Natural Rodent Control

Build a house anywhere and before too long the mice move in. On a farm there are lots of tasty things for mice to eat and mice can quickly build to plague proportions if you are not careful.  I wont use baits to kill mice. There is too much danger of some other animal getting in to them around here.  So we need to use other means to keep them at manageable levels. I say manageable as there is no way we will ever get rid of them. And I don't mind mice really.  As long as they dont eat and poo on everything in sight!

We need to keep mice out of all the animal feed which is an easy and tasty target for hungry mice, so the golden rule here is that feed is always secured in mouse proof containers. Food for chickens and sheep etc is put straight from the bags into the drums when we get it home.  And we try to minimise any spillage when handling feed.  The food in the chicken pens can be an issue as the chickens do love to spread it around.  For this reason our pens have a mousemesh floor to prevent burrowing.  We learnt that early on when the gravel floors of the first pen we built became pitted with burrows and tunnels. We had wire down to prevent predators, but it wasn't small enough to keep the rodents out too.

Our biggest help though for keeping the rodent population under control is our cats. Through the ages cats have helped man keep mice and rat populations at bay and they do just as good a job today. While our cats spend most of their days and nights in comfort sleeping peacefully in the house and are definitely well fed (though they will tell anyone who will listen otherwise), they do a great job in the evenings as mousecatchers and definitely earn their keep. There wouldnt be a week when they don't dispatch a mouse or two. And they do like to show us their successes!