trapping rats

[rhoda_bruce]

To tell the truth, there is a lab in my parish a few towns over and I have know of them to buy snakes, frogs and lizards. Pretty sure they must also buy rats and my daughter teaches biology at our HS, so she might have connections. I was half thinking it might be to my advantage to catch them live. DS probably messed me up this year, and its really only a thought. If I get my old job back up the bayou, I will be much closer, so might be able to take a detour sometimes.....help me pay my gas. But this is really a wild thought....maybe one of my more wilder ones. If I can make a brooder, I'm pretty sure I can also make a cage a rat can't escape from, if I put my mind to it, or just start collecting aquariums from my cousin's flea market. Oh what a life!!! Almost wilder than Jamaican rat venture.

 

[sumi]

Hey, I farm worms to supply pet shops and I'm probably going to expand into crickets soon. People buy them to feed to pet snakes, lizards, spiders etc. Rats and mice make lovely pets, if you got "pet" ones and they breed quickly too. I may go that route down the line, if/when I have time and space. It's a viable business idea.

 

[Mini Horses]

For him, a business. $10K building, special type mice, daily work. But, he makes money from it. Has customers & helps supply other wholesalers. The businesses won't take just any ole mouse....he has rows of mouse containers, about 3 stacks high, water supply set-up, temp controlled, etc.

Yes, they reproduce at an unbelievable rate!! Like every 30 days.

 

[HomesteaderWife]

Breeding mice is profitable but ridiculous to keep up with. My best friend raises feeder mice and she said it's been tough- they bred SOOO much that she had to cull a bunch this Summer and freeze them. She also had HALF of them get loose in her house! I could not raise mice haha!

 

[rhoda_bruce]

Oh my!!! Your friend is in a fix, related to my fix.
Well, I have the vat with water and its quiet now, but I was hearing a lot of noise a few hours ago. I just hope I find out I hit the jackpot.

 

[sumi]

You guys just reminded me of something horrible/funny that happened to me a few years ago with a field mouse. It got into the house and hid in my DS's bedroom. I went looking for it and found the tail sticking out of it's hiding place, so doing what you do under circumstances, I grabbed the tail and pulled… The mouse, realising it's predicament, did the same… Needless to say, a few seconds later I was sitting holding a mouse tail and the mouse is GONE!! I think we both screamed. We did manage the find and catch the tail-less wanderer some time after that and disposed of it. I still feel a little bit bad about that incident.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

Things have been a bit quiet the past couple of days. I have the water barrel trap up there and the repeating rat and mouse traps up there but DS had also thrown a bunch of big poison pellets, which are all missing.
The good thing is I don't yet smell anything. He just finished his first night shift and is sleeping and the girls are going to be leaving this PM to spend the weekend with DH, so I will check the situation later. Hopefully I have a bunch of cold, dead rats floating around. It would be almost like they'd be in a fridge between the cold weather and the water.

 

[Denim Deb]

I realized today that there have been rats in my feed stall. I'm hoping that now that I've gotten it all cleaned up that they'll leave.

 

[baymule]

I use One Bite. Never smell dead rats or mice. It works.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

What happens to them? I have used different types of poisons and they all claim that the rodents will eat them, get very thirsty, leave the house to find water and drink themselves to death.....has not been my experience.
IDK....maybe mine get disoriented and lose their way to the water. But regardless, I have very bad luck in that area. Well, DS went up because a rat got in the trap, but it got away. Probably it was mixed with a doberman....idk.
Again, he says we need to call an exterminator. I've been here before, without an exterminator. I told him, I ordered a repeating rat trap and we will see what it will do for us. In the meantime, I have a ladder in the middle of my house, so we can run up when we need to.