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Rats In The Garden


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Bird feed in a neighbours garden, chickens, rabbits or guinea pigs nearby or it could be a more serious issue like a broken drain if they've been there forever. Get the buggers poisoned as you won't clear it very quickly with traps.

My only thought on poisoning is the fear that if a poisoned rat made his way down the street and was eaten or chewed by a dog would it kill the dog as well. I'm not up on poison and not sure if that's a real thing
You watch too many films or read too much rubbish in newspapers lol

 

The amount of residual poison in a dead rat is tiny as concentrated in the liver generally, using difenacoum for example the LD50 (lethal dose to kill 50% of a given animal population) for dogs is 200g of poison per kg of body weight. The same for bromadialone. These are the safest with bromadialone being the best for rat kills.only around 9g of poisoned bait will kill a rat although they will eat much more than that. Baits Placed inside a few wooden boxes to prevent non target animals and birds getting it will sort them out.

There are others which are significantly stronger and should only be used by professionals!

 

If a dog eats a rat or 10 when using the above it will be perfectly fine!

Edited by ratattack
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Bird feed in a neighbours garden, chickens, rabbits or guinea pigs nearby or it could be a more serious issue like a broken drain if they've been there forever. Get the buggers poisoned as you won't clear it very quickly with traps.

My only thought on poisoning is the fear that if a poisoned rat made his way down the street and was eaten or chewed by a dog would it kill the dog as well. I'm not up on poison and not sure if that's a real thing
You watch too many films or read too much rubbish in newspapers lol

 

The amount of residual poison in a dead rat is tiny as concentrated in the liver generally, using difenacoum for example the LD50 (lethal dose to kill 50% of a given animal population) for dogs is 200g of poison per kg of body weight. The same for bromadialone. These are the safest with bromadialone being the best for rat kills.only around 9g of poisoned bait will kill a rat although they will eat much more than that. Baits Placed inside a few wooden boxes to prevent non target animals and birds getting it will sort them out.

There are others which are significantly stronger and should only be used by professionals!

 

If a dog eats a rat or 10 when using the above it will be perfectly fine!

Cheers

 

Although I can't imagine any films where secondary poisoning from rays happens or newspapers that a story like that appears in lol

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Fen traps and /or poison, site the fens in boxes, wooden or brick so dogs/cats can't get to them, pipe going in each end, takes a few days for rats to get used to something new, but then they will start catching and work 24/7 (until they trigger).

Poison, won't really hurt anything else like dogs as the Amount needed is so miniscule it won't effect dogs, some of the older poisons were bad for it, but not now a days, not the Ones general Joe can buy.

 

Edited to add I just read the replies, seems Others have already given my advice.

 

blood doesn't usually bother them as I have watched them eat the dead ones I have shot around my pens, they really are savage

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  • 2 months later...

Just a update. I set fenns in tunnels and caught nothing . The guy next door has started the refurbishment and he said he found a huge rats nest under the floorboards of the outside sheds . He's had diggers in etc and gutted the whole place . Found 1 rat wandering at the bottom of my garden m it was woozy as i managed to get point blank on it before shooting it. Last one i seen. Hopefully they move somewhere further away

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  • 3 months later...

I had a rat problem around my old house due to a very untidy neighbor with a few pigs to top it off, I shot some within my garden boundaries and caught a few in live traps, I found putting them tight up against a run with a board sitting over on an angle for extra cover to make them feel safe worked a treat then just dispatched them with the air rifle

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When it comes to an infestation near a residential premises I wouldn't try trapping, just bait them up and solve the problem A.S.A.P. The enamel on a rats teeth is harder than iron so they can do a lot of damage if they get in your house. Like ratattack said use Bromadialone or Difenacoum. Both are second generation poisons that can be purchased from Mole Valley Farmers or similar. I know you have solved the problem now but if you or others do use poisons in the future one thing a lot of people DON'T do is secure the poison in a box. When you get a professional bait box it has a copper bar inside. The purpose of the bar is so you can thread the poison, either in the form of wax blocks or pasta pouch/bags, on to the bar. When the rats find the bait they'll eat from the bait box, if the bait has not been threaded onto the bar you'll get one rat take the whole lot away and hide it. Some times rats won't touch bait, or eat off a trap, for ages, sometimes not for weeks. This is because some rats are extremely Neophobic, they have a fear of anything new. So if you are using bait boxes put them down and disturb them, and the surrounding area, as little as possible. There was a comment above that had concerns with cats and dogs getting secondary poisoning from dead rats. Every year there are hundreds of tons of rat poisons sold all over the country and I have never heard of a pet being harmed from eating a rat. There have been cases where a dog has eaten rat poison and this will have the same effect as it would on a rat. Signs of this would be vomiting, nose bleeds and bruising. If you think your dog may have eaten poison take it to the vet and get Vitamin K1. This is the antidote to rat poison. Rats, unlike dogs, can't vomit so if your dog was poisoned and started spewing up it would probably get the worst of it out any way.

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I haven't been shooting for too long and I bought an smk rifle/pistol package in .22 calibre. My aim has improved where I can now Ping a drinks bottle cap off a stick/pole at around the 50-60 feet range.

My rifle is an smk12 which is actually a junior rifle as I wanted my girlfriend and her daughter to be able to use it also, hence buying a lighter rifle. I recently noticed a few rats running across the back garden in the evenings and decided to test my shooting abilities on a moving target. I have hit about 15-20 altogether and have 4 confirmed kills. Resilient little sods tend to do backflips and scurry off.

I shoot from a back bedroom window and have heard that rats can't see red light so I have hung out a work light with a fire glow bulb (make use of what's available). The light is just to help see them better as my garden has high trees in blocking alot of light from street lights etc so is very dark.

I'm upgrading my rifles now and I've already paid for and ordered the Hatsan 1000s .25 calibre, just waiting for it to be delivered and will be ordering the Gamo fox delta gt whisper in .177 calibre and the Hatsan striker edge sniper in .22 calibre giving myself the option of each calibre for various situations.

I've been told that smearing peanut butter or melting chocolate spread and mixing it with cooking oil to a runny consistency are some of the best baits. Can anyone recommend any other baits that I could use please? I'm guessing finding the best bait is like finding the best pellets for your Rifle and once found brings the best results.

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