Allotments 4 All

I'm considering our councils offer of cheap compost bins but i'm concerned of attracting vermin, especially RATS!! this bin would be kept in my back garden so i definitely do not want rats!! So my questions are as follows -

Are they a major attaraction, and if so what is the best deterent, finally are these bins worth the hassle? the link below is VERY imformative but is it true to life or just theory??

http://www.recyclenow.com/home_composting/highlights/siting_pretty.html

Thanks for reading this! any suggestions WELCOME.
KevB

Hi Kev - I've never had a problem with rats (touch wood) and keep one bin in my back garden - I think it's usuallyonly a problem if you put cooked veg, meat or dairy in. Great link by the way - although all those bugs made me feel a bit creepy - yuk! hope they're gone by the time I get the compost out  ;D

Yo kev, ditto to df, I have never known probs with compost bins and rats provided that they receive only raw veg matter, and I have been around compost heaps since I was wee  :P.
We have had rat probs on the allotments, due to careless woodpiles in some plots which provide the space for nests. Also spaces under shed floors. No spaces in your compost heaps, so no problems (touch wood ...)

Have seen suggestions of putting some wire mesh at the bottom to be sure you don't get rats. The worms can get through the holes but the rats are too big. Having said that I don't believe it is usually a problem.

I once had them nest in a bin, but poison soon put paid to that. Otherwise it hasn't been a problem.

I have two bins as in the picture - a couple of years ago as I lifted one of the bins off the mound of earth, a mouse fell onto my foot and scampered away.  I thought nothing of it - just made my heart beat a bit faster (it had chewed the corner off the sliding door at the front to get in and out) - live and let live I thought !!!

Anyway, got the fork out - and proceeded to turn the pile - (I normally bag it up so I can spread it round the garden easier) - as I opened up the middle, about 5 or more baby mice ran out.  To be honest they still had the square shaped faces of babies and I was a bit sad I had disturbed them.

I have never put anything other than garden waste in the bins - so didnt know what had attracted them - maybe a warm place to stay for the winter ?  Luckily, last year there was no sign of them - well not in the bins anyway - though I know they are there because the got into the greenhouse and ate the bird food I had in there !!!. 

Of course mice are different than rats ......

Monica

Hi KevB,

               I bought one of those plastic council ones last year and have had nothing but trouble with it, and not made any compost yet. I put it at the end of my allotment and within two days something had dug a moat around the bottom and pulled everything out. I should add I only ever put in raw vegetable scraps, never cooked or meat scraps. I assumed it was the foxes but when I posted to another messageboard, had lots of people telling me it was far more likely to be rats.
  Since then, someone on my allotment was looking the other day and sort of ridiculed my rat theory, saying it must be foxes as rats couldn't make that amount of damage in that space of time. Anyway, I'm none the wiser, and the hole that they created has now made a mini pond beneath the compost bin from waterlogging, rendering it completely useless.
  No one else has this problem on the allotment site and I was told that I might be better off making something from crates. I wouldn't know if that would make it less appealing to whatever's interested, but might make attaching chicken wire to the base easier. I wanted to put mine on concrete slabs to fix the problem, but apparently can't as the whole point is for the worms to get in from below.

  Good luck with whatever type you choose, and if anyone has any tips for me I'd be grateful!
;D

I get a lot of shrews in my bin....but no rats

I've had mice and voles several times; they're all over the place on the site. I don't mind them, it's just rats I object to.

I have never had a rat problem until....I started, about six weeks ago putting out the vegetable and fruit debris from the kitchen....up till then I have never bothered because our garden produces enough composting material in the normal run of a year. Anyway now I have rats in one compost heap..which one ? The one with the household vegetable and fruit waste. As I have occasionally put  cabbage etc peelings etc out before I can only assume that the attractant is the sweet fruit debris...so much for my recycling concerns. What's more I also have the worlds most intelligent mice. In the poytunnel I have been keeping cooking apples and have a few trays left, stacked up on quite high racks with plastic legs. The little swine not only climb the legs but they also push off the apples, four at a time, roll them over to the door (closed) about six feet away and then from the outside excavate to make a hole big enough to get the apples under the door. They have also for the last two nights taken the cheese  from the trap and not sprung it. I have taught less bright kids. Any suggestions?

Oh no! Don't kill them!! Leave some seed out for them, they might prefer to not waste their time if they can eat readily.

I have 3 council daleks and haven't had any trouble with rats yet. I did have a family of slow worms nesting in them last winter, since the material inside was quite dry at that time.

I am not keen on killing them , Common Clay . In fact I never have until now but you see it's now become a man thing, pathetic I know but I couldn't live with myself if I let a rodent get one over me...actually my wife, to whom, in a careless moment I let slip the mouse/rat problem gave me a good old verbal castigation saying that any animal that bright deserved it's place in the garden. I am now on the horns of a dilemma so I ask again, any suggestions anybody?

Your wife is right. :) If you can't beat 'em, join 'em? Not quite sure how that would work, perhaps mouse ears on an alice band and a few whiskers, and could we please have photos if it gets to this point. :)

Thankyou Common-I'm-all-for-mouse-ears Clay, very helpful, I'm sure. You know they say that you can kill any weed by simply regularly hoeing with a dutch hoe, well my wife suggested that I should just hang about the polytunnel more or less permanently and frighten them off. This remark was less in jest than you might think as she , in the summer, says that I spend too much time there anyway and do I need a seat and cans of beer. I think that was to what she alluded, to quote Eric Morecambe.

I have rats living under a stand of bamboo and in my horse manure based wooden compost enclosure.

Poison bait hasn't worked so far, as they either avoid it or tip the plastic containers over and, presumably, laugh.

Those in the compost will have to go when I use up all the compost, later this year, probably September, but without digging out the bamboo I'm well and truly at a loss what to do about the prime nest or nests.

Council bloke is as stumped as me.

They have gnawed through the wooden panel fence in several places, and undermined some fruit bushes, now dead.

Ferrets next?

As we are never (apparently) that far away from rats anyhow, I wouldn't worry about it too much.  I have had rats in both my compost bins in the garden, and mice in the ones on the allotment.  My sister has the dalek bins and she had a lovely big family of rats nesting in hers, and she only put garden waste in the bin.  I do kinda look at this as the whole cycle of life and I use the compost happily around my garden as a mulch.  After all, in my garden there are cats, foxes and birds pooing and weeing to their hearts content!

hey just realised I got another star!!!!

;D ;D ;D ;D congrats df, this is fun innit?  ;D ;D ;D ;D

My biggests concern about rats is that in winter they'll gnaw their way into a beehive and destroy everything inside while the bees can't leave the cluster and defend themselves in the cold weather.