Help! Dead rats in the garden!

choille

To put poison down is dangerous as anyone's pet can eat it also something may eat the poisoned animal so it needs care.

Farway

choille wrote: »

To put poison down is dangerous as anyone's pet can eat it also something may eat the poisoned animal so it needs care.

The poison instructions do state to place under cover / place in drain pipe etc to avoid pets eating it

Not sure about pets eating poisoned rodent, from my limited experience I have never found a dead poisened rodent, I suspect they crawl away to die in some hole or other, not just drop dead on the spot

Having said that if next door's cat ate a one of my dead rats instead of pooing on my lawn I do not think I would be too worried about the outcome

PS before anyone goes ballistic, I'm not advocating poisoning cats

choille

A poisoned rat will look for water - the nature of the poison - it dehydrates them, that's why I wondered if it had been poisoned.

Cats are less likely to eat something dead than a fox, dog & some birds that scavenge. But eating poisoned creatures is a problem - obviously.

Ziggymole

As a rural cat owner with plenty of experience of rats, I think I can reassure everyone that cats are VERY picky about what kills they eat.

Generally speaking a domestic cat will catch anything that moves, but they never eat another carnivorous animal, so we find the entrails of small furry critters but the bodies of rats, stoats and weasels, for some reason they don't eat moles or reptiles either.

Ziggy