Rats in garden

blue note

Any advice? We saw a rat last night in the garden and again this afternoon. It's a normal sized back garden in a housing estate. I can't think of any food that is being left around for him. But I can see areas which could be good for shelter - a wood shed and a separate wood pile, a garden shed and decking.

I'd rather stay away from poison. We sometimes see cats wandering around and wouldn't like to risk one accidentally ingesting it. Or worse my 1 year old somehow stumbling across it and putting it in her mouth. Do the ultrasonic deterrents work? What can be done about the shed / decking / wood? Is it fairly simply a matter of setting those old fashioned snapping traps?

endacl

Proper old school traps under the decking will sort that out.

Handiest method is to leave one of the planks loose for access. The only creature that go in there will be the ones you want to kill.

Mongfinder General

Find out how they’re getting in. Rats are incontinent - they will leave a trail for others to find. More will come. If you can’t find how they’re getting in, and you don’t want to use poison or traps, mix plaster of Paris with cup of soup and sugar.

If these bastards get into your house, it will be a nightmare. I’ve had the experience. Also, check out YouTube. Act fast because a rat will memorize its paths and won’t take the bait if it senses something amiss.

rolling boh

Would you not go with a rat box and poison he most likely will not be the first or last around . I have caught rats in the traps so they worked for me .

Tabnabs

Ultra sonic stuff does absolutely not work, with mice or rats. There is no "keep away" solution to this problem.

Rat poison in a bait station is your best solution and, with a bit of imagination, can be effective without being touched by kids or cats. Places like Woodies sell them.

endacl

Ingesting plaster is a horrible death to inflict, even on a rat. Snap traps are the best solution in all regards.

Rats under decking not uncommon but saying that I had decking for years and always rat-free. What’s your estate like in general- good and clean or are there hotspots of rubbish or derelict buildings? They’re around for a reason so try and determine the source of their food.

Spend the money on a good rat trap but keep kids and pets away. He may have just been passing through but try and look for droppings also and how prevalent they are- if they’re living in your garden you should be quickly able to determine the source.

If persists, consider employing a pest controller - but if you think the origin is in your estate somewhere in terms of food source, that’s what will need to be dealt with medium term

Mongfinder General

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119135214#Comment_119135214

So is Weils disease. Rats are horrible, filthy creatures. The OP has a child to protect.

blue note

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119135247#Comment_119135247

This is half the question and I just don't know. The first half is getting rid of the rats that are there. The second half is figuring out what attracted them to remove that attraction.

We've neighbours either side of us and our house back onto two other gardens. None of them look particularly unkept. The only thing I'm wondering about is could one of our neighbours have a compost heap? They've a green house, so must be into gardening, so would be the types to have a compost heap. Perhaps they have one and it's not particularly well covered? We have a disused wormery in that corner of the garden. It is sealed and hasn't been used in about a year. Last I checked it I could see zero food in it.

From a google of what attracts them, it's 90% and 10% suitable accomodation. The woodpile, the decking, under the shed and under the wood shed all look like they'd provide relative safety and shelter to me. But there's no abundance of food there. We don't grow fruit or veg, there's no rubbish, we've a bbq but there's never food left on it. We've only started eating outside in the last couple of weeks and haven't been throwing food on the ground.

The corner we saw them come from backs onto that greenhouse, so it is possible they're in that garden not mine and just wandered in.

Tabnabs

Decking is a magnet for rats as you drop scraps of food down there and it's a safe and well sheltered area for them to forage that food.

thefallingman

any rivers or streams behind the house ? A compost heap would certainly attract them, any dog or dog bowls out the back with food in it ?

1874

I have seen pictures and footage of people handle dead captured or trapped rats without any gloves. I'm all for building up resistance but Rats carry Weils disease (leptospirosis). I'd deal with this by any means possible (ie multiple means) traps, poison, anything, but I wouldn't handle dead rats directly as it may be possible to get infected through a cut, so I'd be concerned about a child in a backgarden as one poster highlighted, rats are incontinent, ie they dribble urine with the infection.

I saw a good trap online which is fixed to a wall or location where rats may pass, baited with something to attract rats, the rat sticks its head inside and is dealt with by mechanical means.

Call the council, see if they will put bait down, they use metal boxes that I think children couldn't get access to, but you could make it more inaccessible by covering in concrete blocks. The council had to lay bait (and possibly traps) in the area I live as idiots were throwing scraps/food on the green to "feed the birds" all that did was encourage rats and apparently there was some kind of warren/nest which was being dealt with by the council as I saw signs posted (hanging in trees). Another local idiot was putting piles of food out for cats, result was I found lots of rat droppings around/near food and in drains. After the council placed poison in the drainsin my garden repeatedly, the amount of rat droppings decreased significantly, while I find a small amount still in the drains, I wash it away with a garden hose and pour weak bleach over the entire drain surfaces to destroy any scent and clean it.

Check online, have seen traps made with large buckets and a roller, apparently catches rats? and mice?, no description of how they deal with the bodies, I imagine some kind of sealed and buried container with quicklime or a wormery may assist. I'm not sure if quicklime is readily available, OR maybe the council will take away and dispose of any trapped/killed rats.

Get rid of bird feeders (unfortunately), I was thinking of getting an old style metal bind lid and placing it under a bird feeder but erred and stuck with not feeding birds ata ll. Ensure food for pets is not left outside, any cats? possibly dont overfeed them, not that I think cats go for rats generally. I read a document found online about Cats efficacy at dealing with rats in NewYork and the end result was it was determined rats just hide themselves better or any infected with Toxoplasma will suicide themesleves to rats as that virus inhibits the rats ability to see the danger and the cat then gets infected and helps spread that parasite.

It's possible you or someone else nearby is creating attractive conditions for rats including food sources (difficult to deal with)

I'd advocate any means to get rid of rats, although I've never had to go further than getting the council involved.

The Continental Op

Another source of rat food is a neighbor who is over enthusiastic feeding the birds. Its not unusual to find a lot of food knocked off a bird table, hell I've even seen rats eating off a bird table.

compost heaps MAY attract them if there’s regular kitchen waste being thrown into the pit and it’s uncovered -bird feeders and decks less so - check with neighbours especially if you have a WhatsApp group going - vast majority of people want nothing to do with rats so if word gets out, it might make people be more vigilant and clean up their gardens - what you have in your garden may not attract rats per se, but if there’s a regular source of food in another garden close by, they may well use your garden as accommodation but it’s not true to say your garden is set up to attracting rats- hedgehogs yes, (the wood pile) but not necessarily rats.

If that was the case there would be 100,000s of people with that problem

newmember2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119135276#Comment_119135276

Think you're completely over-reacting, they carry disease but definitely not horrible looking, sure people even keep tame ones as pets.

billyhead

Would the cats not kill them?

Samuri Suicide

Try a goodnature trap -

https://goodnaturetraps.co.uk/shop/goodnature-a24-rat-trap-with-counter/

Expensive but very effective and child friendly. My neighbour has two and he no longer has a rat problem around his hen house.

lordgoat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119135276#Comment_119135276

Oh look the Maude Flanders brigade has arrived.

OP get 2-3 traps if you catch more than 2 -3 rats call in the professionals. If you follow the advice above they will die in a variety of places that you won't be able to easily remove them from. Do you really want to take up all that decking to remove a decomposing rodent body...

macraignil

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119136426#Comment_119136426

Would it be worth adopting a cat or dog from somewhere? A stray cat and dog shelter could be worth a visit and you could pick out a cat or a terrier or similar sized dog that could regard it as its job to keep your garden free of rats.

Tilikum17

Get a cat. The rat will quickly move on.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119139935#Comment_119139935

Always more than one rat and depends on the cat. We have rats near us, everyone has rats near them - you just don't always see them. As long as they don't come indoors, no great problem.

blue note

Thanks for all the responses guys. On getting a cat or a dog - I would absolutely love a dog, but we're just not in the house often enough for it to be an ethical thing to do. He'd end up on his own in the house for 12 hours some days.

Anyway, the wifes mind wandered anyway and she called in an expert. In fairness, if we'd set traps and caught them we'd have ended up calling the expert because it showed that they were there. Or if we didn't catch them we'd have called them too because it would mean that the traps weren't working.

She's now talking about getting rid of the shed and taking down the fences at the back. Hopefully she's going to stop there and not decide that we need to burn the house down to be sure.

Lumen

I think there's a common idea that the outdoors is a clean, fresh place that rats make dirty and disease ridden.

This is not true.

Soil is full of pathogens.

The idea of getting a cat to control rats, and somehow make a garden safer, is funny. I love cats but their poop is unsafe.

Wild birds carry avian flu. Squirrels carry leprosy and a host of other diseases.

And as others have said, rats are everywhere.