Mouse Invasion Time

[Jim Meade / Iowa City]

My amateur experience is that mice are a problem in buildings in the fall when they are looking for a warm place and in the spring when they come out of whereever they are and explore, maybe also looking for a warm place.

I've put a lot of time and effort into mouseproofing buildings and conclude it's pretty rough to do a retrofit if the building isn't tight to begin with.

So, every spring and fall I get out the traps, the bait and stop cracks I find to try to stay ahead of the mice.  A month or so and the invasion is over for the season.

I've used many strategies, but sticky traps and block poison seem to work best in buildings.  I use the bait and moth balls in the combine.  We don't have any corn cribs any more or any animal feed lots, so we don't see the rats we used to, but there are signs of one now and then.

Do you have a porblem and what do you use?

[Shaggy98]

We've had problems for years. Got myself about 1/2 dozen cats and after about 3 months problem solved for the most part.

[dave.charlesworth]

I agree with Shaggy, the best rodent control is some barn cats. I haven't had any rodent trouble since the arival of the nontoxic and natural rodent control devices several years ago. 

[buckfarmer]

My Deere dealer has a repellant that smells like a air freshener. I don't knowing if it works, but it smells good enough to throw it in the cabs anyway.

[cityslicker]

We use bait stations that use the cubesof bait. There are pins in the station and the cubes have holes that you put the pins through to keep the bait in the station and the rodents can't carry them off. We have reduced our rodents to nothing. Over a couple years we've used abount 10 lb of bait . Can't remember what the bait costs. We use two different kinds. One is a blue color and the other is tan. Don't know the active ingredients. The blue colored bait is always gone first, but the tan is eaten also. The stations cost about $10 and would last mostly forever. Just don't forget where you put them. They would outdoors as long as the are not right below an eave where the water really falls.We had trouble for years by one grain bin and when we put a couple of these nearby it wasn't long and you could smell the results.

[Jameshh1964]

As our warehouse holds mostly certified organic grains, we are not allowed to use poison bait. I don't think we would anyway for fear of a mouse dying in some food grade tote bag of grain. We do use alot of traps. 90% of the mice are caught in the spring. The traps have an almond kernel (organic of course because even Oregon mice are concerned about pesticides) glued to the tripping mechanism. They are placed in every corner and under about every 10th pallet space. They are checked via flashlight twice per week. We very rarely catch mice anymore.

[jeffreygweydert]

Jim,

This is the first time I have responded, but have noticed many of your posts in the past.  I wish I could take credit for this idea, but i read it somewhere several years ago, possibly on this site.  A 1 1/2" PVC tee with a short piece (5-6") of PVC in each of the 3 holes and a cap on the top.  (Do not glue the cap on). The short pieces of pipe keep pets from reaching inside. You can remove the cap and put whatever poisen of choice.  You need to secure it so that pets can not turn it over and reach the poisen.  Additionally, if you think where mice travel, it is normally next to the wall.  I have actually placed these on the outside of a building to kill the little beggers outside and not get the smell inside.  Seems to have worked pretty well. 

[clayton58]

Any ideas on what to do about rats? We moved our shop activities out to a new shop and with less activity in the now storage building, now we're fighting rat(s)

[Shaggy98]

I'm telling you that cats work well for rat control as well, at least they are for me.

[nedphotoggmail]

Yes, that's very true.

You can try everything under the sun and tend to traps and poisons and so forth every week or just get a couple tough cats. The cats are the best option and 100% effective. They're fun to have too. Tom Falater