Of mice and feed

I hate mice. I don't want to live with them, I don't want to control them. I want them dead. I need them dead in the barn. I want to keep them out of my house!

I also want to buy more than on bag of food at a time. I can't buy grain and I worry about my hay because of mice.

How does everyone get rid of mice? and keep their dogs/chickens/rabbits safe/ How doe you store food/grain/hay? I have metal garbage cans. That works for the grain, but what about the hay?

:cat: We have a very good mouser cat who is getting old but still hunts. He keeps them at bay. The feed I store in those big plastic bins with lids. The hay is raised off the ground in the barn by a couple of cinder blocks. The mice could get in that if they wanted but I think the smell of the cat keeps them out. He has always gone to the bathroom outside until the last few winter months. I guess we will be getting a new outside cat when he retires. He is 16 and is spending a lot more time inside on our laps lately. He still gets out early and does his rounds which includes the barn. I swear he asked me for just one baby bunny the other day. He does thinks they are delicious. For the time being they are safe in cages. Not sure how I will work out the set up when we go to colony.

Get the large $15 Lowes trash cans, they come with a lid. I fill them with 3.5 50lb bags of chicken feed.
If they are IN your house, you HAVE HOLES you need to close up.
Lots of places sell the black, reusable snap traps. They work real well, just ad a bit of cheese and catch, dump, reload and catch more.

i keep hay bales in the attic of my detached barn. never had mice but i have had moths. i bring hay bales down one at a time and dump it in a refrigerator box. seems to keep the mice away from it. a good barn is a help too, mine is a actually a garage so its pretty tight, never had mice even when i let the mess get away from me and have feed all over the floor (i have some dumpers). i keep my bags of feed up on a table and the opened bags i dump in a open top big tub. it works well. a cat would work too

currituckbun":2kw4noxm said:

:cat: We have a very good mouser cat who is getting old but still hunts. He keeps them at bay. The feed I store in those big plastic bins with lids. The hay is raised off the ground in the barn by a couple of cinder blocks. The mice could get in that if they wanted but I think the smell of the cat keeps them out. He has always gone to the bathroom outside until the last few winter months. I guess we will be getting a new outside cat when he retires. He is 16 and is spending a lot more time inside on our laps lately. He still gets out early and does his rounds which includes the barn. I swear he asked me for just one baby bunny the other day. He does thinks they are delicious. For the time being they are safe in cages. Not sure how I will work out the set up when we go to colony.

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no cats allowed here. i've already been told I need to get rid of some of my dogs, beside the fact that the dogs would def kill the cat.

__________ Sun Feb 26, 2012 2:39 pm __________

ChickiesnBunnies":2kw4noxm said:

Get the large $15 Lowes trash cans, they come with a lid. I fill them with 3.5 50lb bags of chicken feed.
If they are IN your house, you HAVE HOLES you need to close up.
Lots of places sell the black, reusable snap traps. They work real well, just ad a bit of cheese and catch, dump, reload and catch more.

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Easier said than done. This house is old, and was left to sit for several years. there are many things that need work here. I went all around and either poured cement/tar/great stuff, whatever was required in all of the available holes. Short of paying a professional. The mouse traps available in retail stores are useless at best. And they will open up if the dogs run into them, and they will at some point. The dog proof ones I've seen are rat sized, way to small for the mice I'm catching. I've used glue boards and bait, but I can't do that where there will be dogs, bunnies and chickens, esp. dogs and chickens.<br /><br />__________ Sun Feb 26, 2012 2:49 pm __________<br /><br />

SterlingSatin":2kw4noxm said:

i keep hay bales in the attic of my detached barn. never had mice but i have had moths. i bring hay bales down one at a time and dump it in a refrigerator box. seems to keep the mice away from it. a good barn is a help too, mine is a actually a garage so its pretty tight, never had mice even when i let the mess get away from me and have feed all over the floor (i have some dumpers). i keep my bags of feed up on a table and the opened bags i dump in a open top big tub. it works well. a cat would work too

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Cat is out of the question. I'm lucky to have the animals I have, and the terms of the lease are no animals inside, and the dogs would kill an outside cat (this I know for sure). I also don't want another mouth (species) to feed right now.
This is an old house, and an old barn, there's nothing tight about it. I'm just fortunate the roof doesn't leak It would be nice to have better facilities, but will have to wait till another lifetime, when I get some real money, and pay off $$$$$$$$$ in student loans. I gotta make due with the rickety barn as it is. The side where the rabbits are has a raised wood floor with a dirt floor under it. There's no way for me to keep the mice out, short of pouring a concrete slab, and I can't afford that. That's why I can't just keep them out, I need them dead, and I need a dog proof, chicken proof way to do it.

so use the live traps. Seriously. Dogs can't get into them. Chickens can't. They have a slim profile so can be placed under skids and such like. I find they work well.

Then when you have mice in them kill them.

the one I use is similar to this one

http://www.victorpest.com/store/rodent-control/m310

OR You can build bait traps that will be chicken/dog proof. Just a matter of being creative with what you have.

For storage I use big rubbermaid bins. You can do the same with your hay. Put it up on skids, then the bale you are using put into a big rubbermaid storage bin.

Building traps seems like and interesting idea, as long as it doesn't involve any type of metal cutting. I don't any tools for that. The live trap looked interesting, I will find it and see it in person. The mice just turned over the black traps and got out. They were worthless.

I would be concerned that the rubbermaid bin would not allow the hay to breathe. Does hay need to breathe? I've read somewhere that it will mold in a closed container. One bale lasts me three months.

i just leave it open. Mice won't (at least none around here ever have) climb up the sides of the container. So I leave it open.

you can use a bucket with water system as well... not such a pleasant end for the mice, but effective.

Bucket trap instructions:

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/easterly110.html

Even without water, a deep bucket with a hole about 1 inch in diameter in the lid will work for mice. They are not very smart. Put something yummy in the bottom that they can smell... peanut butter, sunflower seeds etc. They jump in but cannot jump back up to the small hole.

Foam mice can chew though, you need to cement any holes or use solid wood. Our house was built in the 1930's and the last owners cared nothing about the house. We also have a million things to fix here and are always finding a hole we missed before.
I am talking about the black, plastic traps, not the cartoon wooden ones or w/e. The black ones you set where your pets can't reach. Against the wall where they run and under cover of other furniture, etc. They snap shut easily and I've never had anything but mice and one mole get caught. Not even our dogs, cats nor chickens.

ChickiesnBunnies":ljjtyggw said:

Foam mice can chew though, you need to cement any holes or use solid wood. Our house was built in the 1930's and the last owners cared nothing about the house. We also have a million things to fix here and are always finding a hole we missed before.
I am talking about the black, plastic traps, not the cartoon wooden ones or w/e. The black ones you set where your pets can't reach. Against the wall where they run and under cover of other furniture, etc. They snap shut easily and I've never had anything but mice and one mole get caught. Not even our dogs, cats nor chickens.

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Well I sprayed the foam along the inside where the foundation and the house meet. Not sure what to do about that but use foam.

I have used the black plastic traps, the Victor Live Mouse Traps. I never use the wood ones, I almost snapped a finger... I had a dog basically pick it up and drop it, and it cracked open. These are big dogs that bend the wire on their cages. The traps in the barn will be in plain sight, except under the pallets, they are going to come in contact with them at some point. I've had puppies crawl under the pallets as well. There is no piece of furniture in the house that the dogs cannot get under. The clearance for the tables, couches, beds, is all 6+ inches. There is very little furniture in the house, and pretty much they can jump or stand up and reach anything I can.

I will look into making a few bucket ones and try the metal ones, and see if the dogs play Frisbee with them. I guess it won't matter much if its a live catch, then I'm not worried about poison.

I looked at it, that's not a mouse trap, it's a dog trap. I'd spend more time trying to keep the dogs from eating the peanut butter or bobbing for mice! The traps have to be sealed, to keep them out.

We use poison with cement blocks on the containers to keep the dogs from carrying them away. Even if they carry them away they can't get the poison out. This does run a risk of poisoned mice being found and eaten although by then the poison level is so low it usually does not produce symptoms and so far 99% of ours have died in their burrows.

Prior to being forced to resort to poison because nothing else would get rid of our rats we handled just mice using live traps again weighted down. The tin cats never worked well at all for some reason. The little plastic traps worked great but are hard to find since all feed stores just carry tin cats. The dogs tended to carry them off and lose them though if not weighted with bricks. We'd then feed the mice to the dogs when caught.

If you want to build a repeating live trap you can cut a hole high in a milk jug with a piece of wood attached so it sticks in the hole a few inches and works like a teeter totter. There are various ways to fasten it down or you can borrow one from a smaller commercial repeating trap. Bait the bottom and tie the milk jug down. I got 20 mice once that year but found it too much work over bucket traps (I have seen mice jump out of a 5g so water is required) and buying traps.

akane":3ng7j1au said:

We use poison with cement blocks on the containers to keep the dogs from carrying them away. Even if they carry them away they can't get the poison out. This does run a risk of poisoned mice being found and eaten although by then the poison level is so low it usually does not produce symptoms and so far 99% of ours have died in their burrows.

Prior to being forced to resort to poison because nothing else would get rid of our rats we handled just mice using live traps again weighted down. The tin cats never worked well at all for some reason. The little plastic traps worked great but are hard to find since all feed stores just carry tin cats. The dogs tended to carry them off and lose them though if not weighted with bricks. We'd then feed the mice to the dogs when caught.

If you want to build a repeating live trap you can cut a hole high in a milk jug with a piece of wood attached so it sticks in the hole a few inches and works like a teeter totter. There are various ways to fasten it down or you can borrow one from a smaller commercial repeating trap. Bait the bottom and tie the milk jug down. I got 20 mice once that year but found it too much work over bucket traps (I have seen mice jump out of a 5g so water is required) and buying traps.

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Yes that was my problem. Either they didn't work or those crazy dogs would carry them off and drop them and either crack them open or just lose them. The really nice solid one is a rat trap, and I'm thinking the mice would just crawl out (got one in my classroom and the mouse was so small it just crawled out). I've been told off hand by someone that there is a no second-kill poison, so eating poisoned mice would be ok, but I'd still rather not allow that.
I never thought of just putting a brick on them. Those dogs have picked up a lot of things, but I doubt they could pick up a cinder block. even so, I can tie the strap/bait station, on to the bottom of the block.