing to look for on the floor, table and in the sink.
Chemical methods of protection against rats
Actually, the chemical way to get rid of rodents is rat poison. Types of rat poisons for rodents range from fast-acting to delayed-acting preparations. It is better not to give quick-acting rat poisons to rats. Smart rodents very quickly understand why their relatives die and stop eating poisonous bait.
However, it is possible to poison rats. For this purpose, rat poisons based on anticoagulant medications are often used today. Rat poisons based on anticoagulants are a clear confirmation of the statement “there are no poisons and no drugs, there is a dose.” The same warfarin is given to people after stroke and fed to rats. The results are very different.
Now they are using a second generation anticoagulant - Bromadiolone, which is also called super-warfarin. It accumulates in the rat's liver. The death of the rodent occurs only after 5–7 days. Other animals cannot compare the rat poison eaten a week ago with the death of a pack member.
Therefore, you need to keep poisonous baits in a place inaccessible not only to children, but also to animals. These rat baits have a very nice vanilla scent. Rat poison is produced in the form of paste, tablets or loose grain. The form of release of rat poison will need to be chosen depending on the accessibility for other animals of the place where the bait will be located.
In particular, it must be taken into account that a rat can “share” a tablet of rat poison, for example, with a rabbit if the rodent decides to drag the bait into its hole, but on the way gets scared of something and throws away the rat poison. Rodents will eat the grain on the spot, but chickens may eat it.Therefore, rat poison tablets can be used in some hole, if there is confidence that the rat will not pull the rat poison tablet out, and the grain is poured behind a closed door, where there is no access for domestic animals, but where gray pests walk.
In a feed warehouse, it is better to use grain or paste, placing it in a corner away from the feed. Of course, one grain in the feed will not cause harm, but if there are a lot of grains, the animals can be poisoned.
When using rat poison based on these products, you need to keep a supply of vitamin K preparations in the house in case one of the animals decides to eat the pleasant-smelling contents of the bag of rat poison. But when used carefully and competently, rat poisons are a good way to get rid of rats at home. In addition, the anticoagulant that has passed through the rodent’s body is no longer dangerous, even if the dead rat is eaten by a cat or dog.
Since these are slow-acting poisons, the new bait placed immediately after eating the previous one will be eaten by already poisoned rats. Even as a preventive measure, a new portion of rat poison should be added a week after the previous one has disappeared.
Electronic rodent repellents
These are ultrasonic rodent repellers, theoretically capable of driving rats out of the house. In principle, rodent repellers are designed not only for rats, but also for mice. But rodent repellers have a lot of disadvantages due to which the devices have not gained popularity:
- ultrasound is not able to penetrate walls, so each room requires a separate rodent repeller;
- Ultrasound reflects well from hard surfaces, but “gets stuck” in soft ones, so rodent repellers cannot be used in a room with upholstered furniture; they are better used in warehouses, which will also not be very helpful if it is a warehouse with bulk feed or hay;
- rodent repellers are declared as harmless to humans and other animals, but the manufacturers of rodent repellers themselves do not advise staying near the device for a long time (less than 2 m);
- If the rodents have not disappeared within 2–3 weeks of continuous operation of the device, the manufacturer of the rodent repeller offers to destroy the rats in some other way.
It’s easier to immediately use another method of exterminating rats. In addition, the practice of those who tried to use a rodent repeller in private homes and on livestock farms shows that getting rid of rodents in this way is useless. When we tried to use a rodent repeller near other animals, it turned out that it either did not work, or that we were harassing other animals along with the rats.
The latter is not surprising, since ultrasound and infrasound have the same effect on all mammals, including humans. The sound and, in some models of rodent repellers, flashes of light will have a depressing effect on any mammal on the planet. That is why the manufacturer does not recommend staying near the rodent repeller. But a person can finish work and leave by turning on the device, but the animals in the barn have nowhere to go.
In addition, the rodent repeller is best suited for removing rodents from an empty room where rats have nothing to do anyway.
Biological methods for removing rats from a private farm
This is the use of natural enemies of rats. Usually cats are bred to hunt rodents. But an ordinary cat can only cope with a rat pup, which does not come out very often. The rat-catcher cat, capable of killing an adult rodent, is highly valued in villages and is usually not sold.
To learn how to catch rats, the kitten must live with its mother for at least six months, learning hunting skills. And even in this case, there is no guarantee that the entire brood will catch such large rodents. Usually, kittens are given away at 2–3 months, and sometimes younger. The mother is just beginning to bring dead prey to a 2-month-old kitten, and the kittens’ teeth are not always able to cope with this game.
By 3 months, the cat gives birth to half-strangled animals, but the kittens are still far from full hunting. A kitten taken away from a cat so early simply has nowhere to learn the techniques of hunting rats. All hope is that he has wild instincts. Such a kitten usually remains wild, even without being handled. But much more often today among cats there is something like the one in the photo.
Weasels fight rodents well. When a weasel appears in your yard, you can be sure that it will catch all the rats. Unfortunately, the weasel will exterminate not only wild rodents, but also poultry and rabbits. It is impossible to explain to a wild animal why it is necessary to catch only rats.
A terrier coming from a working line of hunters can be a good help in the fight against gray rodents. Moreover, it is much easier for a dog than even a cat to explain that it is necessary to catch only rats, without touching domestic animals.
Terriers against rats
And, rather, just an interesting fact, the creation of the “rat wolf”. The method was used on ships during the absence of poisons and today it is more similar to sea stories. The sailors caught 1.5 - 2 dozen rodents and put them in a barrel, leaving them without water or food. These animals are cannibals by nature, and deprived of food sources, the rats began to fight among themselves until only one, the strongest individual remained. This rodent was released. Having tasted the taste of the meat of his relatives, the “rat wolf” ceased to be interested in the ship’s supplies and began hunting for his fellow tribesmen, driving them all off the ship. But on land this method is hardly applicable.
Conclusion
Fighting rats in a private home is, in fact, a protracted positional war in which it is unlikely that anyone will be able to win. Therefore, the question of how to destroy rats does not even arise. We only get rid of these animals for a while and can partially control their reproduction. To minimize the rat population in the house, remove all food from public access, clean out areas where animals are kept so that rodents cannot feed on leftover food, and keep rat poison in a secluded place at all times.
