Rodents in woodpile

jj3500 said:

I love mundane exercise of transferring wood from the outside location to near the house. Especially when these guys literally jump out of their disturbed nest and almost jump onto your sleeve!

I've had these guys lay nests in my vehicles that aren't even sitting for a while. just one night and there is a little nest starting.

What method works the best? Traps or D-con?

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If you can, a good old-fashioned (hungry) barn cat works wonders. They also tend to go after birds too though.

Otherwise I much prefer traps to poison. Poison lets them die wherever (which stinks) and it may interest my dog.

I have several large bird boxes up around the yard and at least one Screech Owl spends every winter. I assume the owls are the reason I don't see a lot of mice in the woodpile. I was told that it takes more than one box to attract Schreech owls, since they like to have altenative hiding places in their territories. I don't know if that is always true, but we started seeing Schreech Owls soon after I put up three boxes. A cat might kill some mice, but it would also kill a lot of other things I want to have around, so no outdoor cats here. I don't use poison, but do use traps if mice get into the house. I catch some mice, but maybe just the dumb ones.

#1: Cats

#2: Traps

No poison for me . . . out of concern that other critters will eat the poisoned mouse . . . and I really don't want mice dying in unwanted places.

I'm not sure what critters were in my stack of cherry but they debarked them all!

All I have ever needed is my cats...

Just toss 'em in the stove.
They don't scream for very long.

jj3500 said:

I love mundane exercise of transferring wood from the outside location to near the house. Especially when these guys literally jump out of their disturbed nest and almost jump onto your sleeve!

I've had these guys lay nests in my vehicles that aren't even sitting for a while. just one night and there is a little nest starting.

What method works the best? Traps or D-con?

Click to expand...

Get a cat and feed it only enough to keep it around but not enough to sate it's hunger.

If you don't want to kill them there are small live traps. They work on mice but to small for wood Rats which are not invasive. Wood rats look like a big mice. If you don't care use slap traps they work best. Use peanut butter for bait.

I throw these around an equipment that will be static for awhile...since they chew the wires and all. As far as being in the woodpile meh... I haven't seen any nests in years.

My dog is the best mouser I have ever had. The only problem is he tears apart the wood piles.My chickens do quite a number also.they just peck them to death and leave them there.No poison for me either with the animals.

savageactor7 said:

I throw these around an equipment that will be static for awhile...since they chew the wires and all. As far as being in the woodpile meh... I haven't seen any nests in years.

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I use moth balls also. Keeps things out of the wood and also larger things from living under the pallets the wood is stacked on.

Steve

jj3500 said:

I love mundane exercise of transferring wood from the outside location to near the house. Especially when these guys literally jump out of their disturbed nest and almost jump onto your sleeve!

I've had these guys lay nests in my vehicles that aren't even sitting for a while. just one night and there is a little nest starting.

What method works the best? Traps or D-con?

Click to expand...

357 semi jacket hollow points

Bye bye

There's a number of ground hogs that nest in my yard including under my shed where I stack most of my cord wood. The hogs as well as birds, owls, and bats in the area do a pretty good job controlling the rodent population..

I have some wood rats living in my woodpile. They're good-sized buggers. I enjoy watching them frolic under my bird feeder. My philosophy is that as long as the critters stay outside, I leave them alone.
Had a gang of flying squirrels up in my attic a few years ago. They raised he11 every night until I got after them with rat traps.

I leave everything alone also till they come in the house. Once you start moving things they all run away. Wood rats are defiantly not a problem.

wood spliter said:

I leave everything alone also till they come in the house. Once you start moving things they all run away. Wood rats are defiantly not a problem.

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We are not talking about Congressman.
We are talking about RATS!

bren582 said:

There's a number of ground hogs that nest in my yard including under my shed where I stack most of my cord wood. The hogs as well as birds, owls, and bats in the area do a pretty good job controlling the rodent population..

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Me thinks ground hogs are more the problem than the solution :cheese:

We have fox and /or coyote and used to have some cats in between .... but some how the cats all "disappeared" once the rodent population got low. We set traps in the detached garage and boiler shed and we have an indoor cat that takes care of the house.
Most of the neighbors use a .22 or similar for the G hogs but I have never had one in my yard. I think because I have a heavily wooded lot and back up to 20 + acres of wooded property and a river.
In fact last summer I was cutting up a dead oak in my cleared lawn area in the middle of the day and a coyote came to the edge of the woods about 15' away and was growling at me ! I stepped over to the other side of the tree with the chainsaw and got on my 4 wheeler and watched as he wandered down the wood line another 500' or so until the neighbors dog noticed him and he drifted back into the woods. I guess a 50 year old Rot that can't run anymore is more of a threat than me with a running chainsaw !

Bigg_Redd said:

jj3500 said:

I love mundane exercise of transferring wood from the outside location to near the house. Especially when these guys literally jump out of their disturbed nest and almost jump onto your sleeve!

I've had these guys lay nests in my vehicles that aren't even sitting for a while. just one night and there is a little nest starting.

What method works the best? Traps or D-con?

Click to expand...

Get a cat and feed it only enough to keep it around but not enough to sate it's hunger.

Click to expand...

Don't need to get that complicated. Most cats will pursue mice with energy whether they're well fed or not. If they're well fed, they just won't eat as many as they do if they're hungry.

jj3500 said:

I love mundane exercise of transferring wood from the outside location to near the house. Especially when these guys literally jump out of their disturbed nest and almost jump onto your sleeve!

I've had these guys lay nests in my vehicles that aren't even sitting for a while. just one night and there is a little nest starting.

What method works the best? Traps or D-con?

Click to expand...

I've learned the hard way not to leave documents or anything made of paper or soft plastic in the glove box of my car in winter. The other day, a neighbor lady gave me a lovely homemade pastry to take home. I forgot about it in unloading the car and left it on the front seat. In the morning, there wasn't so much as a crumb left.

Poison is bad because of all the reasons mentioned by other posters. Snap traps work very well, but you do have to remember where you put them and check them every day or two. Rotting mice smell really, really horrible.

Cats are also good, if you have real mousers. Kittens adopted from a long-standing barn colony are totally brutal on the mouse population when they grow up. Purebred critters not so much.

But I only bother with traps in my cupboards (old house, impossible to seal off from mice). The cats dispatch any that are stupid enough to come into the houe, and they've kept the outside population down to where I have no problems with even the potatoes in my garden in summer.

Otherwise, I live and let live, including the car, largely because it's just a losing battle and there are only so many traps I want to check every day and so many mouse corpses I really want to be dealing with.

Tony H said:

bren582 said:

There's a number of ground hogs that nest in my yard including under my shed where I stack most of my cord wood. The hogs as well as birds, owls, and bats in the area do a pretty good job controlling the rodent population..

Click to expand...

Me thinks ground hogs are more the problem than the solution :cheese:

We have fox and /or coyote and used to have some cats in between .... but some how the cats all "disappeared" once the rodent population got low. We set traps in the detached garage and boiler shed and we have an indoor cat that takes care of the house.
Most of the neighbors use a .22 or similar for the G hogs but I have never had one in my yard. I think because I have a heavily wooded lot and back up to 20 + acres of wooded property and a river.
In fact last summer I was cutting up a dead oak in my cleared lawn area in the middle of the day and a coyote came to the edge of the woods about 15' away and was growling at me ! I stepped over to the other side of the tree with the chainsaw and got on my 4 wheeler and watched as he wandered down the wood line another 500' or so until the neighbors dog noticed him and he drifted back into the woods. I guess a 50 year old Rot that can't run anymore is more of a threat than me with a running chainsaw !

Click to expand...

We have a lot of coyotes around here, despite the periodic massacre parties the local goons carry out. I hear them most nights at dusk and see tracks in the snow even right near the house frequently, but I've never actually seen one in four years here. I have, however, been growled at warningly from the weeds a couple of times, and I beat it out of there fast.

The coyotes do a remarkable job of keeping the area mostly free of groundhogs, raccons, rabbits, and other medium-sized critters that can make life (and kitchen gardens) difficult. Every time one of the shooting parties has a good day, the rabbit population explodes until the coyotes catch up. Drives me nuts.

[/quote]357 semi jacket hollow points

Bye bye[/quote]

And what do YOU use for deer...a Howitzer???

Every freakin woodpile I used this year ( I stack on pallets) has had nests in it. No cats. No poison because of the dog. Not sure if they are mice? Have seen some of the critters from time to time and they seem much bigger than mice. Do I even bother trying to get rid of them considering the woodpile is a good distance from the house? Is it something that comes with the wood burning? Never remember them in my father's woodpiles. I do hate the freakin things!

BucksCounty said:

Every freakin woodpile I used this year ( I stack on pallets) has had nests in it. No cats. No poison because of the dog. Not sure if they are mice? Have seen some of the critters from time to time and they seem much bigger than mice. Do I even bother trying to get rid of them considering the woodpile is a good distance from the house? Is it something that comes with the wood burning? Never remember them in my father's woodpiles. I do hate the freakin things!

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If they really are much bigger than mice, then they must be rats. Or you may have mice nesting in the woodstacks and the odd rat living somewhere else that you're just happening to catch sight of. Any chance they could be either voles or moles? Both of those are a bit bigger than house mice.

With the dog around, best you can do is get some of the kind of traps that they walk into and that close behind them. Google around and you'll find lots of mouse traps and some rat traps. Mice in the woodpile is no big deal, but rats are something you really don't want making a home around your property.

BucksCounty said:

Every freakin woodpile I used this year ( I stack on pallets) has had nests in it. No cats. No poison because of the dog. Not sure if they are mice? Have seen some of the critters from time to time and they seem much bigger than mice. Do I even bother trying to get rid of them considering the woodpile is a good distance from the house? Is it something that comes with the wood burning? Never remember them in my father's woodpiles. I do hate the freakin things!

Click to expand...

If they are bigger than mice they might be RATS.
Rats will hide their babies in a hollow log.
Be Carefull Bringing In Wood And Letting It Sit.