What would be your preferred method of dealing with a mouse problem?

[BlueBar]

A friend recommended baited (poisoned) traps as a straightforward way to get rid of the mouse (mice?) in my garage.

My dad says old fashioned spring traps are preferable because no matter how careful you are with the poisoned ones, they have to be disposed of and you don't know what might be affected by them afterwards I.e. what else might be affected by the poison.

I don't love the idea of squashed mice, but they do need to go and none of the solutions are particularly palatable

Befriending

Spring traps every time. They like peanut butter.

I agree with your dad. My grandad used to superglue peanuts to traps.

Agree about the spring traps. These work well: Big Cheese mouse traps

Snap traps with peanut butter for bait.

Spring traps. Solved it in my current house. We had mice in a different house years ago and tried poison bait traps and the live catch traps and tbh it was worse. With the poison, we discovered that they had spread it all around the ground floor aghhhh! I even discovered granules in the kids toy box! Cue a massive massive deep deep clean and my paranoia for a few weeks, I was so so stressed, googling ld50 of mouse poison and all sorts.
*no children were poisoned.

Not poison, it gets into the environment and also could poison other animals.

Humane traps are only humane if you check them daily and are prepared to take the mouse a long way away from the house.

Spring traps are quick and effective mostly, but occasionally they will trap a leg or tail and not kill outright. Then you have to deal with killing a maimed mouse or throwing away a severed foot. The best way I found of dispatching a wounded mouse was to hit it with a heavy book. but that does tend to splat a bit.

The really best way I found was to get a cat, but I also think the little bugger brought them in in the first place!

Oh and you may have more furry friends than you think. We caught 6 in two days. 😳

If it's in a garage they are easily accessible then spring traps. You can also use baited boxes. We get them in the loft (and rats) and it's too difficult to access so poison is the only way.

Cats.

Get ratman in to get rid pronto don't care how just get rid of them all whatever works best and quickest where there's 1 there's 100 they are pests not cute little cartoons if you don't mind 500 mice running around your house popping weeing and eating everything consider other options.

Catch with your bare hands. Very satisfying

Failing that, use spring. Poison is very slow and incredibly painful and since you have no idea where they will end up, they could be eaten by anything including foxes and birds of prey who have no recourse to a vet like a dog or cat, so that's another animal that dies a horrific death...only to be eaten by crows. Its barbaric really.

Befriend, catch, play, have fun, enjoy your life...or encourage foxes. Mice only last a week round here (according to my wildlife camera)

I’ve used chocolate very successfully to get rid of mice in my house, luckily the traps were effective at killing the mice so I threw the trap away with the mice still in it! Sorry, but I could not sleep if I knew there was a live mouse in my house!

When I had mice in my garage, I left poison trays down and was astounded at how much used to get eaten. Then the guy at the ironmongers shop said that mice were attracted to the smell in the poison bait and it was likely that I was enticing them in from outside! He told me to only put poison down when I saw droppings or a live mouse and remove it when there were no more fresh droppings.

Snap traps. They are dead, you dispose. When they eat poison, other creatures may eat them and also become poisoned, an owl for instance. Also the smell of decaying mouse is awful and lingers.

Traditional spring traps (we use 'little nippers') work very well, we tend to bait with chocolate

I must admit that setting the traps and then removal of dead mice from the traps is one of DH's jobs. I'm not usually one for separating blue & pink jobs but I just couldn't face it!

The mouse is killed instantly so more humane than poison as well as more environmentally friendly

my youngest female cat is a fantastic mouser
she’s a house cat so she doesn’t bring them in she just exterminates the little bastards that are getting in. She will sit patiently beside a dead one waiting for acknowledgement and a few dreamies 😂

Cats. They're also the source of the mouse problem. Feckers.

Snap traps I'm afraid. They are quick and final - no dying behind the kickboards and slowly decomposing.

Little piles of poison pellets in the corner of rooms and go away for a couple of days. Never see them again.

We use nooski traps. Instant.

Or if the dog gets to them first then.....well!! Another instant way.

We caught six in one evening before we had cats. No sooner emptied the trap and reset, sat back down in the livingroom and we could hear it going again. We live rurally, it was autumn, and they got in through a hole in the wall that accommodated the boiler flue.

Our cats do bring in the odd live rodent, but they usually kill them not long after. Haven't had any come in by choice for years now.

I have found the ultrasonic deterence to be quite effective. I would avoid poison, we used this in our garage and found poison pellets deposited everywhere with little evidence tbey had actually worked.

I’m rodent-phobic so I’d have to burn the house down.

Spring traps. 2 pack from screwfix. Done and dusted. No blood either!
Bit of peanut butter on it.

Poison can take a few attempts.

Sod that.

We had mice and rats at one point so we got lots and lots of snap traps, lots of glue traps and lots of poison. Put everything out one night and caught pretty much everything then over the next 2 weeks the remaining ones . We had to very carefully find all the entry points too and sealed up even the tiniest holes so they couldn’t get in ever again