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For most of the decades we’ve had the farm, we were the only farm without rats on the road. But several years ago our immediate neighbor to the south filled an unsecured corn crib with corn, and the rat population exploded.
Chewed surge protector cord
So it was just a matter of time before they invaded the barn, even though we had fully established, hunting barn cats. We’ve always kept all feed in metal containers. But the chicken feed is out in the hanging feeders, and there’s a bowl of cat food for the cats. Nothing we could do about either.
This winter things got worse fast. They chewed up the cords to both heat lamps, and to the surge protector that ran them. My husband tried a rat trap and got one. He built the 5 gallon bucket trap and got another one.
So we got this recipe for rat bait and put it out. Within a week we stopped seeing rats in the coop. The number of eggs rose, as they’d been eating them.
Then they were seen in the coop again, so we upped the caffeine amount. They disappeared and were no longer cleaning out the bait dish. The timing was such I suspect this coincided with litters maturing.
For our first little batches, the kidney beans were broken up in a mortar and ground in a coffee grinder. But as they started eating more of it, we turned to the grain mill.
On Wednesday afternoon, I ground up 3 lbs of red kidney beans in the mill. This isn’t a very great mill, and I had to do the grinding in 2 batches, allowing it to cool down in between. I then spent the next ½ hour cleaning it.
The ingredients
I am now using 7 caffeine pills per batch, ground to a fine powder in the mortar.
I made a double batch this time. This is a 3 cup bowl to give you a rough idea of amounts, as the recipe doesn’t.
This had two of what I call dollops of molasses, as it was a double batch.
There’s probably ¼ cup of vodka for this double batch, then enough water to make it like oatmeal. I probably used ½ cup of sunflower seeds as attractant. My guess is I used around 2 cups of bean powder.
We make sure the cats can’t get at this or the chickens. We’ve found no dead rats, nor smelled any in this heat, so I don’t know where they are going. But it does seem to work and we make sure to keep the bowl full, and make sure it doesn’t dry out and get hard.
I doubt we’ll ever be free of them, but keeping the population in check is the goal. The plan is to rewire the entire barn, using conduit this time, but that can’t happen until the house is done. So we keep our fingers crossed that they don’t chew up any more wires…
MC (metal clad) would be a good alternative in a barn since you're going to have to replace wires anyway. I'd rather use it than EMT (electrical metal tubing) or heavy wall conduit because I don't like bending pipe. Which ever way you go, you'll have to terminate in metal boxes. And don't forget the ground screws.
Good luck!
Yeah, we already have the metal boxes to terminate into. Not sure what he will use for the wiring....
MC has the wire in it. Comes in 12 and 14 AWG. It's what we suggest when we do barns our outbuildings particularly in the country. It costs a little more than Romex, but considering the reduction in time to install it over EMT, it's well worth it.
For anything larger than 12 AWG, we'd hard pipe out over then put flexible metal conduit from the box to an air compressor or welder for example.
Ouch caffeine overdose. My fiance used to shine a flashlight at night near her chicken coup and snipe the rats with a bb gun. Her rat terrier used to catch them as well.
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I should really look into making this for the ext round of rats we get! I’ve featured your post in The Lotus Garden newsletter, which will be published tomorrow.
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Thank you!
I'll have to keep this one in mind. It is crazy what rats will chew through!!