How do I get rid of the mice?

We now live in an old thatched cottage, very rural and surrounded by farmers fields. We have a very old cat who sleeps most of the day and is very much a pampered lazy old cat, and two kittens (8 months old ish).

In our old house, the only time we had an issue with mice (next to fields and the previous owner had terrible trouble) was when our (old) cat went to stay at my parents for a few weeks whilst we were away. 🤷‍♀️

Since moving here in the spring, we got two kittens because we could hear mice not long after moving in. They have been amazing!

Since around September, they're catching, that we see, around 4 mice a day. This sounds grim but my daughter thought she heard a mouse at bedtime last night and the kittens had a sniff where she saw it but nothing there. A few hours later, I was presented with a gift from boy kitten with said mouse...

My advice, get a pair of kittens asap and you shouldn't have many problems going forward!

Block up the holes. We have chickens and we certainly don't have mice in the house. Poison is so dangerous even in a locked box - they go into the box, take it into their cheeks and carry it back to their nest. If they happen to drop any and it's not in a safe place such as a locked box another animal for example could pick it up and die horribly.

We used a motion detector camera (available from Amazon) to work out exactly where they were getting in, and painstakingly blocked up each hole, one by one. It was difficult and time consuming but now we don't have a problem and we don't have rentokill on a retainer either.

Cat. Literally only thing that got rid of ours for good.

PointsSouth · Yesterday 10:53

I’m not sure what a ‘humane’ trap is.
Is it one that kills them quickly?
Or is it one that doesn’t kill them at all?
If it’s the latter, I don’t see how it solves the problem.
Well, unless you also have a largish snake.

Op did you put chocolate spread in? Caught seven mice last winter. Pointsouth they crawl in to get food, it slams shut and you drive them to a field miles away and let them out (so they can’t run back to your house!). Op definitely try different things in the trap and I’d disagree with getting a cat- ours ignores mice and stalks our dog instead 😅 then sleeps. She once lay down next to where there was a mice scrabbling away. She also miaows at three in the morning!! If you love love love cats of course go for it but otherwise you have to be ready for a pet, it’s not just a mouser machine!!

That was exactly my reasoning to start with. I wouldn’t even contemplate rats, even though I knew the amount of noise they were making was a lot for mice. As soon as I told the pest control guy they were under floors and in walls he said it’s most likely to be rats. Unfortunately he was correct 😢 I do hope yours are nice and not rats.

Also live rurally and have mice in the walls - occasionally i actually hear them actually squeaking as well as rustling and running around. Cat has caught one or two but nowadays just does the feline equivalent of raising an eyebrow at them. I’ve tried peppermint spray which did naff all and have humane traps but they always come back. Tempted to get a pet owl at this point!

Plastic snap traps in every room baited. Only way we go rid as really didn't fancy the smell of dead mice from poison. Planet butter and chocolate. You pick them up and cam open them without touching the mice. If your rented I'd asked landlord to get pest control in

Another vote for a cat. Even if it’s an indoor cat or really not a killing machine, cats still release pheromones that rodents can detect so they tend to keep their distance. We live rurally with two cats and the mice are nowhere near our house.

Ultrasonic pest repellers from B&Q worked for me.

I've just had pest control in as I too had heard scratching and chewing in the walls and under floorboards. I ended up getting professionals in as my own efforts weren't resolving the problem. Get a reputable company in, preferably one with good reviews. My problem turned out to be rats. They were coming from the sewer, into our drain and then up through an old disused pipe (from before we had an extension done).

A good pest controller will do a thorough review of your property and establish any entry points. These have to be sealed off otherwise you'll never stop them coming in. Mice in particular can get through the smallest of holes. Are you sure it's mice and not rats?

My guy put bait down in several areas around the house. He also put a non-return valve on the sewer pipe, bungs on the disused pipe, and also cemented a hole that had appeared on an inspection chamber near the drain.

Im currently going through the agony of the smell. The last rat has died under the floorboards and is obviously decaying. It's bloody vile! OP, if you don't seal off all the holes and gaps, missing vents etc, then you'll never get rid of the problem. Vermin follow the urine smell of their peers, and they breed prolifically.

Humane traps are ineffective unless you want to travel miles to empty them.

Cats will torture and/kill them: we can’t pretend that’s all nice either.

Personally I’m all for kill traps and cats til they stop the breeding cycle.

We had them in our walls. Our cats were useless.
We ended up getting pest control in.
Apparently mice love chocolate. They melted it onto the traps. It worked, they were gone in a few weeks.
You will need to block up any holes or cracks with wire wool.

2 cats.

You will really struggle to get rid of them (and rats) with chickens next door as they have a constant source of food.

We had mice in our wall cavity, they make such a lot of noise. In the end we paid a professional who managed to find where they were getting in (the meter cupboard where the cable entered the house and the circuit box) and put poison down but safely so it couldn't be accidentally eaten by anything else. He came back twice to make sure everything was gone and sorted. It was worth the money. We have since had mice in our detached garage but that was dealt with ourselves with normal snap traps.

I think humane traps are neither effective nor humane. It doesn't take long for a mouse to starve to death which is much worse than a quick neck break imo. And I am equally squeamish dealing with living or dead mice
🤦😂.

I rented a room in a house with mice and it was awful. They were in my bedroom at night. I fished one out of the bath for a fellow tenant one morning.

The landlady used humane traps, but she was hopeless about it and found it all tres amusing. She told me once that she'd peeked inside one of the traps one morning and then decapitated the mouse when it made a bid for freedom and she closed the lid of the trap on it. She would try to throw them over the stream at the bottom of her garden and laugh about failing to do so.

I used to have cats when living in my own house but they weren't much good either. They'd catch mice outside and bring them in to play with, then lose them.

Poison has been the most reliable remedy in my experience. I know people who have had some success with the sonic repellers, or traps, but the poison seems to be more reliable.

Another vote for a cat. One of my cats is really annoying and meows all the time but he is very murderous - you can have him if you like 😆

We had a similar problem (maybe not so severe) a couple of years ago.

we found that those plug-in high frequency things worked for a little while until they got used to it and returned.

But one of the reasons they returned was that I discovered DH found them cute and was secretly leaving crumbs out for them!!!
This actually worked in our favour as it turned out because when the situation became more worrisome, they had a taste for the cracker crumbs and were easily caught in the humane trap.

I was surprised how many we caught. I thought we only had one or two - we even gave them names. But, we caught 10 over a couple of nights (and released them near a field).

We have since inherited a cat. She is a rubbish cat hunting-wise (apart from spiders), but I believe just the scent of a nearby cat keeps mice away. Not had a single mouse since.

Maybe get a cat, a sound repellent thing, or a DH who can infiltrate them and then betray them?

If you don’t want a cat, do you know someone with a male cat who uses a litter tray. Put the smelly cat litter near the holes etc to put the mice off.

I'd echo the suggestion of a cat. We also live rurally and had mice in the walls. Since getting a cat we have never heard from them again, despite the cat being thick as mince and never once catching one.

If you are allowed a dog and would like one get a working jack russell :)

Not helpful and probably against your lease to get one but we acquired a cat. She only caught 2 and the f*ckers got the message. She still lays down in certain places like by the kitchen cupboards because she can smell or hear them, but they don't come out anymore.

Previous to her arrival, we used sticky traps which are cruel and utterly gross. Snap traps jyst didn't work for us. So Cat was got, so she can deal with them.