Introduction to Rodent Control
This guide will go over both mice and rats infesting a home, primarily Norway rats and house mice which are all different species of rodents with different habits, but they behave similairly enough in people’s homes to be covered in one post.
We’ll break down this post into these steps:
These five things will be key to sufficient rodent control.
First let’s talk about one important thing to think of when dealing with rodents or any pest problem at all really; the triangle of survival.
A creature needs these three crucial things to survive: food, shelter, and water.
Without these three things, their chances of survival are significantly reduced. That’s why the steps we’re gonna talk about today are so crucial to managing a rodent infestation.
Identification
Rodents like to remain hidden most of the time, preferring to emerge out of their habitats solely to find food or other places of harborage, so identifying a rodent problem can be hard especially if it’s just starting.
Some things that we look for when identifying rodents are droppings, gnaw marks, and track marks.
Gnaw marks can be found on food packages or sometimes along wood or other materials in a home.
If you have a hole that was too small for that rodent they can gnaw at a surface to make the hole big enough to be an entry point for them.
Sometimes you’ll also notice gnaw marks on wires, mice will sometimes use the covering of wires for nesting material.
Track marks can sometimes be found in areas that the rodents routinely travel on, they will often be dark marks created by the oils and dirts on their fur and paws continuously being smudged on that surface.
These are commonly found around the baseboards of a room especially behind furniture or on wires or pipes.
The most common and useful way to identify rodents by far would be their droppings, they defecate a lot of the time and it’s also useful to help you determine whether you have a rat problem or a mouse problem.
Droppings can also give you a bunch of useful information.
Are you seeing them along the edges of the wall in a line?
That might be a path that they’re following.
Are you seeing hundreds of droppings under the stove that you haven’t looked at in a long time?
That might be an area they feel really safe in and could be getting food that dropped underneath their from cooking.
Cleaning up the areas that you’re seeing evidence of the mice is useful as well.
Clean these spots on a daily basis and monitor the the activity, if you continue to see activity there, you know it’s an area of concern.
Cleaning these areas is also useful in controlling the situation, because rodents rely heavily on smell when navigating through a home and removing their scent from areas will essentially make them feel less comfortable and make those areas a little bit harder to navigate for them.
The cdc has a set of guidelines for safely cleaning rodent droppings please refer to those guidelines here: https://www.cdc.gov/healthy-pets/rodent-control/clean-up.html
Finding and eliminating food sources
To me this is one of the most important, if not the most important part of controlling a rodent problem.
The rodents need food to survive, the more food you provide for rodents on your property, the more potential you have for a large population.
Having a large source of food available can change the behavior of the rodents drastically. When they have a plentiful amount of resources available to them, they will work together a lot better and they’ll be more likely to breed and have healthier litters.
I’ve seen large infestations of rodents, that when the food source was suddenly taken away from them, they started attacking each other and significantly reduced their populations just by turning on each other.
When thinking about food sources for rodents, we have to think small; crumbs and grease on the kitchen counters should take top priority.
Small food sources require little energy for the rodents to consume and a lot of the time you might not even realize they’re consuming these things because they’re essentially getting rid of the evidence by consuming it.
You’re going to want to routinely clean any sort of possible food source you can find.
Make sure you get low and look close, making sure you’re not missing even the smallest of crumbs.
The next thing you should be looking at is your food containers; your bags of flour, boxes of cereal, food products in soft containers should be the things you focus on first.
See if there are gnaw marks or any other evidence of them eating from these containers.
Remember to not only look in kitchen cabinets; did you have chocolate or nuts to snack on in your nightstand?
Did you store Halloween candy in a closet and forget about it?
To protect your food items from rodents I highly recommend recommend storing anything that comes in a box or a bag in a hard, airtight container, my preference would be glass but a hard plastic should do.
Make sure to routinely look for any signs of gnawing on these containers from rodents, just in case.
Finding and removing possible habitats
Mice and rats are gonna need somewhere warm to stay, finding shelter spots can be tricky, and in some cases you might not be able to find them at all.
If the rodents are above fixed ceilings and in wall voids, they will be harder to find for example.
You don’t have to take down walls or anything like that, there’s other things we can do like minimizing the food sources on the property or blocking up entry points into the kitchen to cut off their resources.
What you’re gonna be looking for are places that you don’t go to on a daily basis, your attic, your basement and your storage closets.
In the case of your storage closets, rodents love linen and paper; stuff they can use for insulation to keep them warm, so look for droppings and signs of them chewing things in there.
Remove things and sanitize the area as necessary.
Decide if there’s some things you can get rid of to limit harborage for them, try to make sure things aren’t too cramped; I like to say at least two inches between things if possible.
In attics and basements, limit your storage as much as you possibly can.
Rodents are still gonna be attracted to the insulation in these areas, you don’t always have to take out and redo the insulation, it might not be economical for you to do so, but you should probably focus your baits and traps in these areas.
Finding and blocking possible entry points into the home
Usually blocking the possible rodent entry points in the home is one of the last things I talk about and that’s for a couple of reasons.
One: usually that ship has sailed; the rodents moved into your house already, so we should be focusing on knocking down the population now and then work on blocking up the entry points after we got the current population under control.
Two: finding every rodent entry point is really difficult.
For rats; on average the entry point is gonna be around a half an inch and mice are going to be around a quarter of an inch.
Don’t get me wrong, we should definitely try to block up any entry points we find, but pace yourself and understand your gonna be looking for and find new holes constantly so just be ready for that.
Entry points can be almost anywhere; around the siding of the house where it meets the foundation that they’re could possibly be enough space for mice to squeeze in, where your utility lines enter the building, gaps around door frames, and holes and cracks in your foundation.
What I recommend is actually looking for holes on the interior first, especially in the kitchen to help choke them out of the areas you really don’t want them in.
Indoors you are going to look around pipes first, such as underneath the sinks and around baseboard heat; there is usually a tiny gap around these pipes that rodents love to take advantage of.
Next you might look around the wall, sometimes it’s doesn’t meet flush with the floor and they can get in that way.
Sometimes you’ll have holes in a closet from old cable wires or something, so look in those areas as well.
Ideally when you want to look for these holes is before you’re even moved in, that way you don’t have any furniture blocking your vision of possible gaps.
What you use to block these gaps is gonna vary depending on the area.
You can use a coarse steel wool, but be careful where you put that, definitely don’t put that next to any wires.
To me the most economical and efficient way to block up holes is using a spray foam insulation, just make sure you’re doing everything up to your towns building regulations, especially around pipes and wiring.
Trapping and baiting for rodents safely
The reason I saved trapping and baiting for last is because you want to make sure you’re doing everything I talked about first to minimize the conditions for a healthy rodent population; those things are really going to be your long term control.
Baiting and trapping are used as a supplement to knock down the population.
I won’t go over specific traps or rodenticides.
They’re are a lot of products available and you want to make sure you are thoroughly reading the instructions of any product you use.
If you are using rodenticide, make sure to check up on any state or possibly local regulations.
I personally would recommend having a licensed professional handle any sort of pesticide applications on your property.
When using traps or rodenticides; safety is important regardless of what you use.
Make sure any traps or rodenticides you use are well out of reach of children or pets.
In the case of rodenticide it’s also important to take an extra step of precaution to make sure that it is in a tamper resistant bait station to ensure that only the rodents are able to get to it.
My recommended areas to bait and trap would be underneath the kitchen sink and stove, in the attic and in the basement on the sills if possible.
Putting traps and rodenticide in safe, undisturbed areas isn’t only important for safety but efficiency.
These areas that are usually not being frequented by people and their pets are also the places that the rodents are gonna be spending most of their time because that’s where they feel safest.
When baiting and trapping for rodents, consistency is key, when you have an infestation, I recommend checking your traps and bait atleast once a week, replacing rodenticide and resetting traps as necessary.
Once the activity starts to subside, think about checking every month instead.
I would personally recommend to check on your traps and rodenticide stations every three months at most to make sure your always looking for any possible rodent activity.
Regarding baiting traps, peanut butter is usually a good reliable bait.
If the rodents have been eating a certain type of food in your house, before disposing of it, take a little bit of it and use it as a bait on your traps.
When baiting traps make sure not to overapply the bait especially with something like peanut butter, because it is possible that the rodents are able to eat the bait right off your traps without setting them off.
If you start to notice the bait going missing without the traps being triggered then think about reducing the amount of bait on them or removing the bait altogether and setting the trap dry, because at that point you are only supplying an extra food source for the rodents.
Summary
These are only starting points for handling a rodent infestation.
The process can be long and tedious and things can vary dramatically.
Be patient and don’t be discouraged, controlling a rodent infestation takes time but even the largest rodent infestation can be controlled with enough time and resources.
Don’t expect your problem to be resolved over night and even when you are not seeing activity, still remain cautious and alert to make sure your issue does not rebound.
If you are feeling that you are absolutely not getting the results you like within a month, it might be time to call a professional to assist you before things get too out of hand.
I hope you found this post helpful, if you did please share it as well as like, follow and share us on all of our other social media sites to stay updated on informative pest control content. Thank you!
By Jon Amaral ACE, PHE
New Bedford Pest Control
113 Allen Street
New Bedford, MA 02740
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