Need help on mice control How do you do it???

JOCCO

Well-known Member
Back helping friend and see we need to do mouse control. Real question is how do you do it year round around a farm/homestead??? I put out decon and traps can be used inside. BUT WHAT OTHER OPTIONS ARE THERE????? The house cat and local fox are under performing. Oh being an older house it is almost imposible to get it mouse proof. Guess I have a new job exterminator. Thanks all
 
Talk to the phone company in your town. I use to service generators for the phone company down here. They carried some stuff you couldn't buy at the stores.Gave me some one time. Works great.
 
D-con I hate, they die in hidden places and reek. Live, snap type or similar traps, you won't have them dying in walls and stocking d-con for more to find and do the same, and they will hide that stuff, then you might see one stumbling around in the open.

Mint extract/oil, they hate it and there may be other things similar that they do not like the smell of.

Food sources, eliminate those, and places like holes they may get in, using hardware cloth or whatever works.
 
I like to use just-one-bite bars. Figure out what they are eating. Feeding rabbits or animals will bring mice. In winter, put a bucket of water half full inside with some peanut butter on edges. Drown a few that way. I use pop cans on a rod, acts like a roller. Put peanut butter on cans. Mice will only swim for a while.

I find mice usually go to a shed first before going inside a house. I put bars in sheds and garages. Will keep mice from finding the house.
 
I 2nd the peppermint oil for around the house. I put it on a cotton ball an put it in the closets and different spots around the house, window sills kitchen cabinets... It repels mice and helps with spiders. I find it less effective around the barn so I use the just-one-bite bars they works very well.
 
I have a few wild cats that hangout around my barn. I haven't seen a mouse since they moved in about 15 years ago. I give them a little scoop of cat food everyday and they drink out of the livestock tank. I use to go through a bucket of mouse bait a year and would still see mice around before that.
 
I never had much luck with Decon as a control. I use Havoc Rodent control pellets. They are in small paper bags you can put around the inside of the house attic and basement wall sill. IF they are not chewed into you can move the packet easily. Then I also place TOMCAT blocks for rat control. Tomcat uses fish oil as an attractant which works better with rats. These blocks have a hole down the center. I take a 4 inch piece of PVC pipe and drill small holes across from each other on two sides. I then take a small wire and stick it in through one side of the pipe as through a bait block and out the other side of the pipe. I make these two feet long. so you can lay them along the outside of the foundations as the mice and rats will run through them as they make a cover for them to hide. The pipe protects the bait from weather.

Another thing to do is make the outside environment less rodent friendly. Limit outside food sources. Clean up as much clutter as you can so they have fewer places to nest and hide. Example of this would be stacks of old feed sacks. Trim the grass away from the outside of the house foundation. Bare ground helps but 2 inch stone about a foot wide really helps as mice to not like crossing it being in the open and they do not like burrowing in the larger rock. If the house has a laid rock foundation then dig down a little below ground level and plaster the outside with concrete/mortar to seal all the cracks in the rocks.

There is not one thing that will work but all of the above will help but nothing will get rid of them 100%.
 
d-con works but you have to use it the same as you water your dog. In other words everyday you have to throw out the old and put down fresh. Do this for a week and you will have no more mice. Next month you have to do it again.
 
in our tree seeding nursery we use a electronic high frequency sound emitter. they seem to work the best and you don't have to clean the kitty litter box
 
old house
just a regular maintenance thing.
poison containers in the basement and attic, check them regularly
.......never empty
initial all out battle? traps too

outbuildings are tougher, water bucket traps along with the poison will help keep poison costs lower.

sure, poison=dead rodents stinking once in a while.
doesn't last long.
what's the alternative?....let em live? ah...no
(if you have ever heard big rats fighting over poison in the space between floors....in the middle of the night.....the stink of them being dead won't bother you a bit....)
 
A couple rattlesnakes will take care of a big population of mice. A Gopher snake or King snake will do a pretty good job too.
 
My dad hated cats with a passion...and we always had 3 or 4 barn cats around for mice control. As stated below don't feed them very much you want them to "hunt"
 
For the house, easier to keep them out than to get them out! Get some "pest block" expanding foam and start filling every access point. They sense air currents coming through cracks and holes. Stop the air flow, stop the mice!

For the outbuildings, as long as there is food and warmth, they will come. To us, they are an annoyance. To them, it's a matter of life and death!
 
Well, you can't control the fox but you can maybe persuade the cat to helping. Cut down on feeding the cat and see if it will "hunt" for its own food. Also look for food sources that the mice are seeking, possibly the cat food bowl or other animals food, food scraps or other food being dropped or left out, on the ground etc.

I like sticky/glue traps but you have to watch where you put them because your pets can get into them too. Hide them under appliances, in corners and/or along base boards where pets can't get to. Just be sure to check them often, and sometimes you will hear the mouse making noise if they get stuck on one.
 
One of the best and hands down most fun I have owned is a trap(if you choose calling it)was one my brother home brewed more than fifty years ago. The business end is a transformer from a neon sign. Works like moving a plug wire away from ground just enough it stops sparking then pass a screwdriver between plug wire and ground. Zap, the arc resumes although the screwdriver is suspended in air ungrounded. Choose well traveled boards or other narrow and elivated routes. Elevated increases kill rate by 50% because sitting below ol sparky is a container of water where the dirty rat falls into and drowns in case he survives. Hopfully all our childhood neighbors are alive and well but don't frequint YT because I'm gonna reveal a family secret for the first time. Our aggrement with rat pluaged farmers was they leave some of their premium squeezings or iced down beer in the barn,set a lard can of parched peanuts and five gallon grease bucket with lid beside it and when things quited down late that night we would ease in and HAND CAPTURE and drown a few rats. Noone was to come near the barn while we operated because rats don't pay us much attention but you or the kids scare them into hiding. We knew who did and did not have elect power so that was a different kettle of fish. Flash-lite with red lens. Starting out it was paper off tire repair boots. How many of you recall those? Next morning farmer counted rats and beer,should tally out one drowned in grease bucket for four missing beers. If the tally was off one way or the other noone made a fuss. If you are wondering if us hillbillys thought drown rats might run off unless that grease bucket had a lid on it,no but like you fellers they had a bunch of half starved cats around most farms. I leave it to your emagination what kind of ridge runners people around there thought we were. We would have made a site more money catching wild livestock with our dogs and horses but have you tried roping off cow ponies drunk? Not bad if they line out accross an open field but where I come from everything besides river bottoms was in cotton and peanuts. Cattle pasture always included saw briars,thorn bushes and grape vines as large as your arm. That's where wild cattle go if you mess with them. Ask James and Nancy what Tx pastureland looks like. That's mot to infer Nancy tried ridding through there,much less without full awarness and sobrity. Neon parts can be pricy if you can find them but if you know your way round high voltage as many here claim to,a trasnformer,couple of capacitors and a hand full of other stuff will have you knocking them dead literlly and figuritively in nothing flat. Hooch optional but helps pass the time between action.
 
Fellow had one on here while back called "old slim" but I will pass on that one!!!!!!
 

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