Kitchen Garden Forum

As anyone heard of RATS digging up seed potatoes and taking them away????

I planted a load of seeds in boxes and growbags and only the largest are left??

Someone suggested RATS as we seem to have quite a few on the allotments this year...or could it be 2 legged rats ...lol

Oh yes, and digging up all the seedlings in the polytunnel, eating tulip bulbs, beetroot, carrots, chives (but not garlic or onion sets), soap and teabags. Fantastically destructive varmints, I seem to be beating them with copious applications of Eradirat (a maize based product that affects only rodents so is very safe, as proved by the rude health of our do who thinks it is a fine snack) but its been a while and it isn't cheap.

If it is a council allotment it may be possible to get the council pest controllers to deal with the problem, but it needs dealing with as they won't go away.

Thanks for the reply Fen...I have contacted the Ratman for the council and he put poison down....the rats love it ..lol

We have a problem every year as we are near a beck but thia is the 1st year they have ever dug up seed potatoes ..

thanks again

Jaycee, I wouldn't laught too loud.

Rats are often resistant to posion's, though council's are usually up to date and one application will not clear them out.

Watch amy pets do not eat the dead rats, loacl farmer lost his dog that way.
Also try & fnd out where the little darlings came from. Not much point you killing them if next door is breeding them, so to speak.

Good luck.

I have had problems with rats every winter for a couple of years.But this year I only saw one! My solution is traps. Bait with some sausage and you get one live and very angry rat! I use the car`s exhaust fumes to kill it, after putting the trap into a big plasticbag.

Hi Nini,

By far the best bait in my experience is peanuts- probably peanut butter would be excellent too, but I've never tried it. Story: my wife will not permit ANY rodent to enter our (farm!)house- even the sun has to take its shoes off- so you can imagine her horror when I suggested that the cause of complete bowls of fruit vanishing overnight might be a squirrel or a R-A-T!! I mean a bowl of fruit consisting of about 6 apples and 6 oranges and 6 pears: ALL gone without trace by morning, day after day. No other sign of any intruder. I set a mink trap I have- a catch-em-alive, cage job, and immediately caught a rat.It wasn't even a particularly big one . I drowned it in the burn- NOT a pleasant experience, I may say. Found where it had got in. Never had any bother since; back to a rodent-free zone. Place stank of Dettol for months. Hard to believe that one small animal could have removed so many large and weighty objects- to a store, no doubt, though I never found it. So, a few seed potatoes shouldn't be a problem, I guess.

Gruesome though the subject is, could you enlarge on your execution-by-car-fumes method, please- for possible future reference?

Good luck!

Iain.

Sorry, Jaycee, that should have been addressed to you. Sorry, Nini! Senior moment, again.

Iain