Barn Owl friendly rat control

No-one likes to talk about rats, but they're sometimes a problem we have to deal with - without harming wildlife, especially our owls...




...at this time of the year, when other food is getting scarcer, rats are around the outbuildings, looking for spilt chicken feed and scraps.

So this year, we've decided to try Eradibait - as reccommended by the Barn Owl Trust.

The biggest problem with conventional anti-coagulant rat poison is secondary poisoning - when animals consume a poisoned rat, poisoning themselves in the process. It takes a while to kill a rat. Anti coagulants disrupt blood clotting, thining the blood until the rat dies of internal bleeding. It can still be moving around for 2-12 days. And that means you'll probably not find the body before another opportunistic animal (a bird of prey maybe) does. Second generation rodenticides are worse than the first generation ones.

So even if you use the poison correctly, keeping it covered etc, you can't guard against secondary poisoning.

Barn Owls, along with Red Kites and Kestrels, are the most likely to
suffer secondary poisoning. And it's a growing problem.

Between 1983/4 and 1995/6 the percentage of Barn Owl carcasses containing residues of second-generation rodenticides increased from 5% to 38%.

But Eradibait doesn't cause secondary poisoning. It's based on ground maize combined with wheat and a sweet molasses attractant. The rats eat it, and it makes them dehydrated. The manufacturers say rats become lethargic, retreat to their burrow where they lapse into a coma and die. And apparently, because of the dehyration, the smell is less too...

Of course, you don't have to poison at all. You can trap rats, use cats (not very selective though), terriers, ferrets or just shoot them. And if you must use a conventional poison, and you're in the south west where resistance to anti coagulants is still low, you can use a first generation poison like Warfarin - see a list in the more detailed information on rat control from the Barn Owl Trust.