Produce > Pests & Diseases

Rats?

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Beersmith:
Studies have established that rats are  neophobic, and  very suspicious of  anything  new especially of  foodstuffs.   This is pretty surprising but means that  once poisons have been tasted  and accepted rats will  begin to eat them readily.  It just means it may take a long time before rats will overcome their caution and  try a nibble.   Rats are very  good at avoiding traps.   Worth trying but  no guarantee of success.

gray1720:
It's a decent survival strategy, though. Hopefully the disturbance from the dogs, compost shifting etc will help to persuade them to foxtrot oscar...

Vinlander:
I must point out that rats can fight back, so they are bold and therefore often very visible, but they tend to go for bigger targets - especially food waste in compost heaps (cooked or uncooked). Foxes are their enemies in theory but in practice foxes prefer high street fried chicken-in-a-basket-of-litter (and the occasional pigeon or mouse) to killing rats - I suspect most rats killed by foxes were rivals at the same half burger in the gutter.

OTOH mice are very stealthy, you'll hardly ever see them, and for them a nice pea, bean or sweetcorn seed is a good meal.

Despite the rats in and around my plot (and no visible mice), there's a mouse-sized hole over 99% of my missing seeds.  Since they eat my food before I can grow it or get to it, I regard them as worse than rats. A crop failure caused by a mouse actually denies me much more food than what a rat (or a pigeon) can take later.

You can have both on a site and usually do, though they are supposed to avoid nesting near each other - eg. in my polytunnel I get rats or mice every year - never both.

Cheers.

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