Getting rid of rats/mice (merged threads)

MoneyMate

Hope you get it sorted soon , hope this link helps :beer:

http://www.scotts.com/smg/goART2/InfoHowTo/do-you-have-rats-or-mice-in-the-house%3F/12900002

paulsad

Size of faeces if larger than couple of mm probably mean rats (sorry!) Hopefully not but chewing of toys also makes me suspect them. Our mice only seem interested in food and as we are quite rural probably just dormice - I have had a sonic device plugged in for many months and it doesn't seem to have made a lot of difference.

Had rats at my last place which was more in the city they were gaining access by climbing the inside of the drainpipe into the roofspace then down into the rest of the house via the wall cavity. I sealed the bottom of the drainpipes using steel mesh wire. Killed 7 under the kitchen sink using rat traps baited with chocolate biscuit (Nasty but necessary). The first lot were nesting under the conservatory and I poisoned them but they die and rot so the smell is horrendous for many weeks. You MUST try and stop them getting in its the only long term answer - hope I'm wrong and its just mice (If you have mice then you won't have rats as well as the rats kill them).

brightontraveller

Seal up all holes and cracks in your home where rodents may be gaining access. Mice can get through smallest of holes, so blocking them out completely is hard. Making it as difficult as you can may be enough to discourage rodents. Check around your foundation, windows and door frames etc for small holes, cracks and seal. For Air bricks etc some put rodent mesh over those ?



Removing bushes flora etc around house perimeter to meter away can also help, Plenty of traps and poison keep doing so till bait have not been touched for week or so mice aren’t as smart as rats so in one sense easier to trap, poison etc You tend not to get them both together as rats eat the mice lol Some plants are a deterrent to pest spearmint peppermint plant lots of that etc Camphor balls are good with mice along with ammonia the smell of a cat it normally takes two three weeks to get rid of them perseverance is key

Sterlingtimes

Thank you all for the excellent and quick fire advice. I am going to follow a few of these suggestions. But I am minded now to call in Solihull Council just in case I have worse than mice in the loft. The price of £50 seems reasonable.

KeepCalmCarryOn

Update on our visitors:
Whoever said "it's never just one mouse" was right, we caught one in a snap trap last week and then two more yesterday, when all along we'd been thinking there was only the one! We've hopefully sealed up the entrances now though so just need to get rid of any remaining ones.
We're getting the council in next week, ours come for free (Liverpool) so maybe different councils work differently with this. A bit of advice also, we were using a Rentokil "mouse killer" that we bought from B&Q that the mice were quite happily eating for 4 weeks to absolutely no effect, so I wouldn't use this one again. In the end we ended up buying one online called Sorexa that was recommended by a work colleague who had a mouse problem last year and when the council came out they told him this is the one they use themselves and it seems to be working a lot better than the other one so far!

lonestarfan

I don't think the mice are there at the moment but there's definitely been mice in my garage as soft stuff eg old carpet has been nibbled and mouse droppings etc. do they come at particular times of year does anyone know or is it all year round?
How do I get rid of them and stop them from coming in? A brief search says peppermint oil, has anyone used this and it worked?
I'd rather not have dead mouse bodies to get rid of so I'd rather they don't come in there in the first place.
But if they do how do I dispose of their dead bodies and how do I kill them off ?
Just in case anyone wants to start trolling me cos they love animals then please don't. I'd rather the mice didn't die by the way but don't want them in my garage.
Not sure where they are getting in so will try to solve that also.
Thanks.

Ps my post has sensibly been moved to this thread so I will see if I can pick up some tips from previous posts.

Jonesya

I'd start with a few mouse traps, baited with chocolate or peanut butter. Yes you've got to get rid of the bodies but at least that way they're gone, I can't see you deterring them from the whole garage.

lonestarfan

Thanks to whoever moved my post to this thread. I'll have a read

lonestarfan

Has anyone used the peppermint and found it to be effective?

gamston

we get a lot of mice in our loft, can't find how they get in there,
best thing I used was an electronic plugin sound box, but you could not tell when it stopped working/broke, so we went back to traps
I use peanut butter now, don't think its better than anything else I've tried, but its easy to put in trap "holder"