How To Catch A Mouse
The Best Mouse Control Advice
Gone Today - Gone For Good!
Mouse control in Bristol with The Bristol Rat Company, your best local mouse control specialist for complete removal of nuisance mice in your home.
The Best Way To Catch A Mouse
The Best Mouse Trap Advice That Works!
Mice have the same life needs that humans do. Water, Food and a safe environment, to mate and bring up young.
When you hinder any one of these needs, we make traps and other controls more attractive to mice and achieve a higher level of positive trap activations and rodent poison delivery.
Children and Pets
Pets and kids can be a worry when using mouse traps. Mousetraps tend to leave fingers, toes and paws bruised and broken!
Deciding where, when and how to set traps, needs careful and prudent thought for a plan to get the best possible results.
Humane Mouse Traps And Control?
Humane Mouse Control Is Rarely Possible!
Of course, people want to get rid of mice humanely. To trap any mouse is questionably not humane! Don't be sold on humane control, only control that is hoped to be as humane as possible.
For any client, the thought of using poison or a rodenticide is far more attractive than trapping. A key advantage of snap traps is the ability to see the cause of the problem and remove it before it starts to stink.
If you have never been unfortunate enough to smell the putrid scent of a mouse that has perished on a hot water pipe, then believe us when we say that a mousetrap can be a very attractive alternative to bait, particularly when we deal with only a small number of mice.
Humane Traps?
A Mousetrap described as humane might include the multi-catch variety of traps for mice infestations. These traps can be expensive and in many cases, cause mice a high level of stress.
By the time most people inspect the trap, your mouse may be dead from stress, hunger and dehydration.
Worse than a dead mouse is a humane, live capture trap that becomes neglected, and forgotten. We see this regularly!
The mouse dies alone, stressed, soaked in its own urine, surrounded by its faeces, left rotting in a forgotten corner, rediscovered days, or weeks later with the only reminder of well-meaning "humane" control being the stench of a rotting mouse body.
Be warned! Live release of vermin into a built-up area is illegal in some areas and is considered a criminal offence for professional pest controllers.
What's The Most Humane Form of Mouse Control?
The most humane form of mouse control is and always will be exclusion. If the mouse or mice cannot enter a sensitive area, then they cannot cause problems that might later lead to infestations, illness and damage to property.
Spring traps like the one pictured above can also cause suffering. At times the mouse will be trapped by its leg, tail or even the snout and still be alive and trying to frantically free itself.
It's a sad fact, no matter what method you use to kill the mouse, it will suffer. So the focus is on reducing any suffering as much as possible. Proofing rodents out of an area or home is the best way to do this and is not always possible.
Plastic Mouse Traps
Plastic mouse traps are robust, easy to clean and safe to set without losing a finger! Mousetraps are also cheap to buy. Don't go super cheap though. We see many new mouse traps that just don't work well.
Good quality plastic mouse traps often have holes in the base plate so you can secure the trap to a surface using wire, cable ties or screws.
Securing traps is crucial because partially trapped rodents can drag the trap away into an area out of reach, and rot! Rotting mice create terrible stink that lasts for months and impregnates everything in the room.
Another advantage of plastic mouse traps is a bait stage or bait cup in which to place baits securely.
Wooden Mouse Traps
Wooden Mouse Traps are cheap, but harder to operate safely and challenging to clean. Mousetraps are designed to be disposable, because of the absorbency of the wood.
Wooden traps will rarely have a bait cup or stage on which to place bait.
Mouse traps made from wood often have a bait spike or nail on which to mount the bait. A Raisin super-glued into place works a treat, and if you have the pressure plate variety, then chocolate like that already described will work well.
PVC Pipe Mouse Traps
PVC gutter pipe is a simple way to provide an ambush point for mice enjoying what most mice love most; exploring nooks and crannies!
To trap using PVC pipe, follow these three simple steps.
- Buy a length of PVC pipe (black or brown PVC gutter pipe works best).
- Cut the pipe into 18-inch sections and place them where you know mice are active.
- Set your mouse trap and use a stick to push one or two traps into the pipe with the live end facing out.
Glue Boards & Glue Traps for Mice
Glue traps are probably the least humane of all mouse control methods. The best mouse glue traps have a thick layer of glue on them. Cheaper alternatives have a thin layer of adhesive that is often completely infective.
Sticky traps by their very nature don't lend themselves well to peoples sense of fair play, but as last resort glue traps are still an essential component of a broader mouse control strategy.
Glue traps become the go-to solution in situations where other methods of extermination have failed or been deemed inappropriate.
In these cases, glue boards and traps must be deployed used under strict conditions for trap-shy and bait-shy mice in high-risk areas that include clinics, dentists, hospitals, kitchens and treatment rooms, etc.
In conclusion, it's right to say that we never want an animal to suffer.
To this end, we must always check glue traps regularly to ensure bodies are disposed of before they decompose and be prepared as a last resort to dispatch by hand if needed. Could you? If not, then call in professionals.
What's The Best Best Bait To Catch Mice?
The best mouse baits for plastic traps are Sunflower Kernels that you process into a paste or Dark Chocolate. Green and Blacks Organic, 70% plus cocoa is the best we have tried.
The trick with the chocolate is to melt one side of a small piece into the bait cup. It will set like glue so it can't be cherry-picked off by the smaller mice.
Don't believe for a second that other baits are useless. Mice sometimes become very hard to tempt into traps (bait shy), and a variety of baits should be used in the beginning to discover if the mice have a preference.
Does Peanut Butter Catch Mice?
Nut butter like peanut butter and cashew butter are brilliant baits on their good days and deliver poor results over time. The reason is a simple one.
Rodents can lick the butter off a trap without setting it off. The bigger the trap, the softer the trigger.
Don't wait for further damage to occur - Call Our Bristol Rat Control Team - 0117 369 2709
The Bristol Rat Company - Rodent Control That Solves