(602) 919-5915Rats and rodents are one big pain in the neck and once you have them, it can be difficult to get rid of them. Many things draw the rats and rodents to your house or barn including food left out, chickens, or just a soft, cozy place for them to call home.
Most of the Arizona area have Norway rats, also referred to as a brown rat, house rat, wharf rat, water rat, sewer rat, and gray wrapped. It’s large and robust and his belly is mostly gray weighing about 12 to 16 ounces. Most of its fur is coarse and reddish to grayish brown. His ears are small and it lives in colonies underground burrowing along your foundation walls and nesting inside the lower floors.
First off you have to recognize if you have rats but if you’re reading this, you probably have already seen their evidence. Rat droppings, holes dug around foundations or fences and general activity at night. They can be very difficult to spot in the daytime unless they’re super hungry and you have removed all of their food sources.
Rats also have a very strong ammonia smell and can be very noisy as they move through their holes and tunnels and most of their pellet-shaped droppings can be found near entry points around the house. Rodents can be extremely damaging chewing through electrical cables causing fire hazards, and damage storage containers of food for pets. There are several ways to get rid of rats and if you’re trying some home remedies, here’s how to get rid of rats.
#1. Seal up any gaps you find into the home.
Rats can get into your home through exterior gaps and holes so it’s important to seal them with wire wool, coking, or metal. If you’re not sure how the rodents are getting into your home, you may need to contact pest control experts to analyze the site.
#2. Remove anything that would draw the rats.
We had one customer that left their chicken feed out including the water all night and by the morning, most of that food was gone. Once they removed the food sources and locked up the chickens with their food and water each night, the rat population slowly dwindled.
#3. Clean.
Keep clutter to a minimum and move items away from the walls to ensure that you can check what’s hiding behind them. If you had clutter, wood, siding, or anything stacked up against the outside with even the inside of your house, it could be the perfect breeding ground for rats nests.
How to get rid of rats without killing them.
There are several ways you can remove rats without actually killing them… I mean, some people even have them as pets. But if you are not quite the rat loving pet owner but you don’t want to kill them either, you can purchase ultrasonic pest repellent units and plug them into electrical outlets around your room. This in it’s a sound that does not bother other pets such as dogs and cats but it drives rats, mice, and other rodents crazy. However, if you have rodents as pets inside your house, this is not the best option.
Choose a live catch trap to get rid of the rats. You may even be able to rent the traps at some hunting gear and farm equipment stores. Of course, you’ll have to take the rats you capture well away from the populated area so that there is no way it will return. You want to wear a pair of heavy gloves when releasing the traps as rats have sharp teeth and can be aggressive when frightened.
Other ways to get rid of rats.
Traps or bait.
There are a variety of traps including glue boards, live traps, and snap traps that can be very effective in getting rid of rats. However, rats can tend to be very smart so unless you’ve loaded up the trap with something extremely enticing, rats may figure out what’s going on and avoid the trap even if it has something very tempting on it. Rats tend to like meet and blood so a little piece of chicken or steak attached to the rat trap is usually the best option. You can attach it with chewing gum or peanut butter so they really have to get on the trap in order to remove the food.
There are also a variety of bait options to get rid of rats from baiting traps to rodenticide to bait stations. These can be loaded up with the bait but you need to be extremely careful that pets such as dogs, cats, and even birds have easy access to the bait. Bait stations and baiting traps seem to be the easiest as the rat will need to go into the box in order to eat the bait. However, rats have also been known to pull out the bait and leave it where a cat, dog, or chicken can access it so you’ll need to be extremely careful when using bait.
For more information on removing rats and getting rid of rodents on your property, contact us at any time.
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