On arrival at this site it quickly became clear that the Rats had taken over in very large numbers, we found at least 12 Rat burrows, lots of smear marks where Rats had been running over objects, countless droppings and lots of damaged products. We placed traps with several different baits but to no avail, removing the food source was not an option due to it being needed to feed livestock, and the Rats would not eat rodenticide due to the large food supply. I placed motion cameras down to get an insight into the Rats behaviour and habits, within one night I'd had 750 captures on the camera!
I resorted to using a combination of contact foam and shooting with an air rifle and a night vision set up, this became a regular and effective method, in the end we shot roughly 70 Rats which made a large dent in the population.
We have a variety of alternative control methods to bring Rat numbers under control.
