Rats, Chickens & Rabbits
In Pests in October, Pests in September, Pests in Winter, Rats & Mice
Rats, Chickens & Rabbits:
Melissa Aino (our only lady pest control technician) was called out to a rat job. She has taken photo’s while she is there. She is currently carrying out a riddance program and once successful the customer is going to have an annual pest control contract. The pictures show that this site has everything that rats need: food, water (not a problem at the moment!) and cover. It must be mentioned that rats are attracted to the smell of other animals (even predator animals such as dogs, foxes etc.) even if they (the rats) can’t access the animals food, water or droppings. The rats here have easy access into the chicken and rabbit living and run areas. They have cover and appear to be living in the bedding, litter and burrowing into the soft soil. There are even bags of seed in the sheds to eat. In these circumstances if left unchecked the population would expand and as the areas around the food supply get congested with rats they will live further away and commute in to feed. The more dominant rats will live on top or next to the food supply and feed at night, the less dominant rats will feed at night and commute in while the lowest (the old, sick and young) will have to live far away from the food source and risk feeding in the dangerous daylight hours. This rat treatment will not succeed unless the food supply is excluded. Ideally the chicken runs should be on a concrete base and wire mesh not more than half an inch diameter should be used. The ‘normal’ one inch chicken wire is not good enough. Young rats will easily get through this. If putting a concrete base down cannot be done then in the short term ‘sealing’ the run using half inch netting will help but the rats will still burrow underneath and get food and droppings that fall through.
