We have two 'outside cats' that we feed, but don't feed them a whole lot. We want to encourage them to make something of themselves and to be gainfully employed as rat control specialists. The idea is that if we give them less cat chow, then they'll supplement with RAT chow. They do, especially in the fall/winter months, bring their dead prey to our door step. It is quite nasty to step out first thing in the morning and have a mangled rat on your back door Welcome mat, but, well... That's life in the country.
In the summer months our cats aren't industrious and spend most of their time napping in the shade. Meanwhile the rat population grows. We just stacked 100 bales of good hay in the loft in our barn and (there's no nice way to say this), I don't want rats pooping and peeing on the cow's hay. Rats also carry disease and stink. An abundance of rats will likely attract snakes and hawks which don't mix well with our chickens, the hen's eggs (and my wife).
When I walked into the feed room in the barn the other day, rats had chewed through the bag of alfalfa hay and had made a big mess. You can see their calling cards - rat droppings, in the photo below.
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| Rat Droppings in the feed room |
In previous posts I showed you how we use rat shot from a .22 rifle to shoot the rats off of the rafters in the barn. When we turn the lights in the barn, the rats scurry and I shoot and kill them. Well, I'm out of rat shot and the hardware store was out as well, so let's try Plan B. A buddy of mine loaned me a small animal trap. Let's put a dent in the rat population, shall we?
I have the trap baited and the door is open and the trigger is set.
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| Baited trap that is set and ready |
Here is a closer look. You can see that I've cut a bite off of a hot dog and thrown it to the back of the cage. You can see the trigger just to the left of the wiener. The rat will smell the hot dog and enter the trap to eat via the open door. When the rat steps on the metal 'pad' to get over to the bait, it triggers the door to close behind it, thus trapping the rat.
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| Hot Dogs! Get your hot dogs here! |
In the morning we could hear movement in the feed room, alerting us to the fact that we had captured a rat. Yes indeed. A young Norway Rat. I don't speak Norwegian, so I don't know exactly what he was saying, but you can tell by the look in his eye that he knows he has made a mistake that will cost him dearly. While he might have escaped our lazy cats, he fell prey to the trap.
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| Rats! |
I read on victorpest.com that Norway rats can have 8 - 12 'pups' per litter and can have 4 - 7 litters per year. If my math is correct and I use the conservative ends of the statistics mentioned above, each female can deliver 32 babies a year. Those babies reach sexual maturity in 2 - 3 months.
Translation: If you don't do something about it, you have a big problem on your hands.
I shook the rat swiftly in the cage to stun him and then dumped him out on the ground. Perspective is an interesting thing. What you and I see as an ugly animal with a long tail, the chickens see as supper. Sorry I didn't capture any photos of that macabre spectacle.
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| The only good rat is a dead rat |
I'll continue to mix up my arsenal of shooting them with rat shot, using conventional snap traps, as well as using the nifty cage trap my buddy let me borrow to keep the population under control. In less than a week, the scorecard is as follows:
Cage Traps: 3
Rats: 0
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