mouse food or mouse poison!

I believe it takes time before they die in agony.

I'd try scaring them away .... mice and rats do build up a resilience to poisons but I've not seen any with ear defenders yet!

Try

You can tell it's worked by the smell!

I know a couple of people who have tried this sort of thing, and they don't work. They do however really screw up your pets, and your neighbours' pets, in spite of the instructions saying they don't.

I'm also not certain that just because you can't hear a loud noise, it isn't doing you any harm. I wouldn't have one in my house for sure.

Insert cat into attic.

Owain

Our trap is doing a busy trade at the moment. Conventional "Little Nipper".

Ok, it was a bit icky when the mouse was caught by the foot, and had dragged the trap with it while it crawled to a hiding place, except the trap wouldn't come. I was a bit worried that as I pulled the mouse out by said foot that it might come off, but it didn't, and I was then able to dispatch the creature by other means.

Currently baited with tesco value chocolate, melted onto the spike.

they don't die in agony, they simply fall asleep and don't wake up

it takes a while for it to work on mice, usually 4-6 days. All the blue coated poisons are identical, so don't waste your money on rentokil stuff when B&Q's own value range is exactly the same. They don't build up resistance to it because it robs their bodies of vitamin K and they can't live without that.

Go here

The grain is dyed blue as a warning to humans. The poison is within the grain. Don't worry about the husks, it's just that your mouse tribe don't like the roughage :)

Al.

Hum, the young rat that had (mistakenly) decided that living in our house was better than the compost heap wouldn't agree with you. It was not very happy after taking the poison we put down. Loud rasping breathing, dragging itself slowly about. I put it out of its misery with a blow to the head.

They don't "simply fall asleep and don't wake up". They die from multiple internal haemorrhages.

It may have been ill before it ate the poison :-p

They're usualy comatose before anything internal occurs

Except that they carry diseases, are incontinent and like to eat electrical insulation, potentially causing fires.

To the OP: I use Neosorexa, which I buy in bulk from Farmrite. It's a mixture of grains and reconstituted something, all coated blue. It appears to work. I also use the plastic breakneck traps, baited with peanut butter (I'm told that Nutella works better, but neither of us like it, so we don't normally have any).

I've got a number of outbuildings where mice can be a real problem - they ate the wiring in an old Land Rover a few years back. I also use Neosorexa but it's becoming less effective and we've had notification that "supermice" resistant to poison bate are proliferating in Hampshire. What has worked well for us are electronic traps baited with peanut butter, chocolate or nutella. The only headache is the frantic rate at which we have to empty the traps at this time of year. The cat is bloody useless, she just stares at the mice and frowns from time to time.

Rather expensive, though. Much easier to use the "electric" traps I used in my student digs - a piece of Vero board with alternate strips connected to L & N across the mains, and a lightbulb in series to act as a current limiter. Very effective, but not terribly safe. :o)

We caught 51 in the house last year. 8 so far this year. I suspect the total will be much lower since we haven't had a single one in the garage since I "mouse-proofed" the up-and-over doors. I suspect they're now getting in by climbing the Boston Ivy and gaining access to the roof-space, and thence down the pipe runs. I've sealed a number of holes (the ground & 1st floors are effectively air-tight after years of draught-proofing), but the f*ck*rs are still getting in.

I've had to remove the bait-stations in the garden since the birds had discovered them. :o(

In message , Andrew Gabriel writes

I'm fairly sure that if they're as loud as claimed then they will be harming your hearing.

In message , Al writes

So you're saying that they'll eventually die of terminal constipation?

Dave's right, I looked the stuff up. It's related to Warfarin, and interferes with vitamin K metabolism. This stuffs the clotting reactions in the body, and the victim dies of internal bleeding. (yes, that is the same Warfarin you take for heart problems - in smaller doses)

"the first population of warfarin-resistant brown rats (Rattus norvegicus) being discovered in Scotland in 1958"... "Already in 1976 the first case of [coumarin] resistance was detected in UK where 6 of 72 brown rats from five farms survived a 6-day feeding test" ... "The importance of resistance to the second-generation anticoagulants may be indicated by the situation revealed in British rodent surveys in 1970 and 1980: The proportion of rat-infested farmsteads in Hampshire, where difenacoum had been the rodenticide of choice since 1975, increased in this period from 45% to 95% (Greaves et al. 1982c)."

Mogens Lund, "RESISTANCE TO THE SECOND-GENERATION ANTICOAGULANT RODENTICIDES"