How do I get rid of the mice?

[MickeyMouseInTheHouse]

I live rurally in an old cottage so of course, there’s mice. Normally they appear during winter in the outbuildings and I ignore them. This year, they’re in the walls. All the walls. All I can hear on an evening is the scratching and it’s in every room. I have humane mouse traps down, they’re in cupboards and under the skirting boards all the time. They never catch anything, the mice aren’t inside, they’re literally in my walls. If I turn the lights on outside at night, I’ve seen them run up the draining pipes. It’s a really old rented cottage, it has gaps and cracks and that’s clearly how they’re getting in, but how do I get them out? I don’t want to put traps down because I can’t face emptying them, and k think it’s probably quite a big scale problem now. But I’m worried if I put poison down then any cats that chase the mice might get poisoned too? I’ve looked and animal safe mice poison is a complete oxymoron and not happening. What do I do? I can’t live like this, it’s waking my kids at night, it’s waking me, it’s awful!

Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll contact my landlord in the morning and have a look at the sonar things on Amazon tonight!

for those saying get a cat, I used to have one, but the road infront is very busy and he didn’t survive after getting hit. I wouldn’t want to get another cat unless it was an inside one which would be completely useless in this situation! I also work full time so a dog wouldn’t be suitable at the moment.

the humane traps are inside the house, not outside and they’re not catching anything because there are no mice inside. They’re all outside. When we have caught them before, I take them to work, and release there so it’s a decent distance away.

lastly, I don’t have animals or feed, but the neighbours have chickens which is a constant source of food. She has mice in her walls too funnily enough

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

2 cats.

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.

i totally understand that, but I’ve lived here years and never had it this bad before? Usually it’s one bit of scratching over a few days in one room, now it’s everywhere!

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.

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.

Ultrasonic pest repellers from B&Q worked for me.

@BilboBlaggin ive seen mice in the garden, and I’m terrified of rats, so it’s definitely mice 😁

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.

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

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!

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.

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!!

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

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.

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!