!!MICE!!

[wamplercathy]

There are few animals that I truly hate, but mice are at the top of that very short list. Went out to feed rabbits this morning and found 3 half eaten kits, 1 mia, and a very distressed doe. :evil: So I made a redneck mouse trap out of a 5gal bucket, some wire, a beer can and some peanut butter. Most people place water in the bucket but that would freeze. So I put 3 cups of homemade decon in the bottom. I'm going to get those furry b's. :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :mrgreen:

 

[Preitler]

Eaten kits?
Mice???

Uhm. I sure would deploy the heaviest, meanest rat traps. And traps for marten etc.

The mice I have here are just annoyed by mousetraps, shrug them off, but anyway, mice never did bother living things.

I'm pretty sure you have mice, but I don't think thats your problem. Rats.

Get min. a dozen snap rat traps, use different bait, nuts work best.

If you ever happen to see a rat - that's the stupid one out of one hundred...

 

[Tiny Buns]

Also thinking rats. Rats can sneak in through a j feeder or just eat the parts that poke through the wire. Horrible creatures!! Mice tend to just get into the feed but leave the rabbits alone.

 

[wamplercathy]

When we first moved out here, 3 years ago, we found a rat mummified in a truck hood. :x Haven't seen any evidence of rats, and we watch for them. The mice we have are large mice not rats. Teeth patterns are different and I checked the dead over real well. Either way I want them gone. :lol: :lol: :evil: Our cat has been wanting in the rabbitry but I won't allow him in. He's a killer and I would walk in to everything dead mice, rabbits, water system. :x :lol: :lol: We've got several traps in the house but the mice trip them and then eat the bait. Every so often we get lucky and nail one of them. :twisted:

 

[SuburbanHomesteader]

Sorry to hear about the lost kits.

Not sure of your situation... We've got enough control over the other critters
here that I put out bait. The only evidence of mice I ever see is the bait keeps
getting eaten.

In over 50 years here, I've never seen a rat or evidence of one. Plenty of other
predators to worry about, though.

Anyway - good luck on catchin' them varmints! I hate mieces to pieces!

 

[Fireclaws bunnbutts]

Mice can and will eat defenseless things smaller than they are. But I'd place my bets on rats as well. Mice are not big enough to cart off even a newborn rabbit kit, let alone eat three of them. When mice do go for something like that, they generally go for the legs and head.

 

[the reluctant farmer]

Oh ick ick ick. Can Killer Cat at least come in with you while you're in there? He might pull some out of the wood work where they'd normally be hidden. Ooo, hope you get those nasties and quick.

 

[Deer Heart]

I agree, rats, had rats do the same to several young chickens that were just feathering out. Worse yet, they chewed them alive and clearly left the animal alive long enough to be in incredible pain before expiring. Horrible creatures. BUT. What you really want to use for bait is tootsie rolls. Press a small wad on the bottom of your trigger plate on your rat traps, even the smartest rats can't resist and they can't steal it without lethally triggering the trap.

 

[akane]

Mice generally are just a feed nuisance and might spread disease. Rats will eat kits and destroy things on a more massive scale. When they start out they hide quite well but if you don't take the population down they get bolder and bolder. By the time you see a rat you've got a lot of rats. We finally have mostly won the mouse/rat war. It was a year and a half struggle without using poison. We did the plaster bait poisoning. Get a hobby plaster (plaster of paris) or some said instant cement mix works and mix it with powdered tasty foods like cocoa powder, sugar, cornmeal... You can put the bait out right like that. Rotate what you flavor it with. Another way is to mix with about equal peanut butter and leave it a bit oily. The balls will eventually dry and be useless though and it is more appealing to other animals. We tried that once and the cats ate some. The plaster pretty much only causes problems for rodents and it would take putting out a lot of it to impact something bigger. It also won't poison anything higher up the food chain who eats a "poisoned" rodent. What really made me like it was that they also only poop out small amounts of plaster and not green poison bait poop. I didn't want that poop in my small animal cages and on my counters. I'm not sure what all comes out with the green. So far it's working amazingly better than the traps.

 

[wamplercathy]

If it were a rat then the bites would have been larger than what was on the kits. The kits reminded me of what a deer looks like after a pack of yotes have been eating it. It was strange. It was almost like a group of mice had attacked and killed the kits. :shrug:

Thanks Akane, I made some poison out of sugar, flour, and baking soda. Here's :beer2: hoping it works.

 

[Fireclaws bunnbutts]

I should also add that mice are generally grain eaters as Akane said, if they can they'll go for feed above all else. Next is insects, if there's no feed, they'll do a damn good job of clearing roaches and crickets out of their area, but only generally attack something larger than themselves/turn predatory if there's a large number of them or if there's absolutely nothing else to eat.


Rats are predators before anything else and will absolutely choose a rabbit kit over a bag of feed. The fact that three kits were eaten at once screams "rat" if it were a weasel or mink, most likely the momma rabbit would have been killed as well.

 

[wamplercathy]

To be on the safe side, I'll get some rat traps. But the mice we have are huge. The first one we caught 3 years ago tip the scale at a quarter pound. We thought rat, but a friend of ours, a conservation agent, told us it was a mouse. After doing some research and getting a couple other opinions the consensus was mouse, very large mouse, but mouse. For what ever reason we grow everything big. With our coyotes averaging between 60-80 lbs, adult racoons at 50+, and opossums around 15+ lbs. I find it strange and so does the conservation department, but we don't have any answers yet. There might not be any answers to be found. I agree that this is not normal mouse behavior. But I've become accustom to things not being normal.

Either way I want them gone.

Did look at the plaster of paris poison just didn't have any around the house.

 

[ladysown]

wow.... so large mice that you need to treat like rats.

So do research on how to dispatch rats and treat them the say way..you'll need to vary your method to kill/trap them. Because they are SMART.

I've learned with the rats I have here that a snap trap will work for a week and then I need to leave it unset with bait. they steal the bait and then after two weeks I set the trap and catch two rats (I have two traps). Then repeat. So far I'm catching the youngsters and suspect that mamma rat has left or been caught by feral cats since I've not heard or seen wee young for the last three weeks. Time will tell though... but right now the only ones I'm catching are juveniles in various stages of growth.

 

[wamplercathy]

That's what we do inside the house and garage. I set up the bucket trap so when they fall in they'll get covered in the dusty poison. Then they'll clean themselves and get poisoned. :twisted: Your suppose to have water and they drown. :twisted:
But water would freeze I have seen were something had been flailing in the dust. :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

And just when I thought it couldn't get worse Tartar feed her kits last night and never covered them back up. :evil: Stupid doe. :evil: lost the whole litter. :evil: Stupid doe. I guess I'll have to be more hands on.

 

[akane]

When using baking soda or plaster you do have to have some patience and keep rotating what you mix it with. They have to eat enough of it for effects to build up and they may start to avoid the same mix after awhile. It does work. It just doesn't work in days like commercial poison. It may take a week or 2 to really notice a difference in the population but once you starting getting results and keep the bait out there they die off rather rapidly.

 

[Zass]

I'm sorry you lost your litter!
Is Tartar the mother of the chewed litter? Stress from predatory attacks could be behind the behavior.
For future litters, you may want to bring the nestboxes inside and just return them for feeding during their first week. That would keep them safe from mice and stressed does.

I believe Dayna does that, because her kits were repeatedly attacked by a small species of rat that was almost impossible to keep out of the cages.

 

[wamplercathy]

I'm sorry you lost your litter!
Is Tartar the mother of the chewed litter? Stress from predatory attacks could be behind the behavior.
For future litters, you may want to bring the nestboxes inside and just return them for feeding during their first week. That would keep them safe from mice and stressed does.

I believe Dayna does that, because her kits were repeatedly attacked by a small species of rat that was almost impossible to keep out of the cages.

Tartar is in the 1st cage and Rosa is in the last. It's slightly darker over by Rosa, she's the one who lost 4 kits to rodents. Hence why I've been bringing in her box since the attack. Tartar is just a stupid doe. This was her second litter. Her 1st was born in the box BUT she removed everything from it and laid down a tiny amount of fur for a nest. It was warm and I caught it before any real damage could be done. This time she left everything in the box, added a bunch of fur (I've been saving dryer lint just in case), and was feeding her kits well. For what ever reason the rodents haven't messed with the first 2 cages. Just poor Rosa.

Should i do anything before re-breeding her? Was planning on doing that tomorrow.

 

[Rainey]

Should i do anything before re-breeding her? Was planning on doing that tomorrow.

Late last winter when we started breeding the does we'd kept from the previous season, the one I had thought was "best" lost her entire first litter and only 4 of the second litter of 11 survived to grow out. I'm so glad we just stopped trying with her. The other 2 does we'd kept are good mothers and it was just so discouraging to lose so many kits in the first couple weeks after kindling. Everyone has different tolerance level for spraying bucks or small litters or poor mothering, but you might want to just ask the question of whether you want to breed her again. And if you do, I second the advice about taking out her nest box between feedings.

 

[wamplercathy]

That's a given. But in this case I plan to give her a couple more tries. I'm new to this so I don't want to baseball it just yet. Thanks though.

Well, I was making breakfast and a mouse ran between my feet. :evil: followed closely by my 65lb boxer. :evil: Then she crashed in to the cabinets. I know the mouse was laughing it's tail off. So DH reset all the traps. :twisted: When is winter going to be over. :lol: <br /><br /> -- Tue Jan 12, 2016 7:05 pm -- <br /><br /> Caught this little bugger today. Just thought I'd share our victory. :lol: :lol: :lol:




One down countless to go. :twisted: :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[Courta19]

I'm thinking more of a rat. Mice are devious little creatures, you're not wrong, but they seem to lean more towards messing with the rabbit feed rather than harming the rabbits. Rats, on the other hand, are actually quite vicious and will absolutely go after your babes. Most likely a rat problem, though I do not know how to combat that as I have never had this issue. Best of luck!