9 Ways To Deal With Rats (warning: lots of footage of rats, living and dead)

My cat watched your video with great interest! Shame age has reduced her hunting abilities, but she'd like more films with rats. :)

Honestly, I think the fire torch is the most elegant solution. I’d say to keep up with it for every 2 weeks because that’s when the newborns begin to open their eyes and walk. Sure, animal suffering sucks but diseases and crop damage are no joke

A fascinating episode, the progression of methods is a sight to behold, well done.

Thanks for your honest and considered communication and approach on this sensitive subject.

My neighbor has a rat terrier. Has caught 12 rats in one day. Specialized rat hunting dog has made a huge difference in our neighborhood. The feral cats get a few, but mostly the dog keeps them under control. The rats are very smart and it is hard to trap them. Chickens and the feed that go with them is the main source of rats in our town.

My favorite method of asphyxiation is to use road side signal flares. I do this during times the soil is moist. Find 2-3 rat holes in the nest, and start each flare, then stick each flare down in one of the holes. This is very successful at killing the whole rat colony. I use plaster and baking soda baits, and a live trap that comes with a fitted tub, which can be used to drown the rats. Another alternative if you have one in the area, is a terrier club. The club is where terrier owners get together with their dogs, and go to farms needing rat control. The terriers are very effective at killing rats.

So complete! It was enlightening to see you go through all these methods in an order of effectiveness in some sense. Thanks so much.

Most ticks are from mice and rats, not deer as most think. I have no problem with eradicating them. Lyme disease is no joke.

That cat just eating next to the rat at the end had me cracking up. I have a couple of cats like that. You really have to get pure barn cats if you want them to be hunters in this context. We adopted two kittens from a barn cat mama and they are the best hunters I've ever seen. Nothing gets away from them. The other ones that came from the shelter, they can't be bothered. It's a toy to them, not food.

An affective method used in rural and urban areas are putting up owl posts for them to sit and watch for any prey, so just a fence post for them to perch on.

Nice work, brother. Always appreciate your thorough research and patient explanations. Be well

Wow, Very informative, excellent explanation of your problem and solutions you have tried and tested. Thank you.

I appreciate your concern for their potential suffering. I've spent 25+ years rescuing domestic pet rats and agree that they are social and intelligent creatures but I also draw firm distinctions along the spectrum of wild to domestic pet. I recently moved to a new area and I know we have voles, mice, rabbits, and deer at the very least. I would not be surprised if there are also rats. I am grateful to find such a thoughtful video on ways to handle wild rat issues. I'm definitely not looking forward to possibly having to deal with this but I'm glad to see you've tried many options - most of which wouldn't really work for me for the same reasons they don't seem to work for you: suffering and collateral damage.

Great comprehensive video with outstanding explanations and footage! Thank you!

Nice to see a fact based video about this topic. Our normal rat population is 0 despite the fact that I can see fields in every direction. Because after rule 2a do not attract them with food you forgot to mention rule 2b: do not attract them with space to live (the advice to wrap nets and tarps around slats and boards to store them under tension and un-cushy, remember?) To catch rodents my tool of choice is a frankfurter style shovel. the needed amount of "cruelness" comes easy after bed after bed has been eaten empty. rat? dang! vole? dang! mole? not dang. We live inside a village and we only had rats a handful of times in my 51 years. Most times the reason was inappropriate animal food storage (at our chickens malfuntioning food dispenser, at the neighbor's rabbits, at the other neighbor's pigeon stables). It is very important to talk to the neighbors, just to recognize the source of the problem. The neighbor with the pigeons was 80+ lived frugal and had second hand plastic buckets from milking machine washing powder as grain containers. Problem 1: cracks which have been widened by the rats, problem 2: he was too weak to pull of the lid if closed properly, so the lid only was laying on top. Solution: we bought him stackable metal hobbocks cheaply from ebay, cleaned the grain and moved it to the new containers. And we did a group action to lift the pigeon stable to empty the nests below it. four people, two dogs, many spectators :) The hobbocks were cheaper than 2-3 bottles of those blue rat poison sachets would have been. so my advice is: depending on the size of your ground you do not have the problem alone, work with the neighbors, and help them. also some things can be really cheap: perchs attached to the roof rafters at the gable cost almost nothing. and they are empty most of the times. but in the morning hours there is a falcon having his break there and if he only gets one mouse or baby rat snack every week it is worth it.

Thank you for all ur time and all the good ideas.

The fact you have cared enough to try to make it as ethical as you can is more than most people do. You will probably get the extreme side who think you should not kill/maintain any of them but I think your conscious should be clear. Good video.

Great video! You put a lot of effort into them!

The Gas flamer seems to be the best option. The borax/flour or plaster not a bad supplementary action.

thanks for sharing as always your content is of great help!