Could do with a predatory bird to evict the flying paintball machines (wood pigeons mostly) which constantly splatter the cars.
I wonder how effective decoys are?
I live just behind a grain field , in a very, very isolated village .
Just about every house in this village has a field behind it , and just after the grain has been gathered in, there is a rodent migration.
Gone through three boxes of food for them already this year, and they keep coming.
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Youāre feeding them?
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Yes special food , it comes in blue blocks .
They are going through ten blocks every two days .
Itās not something I like doing . I do my absolute best by the flora and fauna .
I have a theory that r*ts and rodents will become the dominant species at some point.
It should have read, three boxes of food this last forty days . Having said that I hadnāt seen one for nearly a year up until now.
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Snakes help keep mice in check here although thereās been a few plagues in the last few summers that caused a lot of damage.
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Whatās the most effective special food you use?
Iād prefer not to either, and although we have some success with traps they are clearly not effective enough. One of the neighbours said heād had to resort to this as traps were no longer working.
Pretty sure weāve had some field mice rather than house mice more recently.
Quite possible theyāve come in through open garden doors during the recent hot spells, though Iāve found a possible entry point under the lip of a step in the kitchen which Iām sure was much smaller in the past. I think you can get some kind of filler with wire wool fragments or may improvise myself.
Yikes.
The most Iāve seen is a procession of 3 some years ago, but thereās always more than you think.
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I use the food from Wilko or bought thirty blocks from Amazon recently.
We see very few mice or shrews in comparison .
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Droughts cause a huge increase in population, they cause so much damage. Luckily weāve had 2 wet summers in a row.
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Do you use the lockable bait boxes?
We had a surge of rats a few years back, which worried some of the local dog owners.
Some got in to the garage and left a lot of mess to clean up. And after a trap got āmummyā (I assume ā went in the waste bin), the flies came a few weeks later, I assume after the babies had died. I think they got under the concrete plinth, somehow.
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When I rented an old farm house in Norfolk in the 90s we had rats in the loft. The farmer put poison down and a week or so later the smell started. Worse smell I have ever experienced. We pulled 15 dead rats out of the loft! Would have rather left them alive.
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Mrs AC was convinced she saw a rat on the garage roof a few weeks ago - I need to declutter our garage at the bottom of the garden as Iām convinced I could hear some gnawing in there the other day. Never seen a rat in the garden before but they are definitely around having seen a few dead ones on the road as well as some on the bank of a local brook near the park in recent years.
Yes, I have three. I thread the baits , like kebab skewers. I never use the sachets as there is no guarantee where the sachet bags end up.
I used to buy boxes that contained a trap from the Big Cheese Company, but they downsized the box and it stopped being effective .
It went from five star to one star performance. Well done to the cost savers and bean counters ā¦
Any dead rats I find, get double or even triple bagged bagged. And into the dustbin.
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I went maximum attack, using bait boxes (red and blue blocks IIRC ā some still in stock), larger sprung traps and small sprung traps, many positioned in a semi-circle around what I thought was the point of ingress/home (around a gap in the plinth, where the various services come in to the garage). Iāve left the boxes down as continuing prevention.
One of the bu^^ers chewed the base of the wooden garage door-post to establish a thoroughfare.
A lesson was learned in that itās not a good idea to store bird food in the garage (or things like dry dog/pet food).
The mess didnāt look much to start with but a batch of dust sheets had been heavily soiled and there were droppings asunder, especially in the harder to get to places.
The foxes can often be heard digging under sheds and I often wonder if theyāre after whatever has set up home underneath (and it aināt hedgehogs, sadly).
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In the middle of winter Iāve had ravenous rats in the she dating anything, including the poison I stored there.
My kitchen is used to store seeds etc these days
best wishes
Ian
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I know what you actually meant but autocorrect really made that sound worse than it was!
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Just re-baited a load of traps with some nutella though itās well beyond best before date and doesnāt really smell of much, perhaps time to invest in a new tub. Unfortunately I canāt use peanut butter. I have a tube of Big Cheese bait somewhere but it never worked in the past.
Iāve no idea if mice habitually or instinctively use certain routes but despite several traps a few feet apart under kitchen units, only some tend to catch anything, almost as though the mice never go to certain areas. Odd. Also strange how they often appear or we find one in a trap after being away for a week or so.
We have always found Thorntons chocolates work well on mouse traps.
Donāt forget that as a Naim owner you have discerning taste, therefore it can be expected that the other residents of your property do too. 
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I have a faulty keyboard as well.
On occasion my computer more gibberish than certain national newspapers
As I understand things (probably wrongly!), they can detect if something has been handled by humans e.g. when trying to set a spring trap, such they can avoid such perils.
I got out the Marigolds for my baiting sessions - no idea if it made a difference.
The red & blue poison blocks donāt appear to give off much of an odour to my nose.
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