I am using peanut butter or cheese as bait, and over the last couple of years the bait has gone within a few hours. Ants and slaters lurking suspiciously…
Any tips on putting them off (prefer not to use poison)?
Slaters in particular can clean bait out fast. Snails can suck chocolate off rat & mouse traps. The introduced banana slugs, big mothers, can eat dehy rabbit - they leave it chewed down to the bones and covered with slime.
I’ve taken to squashing all the slaters in a trap when I find it seething with them. I don’t expect it will help, only relieves my feelings. Use fairly dry generic choc-hazelnut spread in rat/mouse traps instead of Goodnature choc lure - it’s harder for slugs and snails to suck. Peanut butter is also good, but if you use it inside a DOC200 you will catch thrushes and blackbirds.
When I suffer this problem I load the peanut butter into a small zip-lock bag (50mm x 60mm size). The peanut butter smell diffuses through the thin polythene plastic enough to attract rats, but prevents insects from eating it. The rats will still nibble through the plastic to get at the peanut butter. You don’t need much peanut butter in the bag. Just enough that you can squeeze the bag flat so the peanut butter covers all the inside surface of the bag. If baiting a rat trap, use a small rubber band to hold the bag on the trigger paddle. You can get the ziplock bags at an industrial packaging firm, such as Attwoods Packaging.
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We are using licorice - the rats like it and the ants don’t seem to get into much at all.
Get licorice pieces and cut into three sections - each piece will do three traps - its fits well into the bait space on a SnapE rat trap or similar.
Set 5 traps with it and caught 3 rats overnite.
Thanks for the advice. Used some liquorice last night, and caught a mouse that had been lurking in the compost bin for a while. Something else ate all but the mouse’s head…
Will do the peanut butter trick next!
Interesting post - I like the PB in plastic bag trick - I have a few of those little bags used for bank deposits and its a good use of old ones! I had ants taking the bait from traps in the shed beside my chickens and just sprayed them with the diametaceous earth (spelling?) that we spray the chickens nesting boxes with to keep down mites. Worked well and is a natural product.