R*t in the Garden!

[skalexander]

Morning everyone

We moved house in October. We're now at the back of an estate in a small village, which is surrounded by fields. Its a really lovely place to live except there's a r*t in our front garden.

According to next door, the people who lived here before us used to put scrap food in the bushes between their house and ours, which caused them to move in. I'm not clear if next door are still having an issue but this big fat fella keeps being spotted near our bird table. We keep around the bird table very clean. We've changed all our feeders to ones with a rim around to catch any spillage, I've changed one feeder for flutter butter which is solid and we use no mess bird seed so they aren't dropping husks. We don't want to stop feeding the birds, as we love watching them.

We don't want to use poison, because it can be ingested by other animals and we don't want rotting corpses in our garden. I'm going to bring in a gardener to cut back the bushes, to hopefully give them less places to hide.

Any other suggestions as to what we can do? Do those ultrasonic/electromagnetic things work?

[mickey house]

This might help:

gardenersworld/plant...in-the-garden/

[megaflyer]

Get a cat - the safest easiest way to rid them

I too need a better bird feeder as most of mine gets spilled so off to google rimmed ones as they sounds like a (thanks for the tip &#128077

[meboo]

To be honest I think they are everywhere ! I have occasionally seen one but just because I didn’t see it regularly doesn’t mean that it and it’s undoubtedly enormous extended family are not on the prowl ! You are doing the right thing by keeping the bird feeders clean but I don’t think you can do much more unless they are in your house or you find a nest (if that’s the right expression!). Hopefully if it’s regular food source has been eliminated it might spend more time exploring elsewhere

[Nannad]

We had a rat last year, that came from next door, the environmental health came, and told us to remove all food sources from our garden, all bird food feeders of any sort, she did say if we wanted to keep a hanging bird feeder place it where the rat would find access difficult, and put Vaseline round it so that if it did manage to climb onto it it would fall, we did what she said and haven’t seen one since.

[Sandra & co]

We’ve had them, dh ripped up the decking and there were droppings underneath. My Westie goes mad and actually caught one and was shaking it around in her mouth, bird feeders attract them. Poppy hasn’t gone mad outside for a while but when she has a barking frenzy you know she’s spotted something. They are everywhere now and foxes, foxes actually walk around this area

[megaflyer]

Originally Posted by Sandra & co

We’ve had them, dh ripped up the decking and there were droppings underneath. My Westie goes mad and actually caught one and was shaking it around in her mouth, bird feeders attract them. Poppy hasn’t gone mad outside for a while but when she has a barking frenzy you know she’s spotted something. They are everywhere now and foxes, foxes actually walk around this area

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I don’t mind foxes, squirrels or mice (infact I have seen a squirrel with a rat in its mouth in London ) but rats no way. I encourage squirrels to keep the rats away

[Bozza]

Don't let it get in your kitchen whatever you do.

UB40 had that problem, and they wouldn't shut up about it.

[catherinesian]

To be honest, rats are everywhere so as long as you don't leave loads of bird food lying around their numbers should keep in check and they won't be much of a nuisance. Poor guys get a bad rep.