fish brain
Crew Member
How to you trap rats?
Here is my method, does anyone have a better way?
It seems like spring and fall see fresh waves of rats through the farm. My wife hates poison, so unless they get too far ahead of me I run trap lines. My usual method is to put out some tasty bait for at least three days, usually a week. Then start trapping. Tasty bait can be Peanut Butter, Bacon Fat, Fat from any other meat we cook. Rats seem to love fat.
I choose the type of fat I am going to use and stick with it until it stops working.
This is how I do it. Tasty bait is free for the three days to a week. I place this in multiple spots where rat activity is obvious. IE I see rat turds. This gets the rats used to eating the bait, I will start to bait my traps only when all the free tasty bait disappears for two days straight. Depending on the population, all my traps will be full for the next day or two, then one or two rats a day for a while. If I havent caught a rat for three days I switch to a new tasty bait and start the process over. So say the previous example was peanut butter, I would only use peanut butter until it stops working then switch to bacon fat, run it until it stops working then switch to chicken fat. Eventually I get to the point where my free bait stops working. This usually means that I am on top of them. At this point I will take a week off between bait changes to make sure they are not bait shy.
Here is my method, does anyone have a better way?
It seems like spring and fall see fresh waves of rats through the farm. My wife hates poison, so unless they get too far ahead of me I run trap lines. My usual method is to put out some tasty bait for at least three days, usually a week. Then start trapping. Tasty bait can be Peanut Butter, Bacon Fat, Fat from any other meat we cook. Rats seem to love fat.
I choose the type of fat I am going to use and stick with it until it stops working.
This is how I do it. Tasty bait is free for the three days to a week. I place this in multiple spots where rat activity is obvious. IE I see rat turds. This gets the rats used to eating the bait, I will start to bait my traps only when all the free tasty bait disappears for two days straight. Depending on the population, all my traps will be full for the next day or two, then one or two rats a day for a while. If I havent caught a rat for three days I switch to a new tasty bait and start the process over. So say the previous example was peanut butter, I would only use peanut butter until it stops working then switch to bacon fat, run it until it stops working then switch to chicken fat. Eventually I get to the point where my free bait stops working. This usually means that I am on top of them. At this point I will take a week off between bait changes to make sure they are not bait shy.