It is not an unknown fact that I have been battling mice and rats this past year. I’ve had my share of victories but have also taken numerous defeats. For whatever reason, we have seen more pack-rat problems this year. They are immune to the bait blocks. They set the rat traps off, then eat the peanut butter. I came face to face with one a couple of weeks ago. If we would have had light sabers, it would have been an epic duel. Although, I would have won. <\/p>\n
A couple of weeks ago, a student showed me videos of numerous rat\/mice traps. I watched and learned. I have since seen a bunch of facebook posts of the bucket trap. I built my own version. They work. I’ve used Nutella, Peanut Butter and Honey as bait on the roller bottles. I have caught mice in all three different barns. And this weekend, I finally caught a rat. Although, this was a somewhat disconcerting victory. There was a drowned rat in the bucket–frozen. But, the 1\/4″ metal rod with the plastic bottle attached to it, had been removed from the bucket and was nowhere to be found. What kind of critter dis-assembles the trap and then takes it to it’s lair? I have made design improvements to that bucket trap and ordered Duke to set a box trap for the perpetrator.<\/p>\n
For those of you that are worried about inflicting pain on a living being, this trap lets the rodent commit suicide. They have to make the decision to crawl out onto the revolving plastic bottle. Once they do, they have the option of swimming, climbing or jumping to keep their life. Not my fault if they don’t make it. They made a choice and must live or die with that choice. Of course, I wouldn’t have a problem stomping, shooting, smashing, poisoning or doing whatever it takes to make them leave the premises. This bucket method is somewhat humane, but it is the end result that I am after. <\/p>\n
Good luck and happy hunting. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is not an unknown fact that I have been battling mice and rats this past year. I’ve had my share of victories but have also taken numerous defeats. For whatever reason, we have seen more pack-rat problems this year. They are immune to the bait blocks. They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}