Compost bins attracting rats.....

usignuolo

I live in a pleasant suburban street not far from the river Thames. Our council has been promoting compost bins and I took up the offer and installed one at the end of my garden. It didn't take long for a family of rats to take up residence (the bins had no bottom) - although I was scrupulous what I put out and I stopped using it and got the council in to clear them out.

However I noticed several older people in the road had installed the compost bins and the guidelines on what to compost are confusing at best. It only takes a few egg shells to lure them in, and I was concerned that the rat population locally might into our houses as the gardens are small and the houses are old and have old coal holes, and air bricks many of which have cracked covers.

I contacted the counil who basically denied there was any potential problem with rats, despite the fact that the neighbouring borough, border only half a mile away, had had to issue revised guidelines because they became such a problem.

Earlier this year, by coincidence, four of the older home owners moved out. One of the houses was occupied by squatters who generated a lot of rubbish until they were cleared out and the other three houses stayed empty for a while. Then they were all sold and extensive building work started, on all of them which meant they have been unoccupied for several months, and presumably if there were any rats living in the garden compost bins, they would get well stuck in.

Building work continues on two houses which remain empty, one chap is doing it himself and looks likely to continue doing so for many months. Coming home from shopping yesterday, I turned the corner and a large well fed sleek rat scampered along the pavement in front of me and up into the front gardens of one of the houses at the end of the road. It seemed to disappear into the broken vent in the front of the air vent under the bay window.

I have no broken air vents or cracked coal holes but I do have a large cellar I use for storage and so does my next door neighbour. Meanwhile the council has stopped offering a free vermin control service and I am worried that the rats are getting out of control and will invade my cellar next. Is there anythingI can do to discourage them?

surfsister

rat poison if they come near your place. I had a problem after my feral cat died(he was a terror and chased the rats away) and left rat poison in a closed shed. It soon disappeared several times. Worringly uou can even but it in poundland shops!!

About the composting don't add any cooked stuff/egg shells etc just grass clippings/tea/coffee/veg offcuts/torn newspaper/weeds etc

I had a rat proof compost container (cost £120 plastic) I had it a week and rats chewed a hole right through!!! But after the posion I have had no problems.

Look for rat droppings if you're not sure if you have them in the cellar, like mouse only larger and you can usually smell rats, a horrible smell.

Not much else I can think of, anyone else help out here?

rhiwfield

As for the composting bins attracting rats, they can do. Solution is to lay layers of chicken wire/mesh underneath so they cant tunnel in. Unfortunately rats are everywhere, in cities, towns and villages but if you deny them access and dont allow them access to food you will minimise the problem

Lotus-eater

rhiwfield is right, rats are everywhere, all the time, we keep their numbers down (sometimes), but that's all all we can do.

I've never seen a confusing (at best) instructions about what to compost, all very clear to me.

But you do have a problem that you need to deal with, fast, otherwise they will get out of hand.

This advice comes from experience and I don't care if you like my advice or not. All the neighbours need to work together, you can't do it by yourself.
If it were me I would contact everyone whose house backed onto the area I was worried about, advise them to put wire under their compost bins, after that they should be fine. Help them with what they put in them, if they are confused. If it were me and someone was too old to do it themselves, I would sort their bins out for them.
Tell everyone that ANY food outside will attract rats, no birdfeeders, no bread on the lawn, nothing. No food in binliners outside for the rats to break into. You only need one bad nieghbour and the whole thing won't work.
You will need to poison them, it will be better if you do it as a community and my choice would be the council. But you can do it yourselves without too much problem. You can buy large amounts of poison online and it's not that expensive.

Now........ if you manage to get everyone together to do that, you must be a magician but it is something worth persevering at.

Ste_C

If you're going to poison them, make sure it's proper poison and not cheap stuff. The cheap stuff is weak enough to make the rats feel ill but not weak enough to finish them off, so it'll only serve to make them stronger.

However, poison shouldn't really be needed anyway. Don't make it easy for them with food and don't give them easy access to a potential habitat.

Lotus-eater

Poison will be needed, once they have moved in, it is almost impossible to get rid of them without it.
Not making it easy for them with food and habitat before they have moved in, is good advice, once they are there, it won't make that much difference, they will just find food somewhere.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Think you're unfortunately on a bit of a loser here. So the rats like living in the nice warm compost bins - if their access to the bins is restricted, where else nearby is warm, safe and with a constant supply of leftovers? That's right - the houses. They'll be in the sewers already. And it doesn't matter whether you are in the Lands End Estate, Lots Road or Chelsea Harbour (for example) the rats don't care. All they see is food in bins, in burger containers, on the floor, everywhere they go.

ANGLICANPAT

So how do you know what is a strong enough rat poison and what isnt? Can you buy strong enough ones legally without going online? We live in a Victorian house with 6 flats in it. We've been putting poison down intermittently for mice for a while and they seemed to have gone, but now the ground floor says theyve seen a rat in their flat, and we have heard over the past two nights, really noisy scratching under the floorboards. Two of the flats want to do nothing, three want to put down the strongest possible poison (ideas?) and one wants to call out Rentokil because they say they will remove bodies and target properly . How the hell can they claim to find dead bodies , the rats could die anywhere couldnt they?

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

They usually come back after leaving the bait and collect corpses.

ANGLICANPAT

But if rats die in their nests which could be under floorboards, in cavity walls etc

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how could they without mutilating your house?

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

The rats have to get in and out somehow. Otherwise they wouldn't be there in the first place. And they are more likely to do it properly (ie, cleanly, effectively, and without killing domestic animals, other wildlife or leaving rotting corpses all over the place). Because, if you bung down whatever stuff you get sold in the nearest DIY shop (like they or you are experienced in pest control), you get the job of dealing with the results. And if you don't identify every entry point, you'll just get more moving in to a vacated area. Oh yes, and I would rather someone trained was handling stuff that could quite easily kill me or my family if it isn't used correctly, rather than the bloke next door, for example.

Not my idea of fun.