Remove competing food sources

While easier said than done, eliminating food sources is critical when setting up your trap. Do you know what the pests are eating? It’s often not until we see the pest getting into food that we know they’re present. 

If it’s orchard crops, think about when the food is on the ground and how you can reduce waste. Consider intensifying trapping seasonally, before the produce ripens.

Maybe you’ve seen rats chewing through feed bags, or mice in your hay bales. Wherever possible, placing all feed in secure bins will make a big difference to catching and controlling rodents.

Is there pet food lying around? Or scraps in a compost bin? Securing these, and removing them as a freely available food source, will vastly increase the chances of success with your trap(s). 

In a chicken coop it’s best to use a feed dispenser, which requires the chickens to engage with it. This will ensure that all feed is eaten by the chickens, not the local rats and mice, and reduces the amount of food available on the ground. 

When feeding food scraps to chickens or other animals, consider if there are any ways you can limit when this is left out and how they can access it. 

Pests have a very good food memory and will tend to go for foods they are used to before trying something else. Trying to switch their preferences to a new food source - like the paste in your new trap - can take a bit of time and perseverance.

The aim is to get the pests to start looking for a new food source (in your trap!). We do this by eliminating the food they’re currently eating where possible, and pre-feeding with the paste you’re going to put into the trap.

If your situation is not covered above and you’d like to troubleshoot with our team, send some information about your environment to us at [email protected] and we will happily do what we can to help!