How do I know if I have a rat problem?

You can see rats, hear them (if they are inside), sniff their urine, see or suffer the consequences of their damage, or see them fall or gnaw. Fortunately, most rat problems are outside and are usually caused by a food source, rats using a hiding place or water source, or perhaps a combination of all three.

In home gardens, bird feeding, compost heaps and animal droppings are the main reasons. You can see rats during daylight hours, but they prefer to act at night. The absence of vegetation, smears, footprints and compacted earth speaks about the race. Rats lie in burrows dug in the ground and can cause harm by collecting nest materials, contaminating food with urine, feces and hair. Burrows can resemble small rabbit holes. They can dig holes in the ground or in compost piles, but they are easy to adapt and use under sheds or inside buildings.

Attics can be used as lounges, kitchens as a food source, or both. Rats are extremely intelligent and adapt to their environment. This is what makes them some of the most successful animals on the planet and makes controlling rats challenging. If rats are inside a building, you can hear them in wall cavities or rooftops. You can see their droppings or smell their urine.

Why treat rats?

Landowners have a legal obligation to treat rats. They carry disease, can cause fires, and cause other damage by chewing on cables, water pipes, etc., They kill other wild animals, and the infection multiplies and spreads rapidly.

Preparing for treatment

Write down where you see rats, ask your neighbors if they have them. Leave any debris or damage to be examined by a specialist. If you are feeding birds, stop. If you have a compost pile, do not put food on it. Identifying and handling the food source is the most important factor in controlling rat infestation.

Treatment

Infestations in rats are usually treated  Pest Control London with a cereal-based poison bait containing an anticoagulant poison called Sakarat *, which contains 0.005% bromadiolin. This venom usually requires rats to be fed several times before dying, or if they consume enough venom to give them a lethal dose on their first feed, they will not suffer any side effects until some time after feeding.

This ensures that they do not become suspicious and associate the bait with illness or death, and a “complete kill” occurs, killing all the rats in the colony. Another rat poison called * Sorex Brodifacoum Rat and Mouse Bait may have been used. The product code for this poison is BROD83000. The technician will let you know if it has been used.

It can take up to 7 days for rats to start feeding on bait as they are suspicious of new items. It is important to achieve complete destruction, as they reproduce at such a high rate that any survivors will soon replace the dead with their offspring. (A healthy female rat will live two years and can produce up to 60 pups per year.)

 Rats live in colonies with dominant and subordinate individuals. With severe infestation, rats can be seen feeding during the day, usually secondary older and weaker animals that feed during the more dangerous daytime hours to avoid the more aggressive dominant rats. If you see rats during the daytime, this usually means that the problem is serious enough.

What Do I Do Afterwards?

If rats enter a building, it is important that the entry points are located and filled (you may need a builder for this), otherwise the problem will recur in the future. If you don’t want rats to come back, you must first list the reasons why you had rats. Rats need three things to thrive in life: food, water, and shelter. Gardens often include all three, and any attempt to eradicate the infestation and keep it from re-infesting will fail if these three problems are not addressed.

 The main culprit is bird feeding, as it provides the rats with high-energy food at regular intervals in a fixed location. Birds are messy feeders, and a small amount of nuts pecked from the feeder will support a population of rats that will breed year-round and then drive their young into the vicinity to create a new colony.

Feeding birds can wreak havoc on wildlife, increasing the number of rats, mice and gray squirrels in the area to artificially high numbers that can be harmful to the natural population of wildlife. Many people die each year from diseases carried by rats and mice. Compost heaps are often a warm place to live in the winter with a regular supply of food if used at regular intervals.

Author: mayank