Vermin or harmless?

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Colin_M
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Over the winter, I have seen signs of visitors in 3 of my plastic "dalek" compost bins. Usually the material has been disturbed, or there's a "tunnel" up one side of the compost, but nothing to see outside or in the surrounding ground.

Today, I found a hole - almost like a burrow on the ground next to one of the bins. The exterior size of this was around 7 inches at its widest, though the tube going into the ground was nearer 3-4 inches.

:?: Before I start thinking about rat poison, can anyone advise about other animals this might be?

:?: If it is rats, any advice (or should I just live with them)?
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oldherbaceous
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Morning Colin, it sounds suspiciously like rats to me.

Sometimes just by disturbing the contents of the bins can be enouh to make the rats move on.
The burrow sounds as if they are moving in to nest and have young, where as the tunnels in the bins sounds more as if they were just visiting for food.
Kind Regards, Old Herbaceous.

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Clive.
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We have the R' problem in a work compost bin at present...and a tunnel into the Beech nut heap....

Bait is there in the bait box...to which their first response was to block the box entries with leaves stuffed in....and now they have decided to start eating the box....but not the bait.!! :roll:

Clive
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Gilly C
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we had that problem one year and I even found an egg there the lid was on :shock: so now as soon as it turns cold we take the lid off the bin so nowhere nice and dry for them !!! it does mean I wait a bit longer for the compost though, but as I keep chickens it soon gets going again !
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Colin_M
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oldherbaceous wrote:t sounds suspiciously like rats to me.
Sometimes just by disturbing the contents of the bins can be enouh to make the rats move on.

Ok, as I feared.

Over winter I've done a bit of forking the mixture up. I've also been putting the contents of our Bokashi bin in (which smells pretty powerful & acrid) and they seem to be putting up with that.

A neighbour has given me some rat poison and I've used a 2 litre water bottle (with each end cut off) and put that up the tunnel with poison in. I had to reassure my family that I'd minimise the risk to other animals & any allotment-holder's dogs. Hence the idea was to put the poison in the rats' path, but out of snuffling range of other visitors.
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Gilly C
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I have 2 dogs we use bait boxes and tom cat poison which you thread on bars so it is safe foe pets we have only ever found one body they usually disappear to die ! there is danger if the corpse gets eaten !
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