Rats!

[VenusStarr]

We have rats in our garden, under the decking. I'm gutted as I've been

No idea how that posted. I've been really enjoying my garden recently. We have been putting bird food out and had some lovely birds coming in.

Obviously took everything in. They're really brazen. This morning there were 5 small ones out, mooching on the grass and in my pots.

Feel awful but have booked council pest control. Hate the thought of poisoning them but if we've seen 5 in the daylight, how many more are there and where are the parents? 😔😫

I also feel pretty disgusting, like we should have a big red X on the door!

Any advice?

Stop feeding the birds.

We have a popular nature area near us and some members of the community think it’s imperative to feed the birds and squirrels every single day, year round, multiple feeders everywhere. The area is swarming with rats. You can see them in the daytime. I don’t go there anymore. But the people doing the feeding can’t be reasoned with.

If you want to feed then in your garden, I don’t know how you can do that without also feeding the rats.

There's no bird feed outside now. We noticed they've come through a gap in the fence from next door. They're always in the garden, having bbqs etc. But think they've settled in our garden 👍

We actually back onto a nature reserve. The babies are quite cute but I obviously don't want them living in the garden. Sigh.

Friend has a huge problem with rats. The next door neighbour puts huge quantities of bird food out on the ground and also feeds foxes. They won’t stop

Agree - take the food away and get an exterminator in asap. I also quite like rats and feel terrible about killing them, but if they aren't dealt with quickly it will soon get out of control. If they are as brazen as you say, they sound well established already (sorry! just reinforcing that you are definitely doing the right thing by calling pest control).

Notorious for living under decking unfortunately.

(and yes, it's the bird food - we've had rats twice, once when I put up bird feeders, and once when I left a bag of dog food in a thick sealed plastic box - they chewed through the plastic!) Once the food is away you are less likely to get a new infestation (but getting rid of the food alone won't make them leave, in my experience)

🤦🏻‍♀️ 😬 oh no! We just had a couple of hanging feeders, one small bird seed and one peanuts.

Hoping they'll just bugger off as there's nothing to eat.

We jetwashed the decking yesterday to try and get them to go. 5 minutes later a small head poked up 🐀 not bothered.

We had rats for the first time (well knowingly!) last year. They were brazen too, sitting under bird feeders waiting for food to fall (that’s when they weren’t actually on the bird feeders). I lived in dread our lovely but very prim and proper next door neighbours might see them!

We stopped putting food out and got rat traps (like mouse traps but bigger and in a box). Caught quite a few and then all went quiet on the rat front. Think our garden was a rat run as no evidence of them living in our garden, and a number of other neighbours (not the prim and proper ones 😀) admitted they had rats too, also saw them eating off their bird feeders.

Hadn’t seen any sign of them this year so dared to put some bird food out again last week. Sod’s law saw a rat 2 days later but not near the bird food. Reset the rat traps and caught one that night.

We spotted one a few weeks ago and have stopped feeding birds. They may live under our compost heap or come through from next door who often eat in the garden . Any hedgehog/pet friendly ways of eliminating?

I had to call council pest control out after seeing and finding rats in my garden over winter.
The exterminator determined they were coming from gardens behind and using my garden as run. Poison traps laid out near a gap in the fence and I haven’t had a problem since. Fingers crossed!

(also- if you've got to wait a while for the council to come out, you could put out your own traps - we used the ones that are in a sealed box so that other wildlife aren't at risk)

We had rats during lockdown. They were bold as brass. We stopped feeding the birds and put down traps (in the boxes) but didn't catch any. I've been feeding the birds again for 18 months but put hanging trays underneath and so so have only had one sighting of one rat. Any odd bit of seed which falls on the floor is quickly eaten by the birds.

@sproutsandparsnips all my bird feeders had trays underneath mainly to stop the dog eating anything dropping from the feeders (wasn’t well after eating the bits that had fallen from suet ball feeder). That didn’t stop the rats though, they just climbed onto the feeders (saw one in the squirrel proof one too!)

We put our feeder, with a tray under it, on a 6 foot pole. Watched a rat shimmy up it easy as pie.

We have had rats and had to get pest control out. We ended up with them in the house as they were coming through a tiny vent from the garage. It was horrible.

Get a cat. The rats will move on immediately. They don't like the pheremones that cats give off. We had a similar problem that pest control couldn't solve. Are your rear drains/manhole located under your decking? If so the rats could be tunnelling in and out of this and could interfere with your internal drainage too.

@SlipSlidinAway we had a feeder hanging by chains from a tree. Rat happily climbed the tree and down the chains to the food

If you get a cat, for god sake think hard about not getting a cat flap. We don't have rats but we do have a cat, and she regularly brings in mice though the cat flap overnight. We then wake to mangled mouse corpses.

I've lived in two houses with decking and in both I had rats under it - despite there being no bird feed in my garden or the immediate neighbours.

I am still in the 2nd house and have removed the decking and replaced with a patio. No rats.

I have concluded that rats and decking just go hand in hand.

You can feed birds if you catch the bits that fall, clear up every evening, and bring the food in at night.

In your case, I’d strongly consider removing the decking. There’ll be plenty more rats in the neighbourhood waiting to move in.

Thanks for all the messages. Nice (but grim) to know were not suffering alone.

Decking is at the top of the garden, away from the house and drain (which is covered). We've covered a vent (that is already blocked from the inside) and have a conservatory on the back so no way in - I hope!

Our garden is enclosed on all sides, access through the front only, so getting the decking up and replacing it is ptaxtivally impossible. We know underneath the top bit is concrete and then the second layer is a mixture of concrete and soil. Dh is miffed that they've broken his lights - only one works now, nearest the transformer. To remove it, we'd have to bring it all through the house and then no idea what we'd be able to put there instead. We've previously looked into patio slabs and don't think we could do it logistically.

@mumonthehill this terrifies me 😭 literally my worst nightmare.

We've got huge wood pigeons that normally scoop up the seeds that drop.

Pest control coming next Monday. I really hate the thought of killing them. But I also couldn't trap them and release them in case they bit me. Dh is incapacitated this week as having an operation. There's nothing to eat in the garden now so hopefully they'll go away.

We've had rats in the gardens Imlive in the country surrounded by arable fields, and next to a small wood copse. I feed the birds and have a wildlife,pond. There are buzzards and sparrow hawks, and owls, and last year I was up a ladder cleaning the greenhouse when a rat came squeaking out from under the shed chased by a weasel. They had a tussle and the weasel killed the rat (twice it’s size) and dragged it away. Amazing to see. I don't know if the farmers put stuff down in their barns (probably) but the rats never seem to get out of hand.

Sorry. That's not true.

Not in quantity anyway (sorry pressed send too soon!).

Cats are not a reliable enough deterrent when there's an infestation