It is important to take preventive measures against mice and rats from invading your home. These pests can cause untold damage by destroying property and through their disease-ridden droppings and urine, which can lead to health problems. The animals can gain access to your home through gaps and open spaces. Continue reading this article to gain tips and bits of advice you can use to wade off the rodents.
Keep Your Home Clean
You can do several things to make your home less of an attractive prospect for mice and rats. Firstly, ensure that your home is kept clean at all times. Rodents love the dark, warm places they can make their home in – if it’s nice and clean (and thus relatively free of clutter), it will be much less attractive.
If you have a cat, ensure that the litter tray is cleaned at least once a day, and always keep it in a place where there are no holes for rodents to enter. Ensure your bins are secured securely against vermin entry.
Eliminate Open Food Sources
It is the most important measure you can take to prevent an infestation of rodents. As soon as food sources become available, they should be taken away to ensure no availability to spark off an infestation.
When you put groceries away and notice mouse droppings on them, they have likely been there for some time, and you should discard the affected food immediately. Scour for any old food stores as well – check them and clear all mouse droppings away before you use the food.
Use Traps & Poisons
Poisons and traps are effective against rodents. A mousetrap can help you to catch the animals. Traps vary from humane live traps to simple one-use instant kill traps.
However, many people prefer to use poisons as they are quick and easy to use, with no need to handle the rodents directly. A poisonous substance can be left out in a special poison bait station or sprinkled around potential entry points. Please note that poisons are potentially dangerous for children and dogs or cats, which might ingest them when cleaning their paws.
If poisons are used, the best option is to use ‘second generation‘ poisons that stop blood clots from forming in the rodent’s brain. They kill the rodents quickly and humanely rather than inducing terrible pain.
Seal Off Your Property
If you live on a property that is open to the countryside, rodents will be your concern. Rodents will burrow into your home from gaps in foundations or under doorways. Marks along doorway edges and skirting boards will announce their presence.
Check your home from the outside. Crawl around the edge of your property and look for any large gaps or holes where a rodent could gain entry to your building. Fill these with steel wool, making sure there are no gaps larger than {an inch} in diameter. Cover this with fine mesh wire (such as chicken wire) and fix it in place. It is a permanent fix that will keep rodents at bay for good, as long as you fill any existing gaps or holes around your home.
Hire Pest Control Services
The easiest and most effective way to eliminate rodents from your home is to hire a professional pest control company that can effectively deal with the infestation without you having to expend time and effort into the process.
A Survey by a professional can provide you with advice on how to best seal your property to stop any further entry of pests – such as blocking holes or gaps that rats may attempt to sneak through. Experts can also help you identify what has already let rodents in, so you know what needs to be sealed up next.
Various mouse and rat prevention measures have been tried over the years with varying degrees of success. Rat traps are one of the more obvious methods, but mice can be harder to catch, especially when moving through walls where they are out of sight.
Pest control companies are often the way forward for people with these problems, as they have experience preventing and evicting rodents. One of the most important aspects of preventing rodents is good housekeeping, keeping food stored away, and checking the home regularly for signs of an infestation.
Observing the above preventive measures will be a huge success for your fight against mice and rats. If they have been bothering you, make that move and apply one of the measures.