I AM GOING INSANE. What can I do to fix this. I have bait traps all around, I've tried putting pure peppermint extract all around. My latest attempt is camphor blocks. NO GO. I have a fresh nest 1 inch away from a camphor block. What else can I try?
Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full with water and put in sunflower seeds so the water is covered. Attach some kind of ramp for the mice to get to the top of the bucket. When they see the seeds, they will jump in. I have even used that for getting rid of chipmunks. Reset it every few days until you are no longer catching mice.
Bait stations outside the building. I prefer soft pack baits. Should there happen to come a rat wandering around, rats are much more likely to snack on soft pack baits than solid block or pellets. If there is any risk at all of non target poison ingestion do not use a bait with bromethalin as an active ingredient. It is a neurotoxin and is not treatable.
An old coworker swore by mothballs. I had a mouse run across my feet yesterday on my buggy. Did a quick look but didn't see any nests which just means it's somewhere that's a PITA to get to.
Regular old snap traps, check and bait often. Be careful with the poison bait stations as those mice that get poisoned may become food for something else thereby affecting them.
I second or third the bucket trap. We used them very successfully in our grain room when we had laying hens. I had the ones where the mouse walks up the ramp and then out on the baited “plank” and plop! In they went We had tried poison but the danged mice would take it and hide it, I’m sure some succumbed to the poison but we did much better with the walk the plank!
There is another variation to the bait bucket. Run a rod through the top with a pop bottle on it and peanut butter or bacon grease. Make sure the bottle cant be slid from it being centered over the water. Smear a coat of peanut butter or bacon grease on the bottle. Mice crawl out on the rod to the bottle and it rotates. They fall in the water. No need for sunflower seeds with this method.
I think there's some experimenting to do with this method to figure out how far away the ramp should be from the bottle or can? I guess maybe stop the ramp at the edge of the bucket that way the mice have to jump to the bottle/can? For what it's worth, I've used a straighten metal coat hanger as the "rod" in the past. Caught a few but never had great luck. With sunflower seeds, obviously they float and the mice think it's solid until they jump in. Personally I like a snap trap with a metal trigger not that plastic cheese shaped one. Smear peanut butter on the trigger and then wrap the trigger with scotch tape so they can't just "ever so carefully" lick the trigger clean.
The ones the shooting club used just had a ramp up to where the threaded rod was through the bucket. They climbed up then crawled out to the bottle. You could use a wooden dowel too if you needed it larger diameter. I use tom cat glue traps in the garage, for the rare occasion they get in, and we have 6 bait stations outside around the house and garage. Refillable with blocks. We don't have a mice problem with this method.
So put the ramp parallel with the rod? Maybe that's how I did it? Definitely not the orientation I was thinking when I wrote that response.
Use a Tootsie roll...work it into the bait holder, they can't steal it off...it lasts n lasts n lasts...unless you don't check the trap often, and they steal the bait right over their buddies dead body!
