Grow Your Own Magazine

Not sure if there is an answer to this but.....
Our allotment is opposite an old railway line and rats from there frequently pop over and help themselves. Last week they got into our shed and ate all our seeds that were there. Lots of people put poison down, but it doesn't make a difference. Any ideas?

Call a professional, and ask their advice.
On my site we have rats (cos the neighbours leave bread and scraps on the birdtables) but they don't visit me any more:

• keep seeds in tins. Not plastic, rats will chew through it
• don't provide cosy warm dry rat beds: water your compost heap
• leave a big gap under your shed (mine is 6 inches up on breezeblocks
• obviously don't put meat scraps on the compost heap
• don't leave birdfood on the ground after dark

I hope this helps you too.

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

We had a few visits from rats, as an association we purchaced a tub of poison if anybody on the site spots any work someone from the commitee will lay the poison untill the visits stop, the poison is put in drain pipes so as to keep out any other wildlife or domestic animals, the poison is in tablet form so there is no worries about spillage, this works out cheaper than calling in the ratman who around here will charge £40 a visit.

I thought local authorities had to deal with rats? Heard on the radio the other day, that people should call in the professionals as soon as they see rats, otherwise the problem will get out of control.

They seem to love cosy sheds, my brother just discovered a nest in his shed..

In a number of parts of England, rats are now immune to every poison available......

KVP
I suggest you give your local council a ring, down here it will cost you at least £40 for the council ratman to come out, one of the allotments in the borough called them out and this is what they were charged

[quote=kentvegplot;162359] They seem to love cosy sheds, my brother just discovered a nest in his shed..[quote]

Consider how they are getting in ... I had some chewed a hole thru the shed floor once. My next shed, I raised higher up off the ground, now the rats can't shelter under it to even begin chewing.

p.s. our council (Gt Yarmouth) provides a free service for rats and mice - rehousing, I presume

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

Our council provides a free service to get rid of rats for homeowners/renters!

What happens at our allotment site is that someone from the council comes out and gives the allotment committe the rat poison with insstructions how to use it. If anyone has a problem with rats they only need approach the committee who will either set the poison themselves or give poison and instruction to allotment holder of how to use it!

Seems to work for us as apparently there was a major rat problem,(before my time there) considering quite a few have chickens and we are on the edge of fields and woods, but we seem to be free of them for now!

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

p.s. our council provides a free service for rats and mice - rehousing, I presume[/quote]

Not any more they don't. WDC have charged for mice for at least four years - they did do rats for free in residential properties, but they are now putting the contract out to private tender which means we will all have to pay!!

We didn't think we had rats in the shed until we left one of the pups in there while we cleaned out her run. Ten minutes later, we opened the shed and found her sitting there with a dead rat at her feet, not bad for a 6 month old Welshie!

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http://www.weltaf.co.uk/
Why keep a dog when you can bark yourself !

Call me biased (I have four happy rats living in my front room) but if you're careful you never need to trap or poison them. Just make sure everything edible is kept in a secure container like a biscuit tin, and don't give rats the opportunity to make a nest (ie don't leave cardboard or textiles lying around in your shed).

I saw a brown rat on the allotment next to mine a few weeks back - if she makes a nest in my shed I'll probably start feeding her! She has as much right as I do to be there.

light the blue touch paper and step back ....
I would agree that wild animals have a right to live - in the wild. A shed is not a naturally occurring habitat. It might be nice to have one pet brown rat, but they have a LOT of babies!

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

.....and carry diseases.

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Manda.

"Wouldn't it be nice
For maybe an hour
To not have a care."

Baby rats - how wonderful! Seriously though, I won't be encouraging her. I follow my own advice about making a shed less inviting.

I definitely consider an allotment site to be 'the wild' though - I built the shed in ratty's territory and there's no way I'd poison her just to make the allotment 'mine'.

Most 'pest' problems are caused by people leaving food or nesting sites available. I've had several allotments for ten years now and never once had the need to poison or trap anything.

And they carry far fewer diseases than we do!

As you share your allotment (I presume) you can't be sure what others are doing, even if you are treating the rats as the wild animals they are.

I would just suggest that you don't corner one as they will go for you - but you'd know that, I hope the other allotmenteers know it too.

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Manda.

"Wouldn't it be nice
For maybe an hour
To not have a care."

Hardly.

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Manda.

"Wouldn't it be nice
For maybe an hour
To not have a care."

I agree with Paul, what the people who make a fortune selling rat poison don't tell you is that prevention is better than cure. If you provide an environment that attracts rats, then even if you kill one, more will come along.

Also, we all know that after eating pellets, slugs die slowly, and during that time any birds and hedgehogs that come along and eat them get posioned too (thereby making the slug problem considerably worse). It's the same with rats that are dying from being poisoned - just because pets and wildlife won't eat the poison directly, that doesn't mean it's safe.

I agree that if they find nothing to eat they will move on. One of the biggest attractions for rats is the seed bird-feeder. There are ALWAYS seeds under ours - some birds actually chuck stuff out until they find the one they like! Difficult one this, as I love to have the birds around the garden.

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Earth laughs in flowers. Ralph Waldo Emerson

www.vegheaven.blogspot.com

Updated November 17th - The Big Dig

Come on Manda - Allotments are heaving with wildlife - it's one of my favourite parts of the hobby. Apart from brown rats on our plot we have bank voles, muntjac deer, foxes, slow worms, every kind of newt/toad/frog, lizards, snakes.... I could go on and on. That's not to mention the birds and insects!

The artificially diverse range of habitats on an allotment site is responsible for bringing all kinds of different species - including humans - together in a small space. There's no reason we can't co-exist, and the attitude that it's 'my land' and 'I have a right to kill anything on it' is at least 50 years out of date.

Indeed, but as I said hardly 'the wild'.

We don't appear to have been able to 'happily' co-exist with rats for a very long time, if ever. The last part of your statement has nothing to do with what I said. For your further information 'man' has been managing his environment at least since the Mesolithic, and things have been killed to further the aim of a better environment.

However 'I have a right...' doesn't follow on from that aim. I did not mention 'a right', but in a man-made environment rats are vermin and so should be treated as such. Sometimes harsh desions have to be made towards killing things...a decision I don't take lightly. But treating rats on an allotment as 'cute' is not an attitude I can go along with.

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Manda.

"Wouldn't it be nice
For maybe an hour
To not have a care."

I've started something now..............
Looks like prevention is better then cure, but I have to agree that wild rats do carry diseases such as cholera, typhus, bubonic plague and leptospirosis, a bacterial illness spread by their urine contaminating water or food (information from BBC website). I do know of children becoming very unwell following expose to rat urine. They really shouldn't be encouraged or fed.

OK, we have different definitions of 'wild'.

Generally speaking, humans do co-exist happily with rats and always have. There are at least as many rats in the UK as there are humans and how often do they bother us? The only time a problem will occur is, as I've said, when food and nesting opportunities are provided by humans in a place where rats, from our point of view, ought not to be. Avoid doing this, Manda, and you won't have to make the decision you "don't take lightly".

Rats have been 'managing' their own environment for just as long as we have, as have all animals. Guess which animal caused global warming, widespread pollution and the extinction of thousands of other species? But let's not let that stop us eh? It's all to further the aim of a better environment after all.

Leptospirosis (Weil's disease) is rare, and has a low infection rate when encountered. Rats are by no means the only animal to carry it. And when was the last time you heard of anyone catching one of the other bugs that Beaky lists? All animals carry diseases and parasites - you probably have E-Coli and Salmonella in you body as you read this. Rats are no particular exception to or example of this.

Why are rats vermin? Are we somehow more deserving of an un-chewed seed packet than they are of their very existence? Pet cats and dogs probably do more damage to our property than wild rats do - are they vermin? By the way, rats are more intelligent than either.

In a nutshell, don't be stupid enough to feed and house rats and they won't bother you. Therefore no killing required. Ratty rant over!

Yes, yours is more Beatrix Potter than mine.

I am not gonna comment again. Rats are vermin. Don't patronise me.

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Manda.

"Wouldn't it be nice
For maybe an hour
To not have a care."

Hey, let's just agree to disagree! I really had no intention of patronising you.