Rodent control

The strangest part is how they leave other things when they take your stuff hence the name trading rat. If it’s shiny they grab it such as tools, tinfoil etc… and where your screwdriver was will be a rock or stick…um no deal lol! Understanding them helps to combat them http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/pack_rat.aspx. Lewis and Clark’s expedition would have starved to death had it not been for rodents such as these that pack there nest full of food. I can’t imagine how desperate they were to eat it . I’ve heard it was Jerusalem artichokes they ate. At least one version of the story I heard was it was pack rats nest they raided for food but this account is slightly different “On April 9, 1805, the captains recounted Sacagawea’s search for “wild artichokes which the mice collect and deposit in large hoards.” The description is confusing, however, and is thought to relate not to Claytonia lanceolata but to the hog peanut, Amphicarpa bracteata (L.) Fernald.” Jerusalem Artichoke | Discovering Lewis & Clark ®. By the way if you like Jerusalem artichokes and we do love them you should know there is a large patch growing right outside the pack rat shed. Be aware they may have been one of the attractants to the rodents. With the potatoes, tomatoes , onions , peppers, garlic etc in the garden a few feet away you can see how the pack rats thought it was a hard shed to pass up .

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Yes that is a nice one!! A real trophy😝. When I had one in my shed I put out one of those sticky boards , the rat would just drag it off and pull out of it. Once , when I went to check it, my chihuahua ran past me and became hopelessly tangled in it. How does a rat escape a trap that catches a small dog?

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Clark,
That rat looked bigger than my squirrels?

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Wanted to post this link just as documentation to verify my account of these pack rats hunting prey http://www.mypetchicken.com/backyard-chickens/chicken-help/What-do-I-need-to-know-about-rats-if-I-keep-H177.aspx . They are widely known to hunt whatever they can bag. This article says they get 10" but other links say pack rats get 18". A foot or so like this one I got is not as big as they get and tomorrow may demonstrate that. The trap is reset with peanut butter and they come out at night so soon we will see what happens.

http://forum.vpaaz.org/forum/topics/i-adopted-some-barn-cats

For those without feral cats…adopt some…

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I have a few mouse problems in my unattached garage, but a local neighborhood (not feral) cat does a good job of limiting them. My big rodent problem is squirrels, which I trap and euthanize throughout the growing season.

But it’s worth noting that these guys do not hibernate and need more food during the winter, so it pays to keep after them even when there’s no fruit for them to damage, thereby reducing the breeding population.

I gather that it’s at the end of the winter when their stored food is gone and new sources haven’t appeared that they are most vulnerable and likely to enter traps, so that’s important too.

I dislike the whole process of having to catch and dispose of critturs, but it seems like it needs to be done if we’re to have fruit, so I do it.

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That is a good point Mark, it is easy to let your guard down when all of the crop is done for the year. I took care of a large red squirrel last week and I noticed I had another one working on some of the black walnuts left in the yard. I suppose I will have to keep an eye open for it as well.

Yes it was larger than a squirrel.

I’m lucky I have a lot od squirrels on my property but they stay down in the creek bottoms. My barn cats kill any that wander up close to the house and the fruit trees.

I’m already seeing rabbit damage and I still have green grass and other weeds still growing…i noticed my blueberries have all been trimmed…the cilantro that is still growing is all trimmed and the green shoots of my garlic have been trimmed… this thing is already seasoned! Traps going out…can’t imagine what he’ll do once we get snow cover.

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My trap turned up 10’ away from the shed the other day. Last night I got another pack rat. Are you ready for the rabbits? Some locations are already getting snow and when it snow the rabbits show up in big numbers in Kansas. I use several methods to control them.
Method 1: A cage like this is very effective on rabbits and other rodents.


Method 2: Painting the trunk does help

Method 3: That is grafting wax smeared on the trunk though I use tanglefoot normally.

What about the deer you might ask? You can see here by my old orchard back in the day it was a real battle that ended with a 5’ fence with a hotwire on top.

The fencing keeps out deer but not rabbits and other rodents.

You can tell by the pear bark the rabbits won’t be chewing on this tree I planted about 10 years ago.

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Yes,I have to get a cage around my Fuji . It must have a sweet tast to it. A deer ate every leaf of it this spring and left my other apples alone.

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Good Lord! Are those root suckers on that pear tree?

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Yes it was sold as an old fashioned Kieffer from the arbor day society. Not to worry when the rabbits hit the suckers will be gone. Great news its never had a fireblight strike or any other disease that’s visible. It appears to be on its own roots. If the rabbits ever leave them I will build dirt around them and use them on some other borders. Its not a Kieffer in the sense we know it because its a medium sized pear. Odly when I looked it up in the pears of new York it looks just like it. Here is the other strange things about it the first two years the pear produces the fruit is terrible. Nowadays when it produces fruit which ripens with 2 weeks of my Bartlett its delicious. My family will not let anyone else get a pear off that tree because of the sought after flavor. When it was a baby tree it had thorns like a wild pear that dissapeared as it got older. The pears don’t keep but for a month or so and turn yellow when ripe. I ripen them off the tree. It produces well. Its a strange pear but in Kansas its gold because of disease, animal, weather, drought, and heavy rains, wind etc tolerance. It bears a crop and you can set your watch buy it most years.i would never take a chance of pruning off root suckers when sap is running because you are opening the roots up to fireblight and no tree is 100% Immune.

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Jeff,
I sold off all my guns many years ago so that trap won’t work for me.

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Glad to see someone else that like the old Kieffer pear. It is an early bloomer which matched my Orient almost perfectly.

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I have the old fashioned one, the so called improved version and I like them both! I even own a kieffer that is not a kieffer at all and no one has ever been able to identify it.

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Ha! I’ve just found that I need BEAVER control.
Big orange-toothed rats are cutting down 20 yr old pecans in my riparian bufferstrip planting.

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Beaver are tough to deal with. My grandads ranch was irrigated by ditches. You would go and check the water first thing in the morning only to find that the ditch was dry. You would drive around to the other end of the ditch and see the water running down the ditch and disappearing into the thick brush. Then you would take an axe and get in the ditch , crawl through the squaw berry trees and willows until you found the damn and chop it out. Grandad was big on trapping beaver for this reason!

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