The pest management group at Nga Manu Bird sanctuary has had ongoing issues with bait loss from mouse and rat traps. Slugs have been identified as the chief culprit as occasionally they set the trap off and are caught. We have developed small ventilated bait caps that slip over the bait, preventing access by slugs and snails but still able to emit a odour as a lure. These appear to be very effective in preventing bait loss and also do not appear to impact the kill rates for target pests. The caps can be 3D printed and I’m happy to share the STL file with anyone wanting to give them a go.
Here is a picture of the cap installed into a mouse trap. Larger caps fit the rat traps of similar design:
(https://photos.app.goo.gl/cu9qaexMKrz2whio7)
Rob - Nga Manu Pest Management Team
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Fortunately, I rarely have any trouble with slugs or snails, but there are several things that might work for the sanctuary that have been effective at reducing lure loss to rodents where I trap.
In mouse traps with a circular bait cup, a chickpea can be pressed on top of a sticky base lure. The gap between the edge of the bait cup and the chickpea is quite small, so only small slugs or snails could reach the base lure. Chickpeas are very dry and very hard, so slugs and snails won’t be able to eat them, and mice either attempt to remove the chickpea or nibble on it in the bait cup. Either way, mice create more movement on/in a trap than they would with an exposed lure. A chickpea can last in a trap for a remarkably long time, because a mouse is usually trapped when they’ve only nibbled a small % of the pea. In wet weather, chickpeas are an excellent long-term lure, because they take a very long time to go moldy.
In rat traps, plain M&M’s are an excellent fit in bait cups, and it’s possible that they would be much harder for slugs and snails to consume than a lure like peanut butter or Nutella. Like mice, rats find it harder to eat M&M’s without being trapped (I wrote a post about M&M’s a while back). There may be a round hard candy that fits in the bait cup as well as plain M&M’s do, but I haven’t managed to find one.
Probably the best potential solution would be to use marbles in your rat traps that have bait cups. I wrote a post about using white marbles that you could search for, if you’d like to. Using white marbles, my T-Rexes and Kness traps have an almost perfect kill record.
Good luck.
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