"Katra" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Loki" wrote:

il Wed, 12 May 2004 00:43:14 -0500, Katra ha scritto:


I agree...
The rats have made it difficult to transplant corn sprouts! :-P
I usually just toss the trap into a bucket of water and walk away
for 10
minutes or so. If I don't have to watch, I can handle it.

When I catch rats by hand, I grab them by the tail and hit them
hard
against the nearest cinder block or tree, and that kills them.

The other morning, I found two nests and managed to kill one adult
female and 16 young rats that way. I watch carefully for nesting
sites
and clean them out about once every couple of weeks.

Gee where do you guys live? I have yet to *see* a rat. Let alone
need
to kill one. yuck what a topic....

Central Texas, suburbs...

I have chickens, they are attracted to the grain feed.
There is nothing I can do about that. I just have to find more
efficient
ways to kill the little SOB's. They are very prolific.

The general trick is to store the grain in a metal trash can or
something like that. Also, those dangling metal tube feeders work
well -- as long as the rat can't climb down whatever it is you dangle
the feeder from.

We had rats in our henhouse when I was a kid. My dad made a bait box
with a hole that's large enough for a rat to enter, but would keep a
chicken out. He put anticoagulant (warfarin) type rat poison into the
box every day. Sick and dying rats literally came out of the woodwork
after a few days.

It takes more than one dose to kill the rats, so the secret is to buy
five pounds or more of rat pellets, then keep the bait box filled. Just
putting out a box or two of d-con won't do it. The rats just get sick,
then get over it.

After a while, the dead rats stopped appearing and the poison pellets
stopped disappearing. We haven't had rat problems since then.


Ray