TOPIC: How do you control rodents?

Guy ask me about rodent control but I don't have an answer. I do have a seed producing bed of 120 plants surrounded by rabbit wire.
Right now all my more mature plants in the wild pretty much have seed clusters but thats not to say that they could not be eaten in the next few days.
Does anyone have a solution?

rootman

Not really. Owls, snakes, cats and bait stations work, but so do rifles and rat traps with peanuts on the trigger. But, any and all of those only can do so much...its like holding our finger in the hole in the dike so to speak. We can only hold the wave back so long.

Don't kill the snakes you find! And as mentioned above, encourage the owls, etc.

In the wild, you just have to factor in some loss. So, if you need seed from 120 plants each year, have 200 plants growing! That will allow for some predation of the seed - be it rodents, birds, etc.

I do put out some snap traps, mainly to see what is out there. Don't really use them as a control method. I'm more concerned with poachers, but haven't been able to find any human sized snap traps...

\"human sized snap-traps\"... LOL

I had mice in my greenhouse, and used mouse poison to controll them. I didn't like putting poison out, much rather us the snap-trap, however these mice were smart and ate the nut right off the trap w/o springing it.

I was just thinking, What about buried mason jars with a dumping platform and bait on the end and counter weight to pull the platform back up?

rootman wrote:

I was just thinking, What about buried mason jars with a dumping platform and bait on the end and counter weight to pull the platform back up?

Well, you know what they say....if you build a better mousetrap....