From experience if I just put a victor rat trap in a wooden tunnel (shout out to karioiproject’s shop), I frequently have the bait go missing without trap triggering. if I adjust trap to be more sensitive it goes off with no catch. Had really great results by putting the rat trap as usual near the entrance, but then just put an ordinary mouse trap behind it in the tunnel. The mice always seem to walk around the rat trap, to get snapped by mouse trap. If suspect lots of mice around, take the victor rat trap out, and put two of the mice traps inside the tunnel instead. I’ve found the ‘Trapped! Mouse trap’ to be the most effective against mice so far. Was inspired to share after last night’s haul and the trap double-ups in tunnels. 
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Where are your traps sited? In the bush or around the house? How often do you check them?
I have a few ideas, but they would be more effective (I hope!) in some environments than others.
Cheers.
Thanks for the response! I’d be happy to hear your ideas, but my post really was to say that putting in mouse trap with the rat trap is what entirely solved my problem. And then if I find consistently getting mice with this combo, skip the rat trap entirely and put two mouse traps in tunnels for a while.
Most of the traps are along the bushline and I check them daily along with my main target - the possum.
Using mouse and rat traps is an excellent technique to kill more rats.
A few years ago, after finding too many of my traps quickly licked clean by small rodents before rats turned up, I bought 20 mousetraps and custom-made some tunnels for them (several double-sets and a quad-set, plus 1 trap in most of my DOC tunnels). I checked the mousetraps every day for 2 weeks, killing dozens of them (50 in the first month!). Once I was only killing 1 or 2 a day, I gave my rat traps a prefeed, which only lured rats, as evidenced by the droppings.
After re-luring and arming my rat traps, I went on a killing spree. After a week of daily checks, I then went 3 weeks without killing a rat, with the pre-feeds in my rat traps and DOC tunnels left alone, aside from the occasional nibble from a mouse. This was in late autumn, when rat activity is at its peak here, so I’d put a very large dent in the local rat populations (I have ship rats and brown rats to deal with).
Imagining rats scurrying around for a week or two without any of my rat traps armed was stressful, but my patience paid off big time.
As far as mousetrapping goes, I’ve found a good way to increase my kill rates. I put a normal lure, like peanut butter or Nutella, in the bait cup, and then I press down a dry chickpea on top of the sticky base lure to hold it in place. In order to eat the base lure, mice have to get the chickpea out of the way with their snout and/or paws. If they want to take the chickpea away, they have trouble getting it off of the sticky lure underneath it. Sometimes, they’ll nibble on the chickpeas, which are very hard, which caused enough movement and vibrations to fire the trap. Very few mice have managed to avoid death since I started using chickpeas.
Also, because they’re so dry, it also takes a long time for chickpeas to go moldy in wet or humid weather, and the base lure directly underneath chickpeas are protected from the elements, so it can stay fresh for a long time. Most grocery stores have dry chickpeas in their bulk food aisle. Until they eventually go moldy due to humidity or they get wet, chickpeas can work for a very long time, so they’re convenient and extremely cheap to use.
Regarding possums, I don’t have to worry about them very often, because the forestry companies poison their blocks every few years. I only have to worry about the occasional straggler. Fortunately, our dog is good at detecting them, sometimes getting them on the ground. We manage to shoot around 6 per year, but sometimes it’s impossible to see them in the large Totara that covers most of the property.
If your username refers to bellbirds, then you’ll be happy to hear that we have a large population on our property and the bush nearby. We hear them so often that they’ve become background noise. The juveniles learning to sing can be pretty painful, though, with lots of out-of-tune, off-pitch attempts at calls.
I hope that your rodent trapping success continues.
Cheers.
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Cheers for your detailed response and encouragement. Some pro tips in here! Really interesting about using chickpeas to help protect the bait. Does it help at all when the slugs and snails are in full force? When they are about, I sure to seem to ‘catch’ a lot of slugs. This time of the year though, when I see a trap report marking the rat trap with missing bait, can’t help but wonder if a mouse trap behind it would have prevented that.
Had to laugh about stress levels of feeding rats for 2 weeks before hitting them. I’m not sure that could handle it!
Indeed username does refer to bellbirds - I can count on two hands how many times I’ve heard them here but hoping with community trapping efforts here and planting, we can win them back! Our area seems to be somewhat hooching with possum. This was undeniable once I setup cams which I use for decide on best trap placements. So far 20-ish possum in less than a year and looking forward to seeing numbers come down.
Thank you again!
Luckily for me, slugs and snails rarely interfere with my traps. It’s only the large Leopard Slug that does, because it’s so big (thumb sized!). A few times a year, one will fire a mousetrap, so they aren’t a nuisance.
Compared to a base lure like PB or Nutella, chickpeas should be unattractive to slugs or snails, because I doubt that they could smell them. Chickpeas are very hard and very dry, so I don’t think that slugs and snails would be able to eat them. Could slugs or snails move a chickpea to reach the base lure? I’d be very, very surprised if they could. Mice have teeth and paws to work with, and they are almost always killed trying to move a chickpea.
Oh, yes, there is plenty of hand wringing before putting the rat traps into action again, but then the floodgates open. Finding a kill in nearly every trap is amazing!
Besides, is there anything worse than checking dozens of rat traps, to find that mice have licked every one of them clean?
Regarding possums, because they have such excellent eyesight, I’ve started to use GloTags, in an attempt to attract more of them to my traps. They last for ages in the elements and the glow can be impressive (depending on how much sunlight they receive, of course). I’m going to make a square with 4 of them on a ramp to one of my Timms to see if it seems to make a difference.
If scavengers aren’t a problem, one thing that you can do is to place a dead possum next to the trap that killed it. It lures other possums to the trap due to the smell, and the trap smells like the possum that it killed, which makes the new possum curious. During mating season, this technique is known to be very effective.
Keep up the good work and I hope you have better results getting the possums.
Cheers.
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That’s really interesting with the Glo Tags. I’m having actually pretty great success catching the possum. Maybe our property is on the possum motorway. Lately I’ve taken to boiling up cinnamon water, filtering out into spray bottle. Then spray whole bunch around, and up inside flipping timmy traps. Just cleared a possum from trap moments ago.
Mouse nightly body count is still alarming. Looking forward to see those trail off.
thanks for tips!
Is the mix just cinnamon and water? Why do you boil it?
Nutmeg is another smell that I’ve read that they like.
What lures do you use in your traps? I’ve had pretty good success with pieces of apple coated in cinnamon (I shake them in a container to get good coatings). The cinnamon is a good way to slow down mold-growth, which helps, but you’re checking your traps so often that it probably doesn’t matter.
By checking your mousetraps daily, you should be able to reduce the local population significantly pretty quickly, because their ranges are typically quite small.
If you also use DOC tunnels, mice are excellent lures.
Cheers.
Shame no pests are interested in turmeric as I accidentally bought an enormous container from Costco when I thought I was getting a second large cinnamon. I thought boiling cinnamon powder with water might help extract more essence of something that I could still spray out from bottle. (I did carefully filter out cinnamon powder afterwards) Willing to admit maybe the hot water part does nothing.
For possum traps, I mostly do cinnamon dusted apple chunks (I also put some inside the trap, but not on the trigger), but noticed rats love to raid bait from flipping timmies, usually escaping getting snapped by trap. I’ve got video of rats raiding traps a couple times and just once actually did catch one rat in flipping timmy. The chunks I leave around/outside trap usually cleaned up by birds in a day. If I don’t refresh bait inside possum traps every week, there typically isn’t much left after the rats and bugs (what a wasp season). Since I didn’t do anything with that trap for a couple weeks, other than a few sprays with cinnamon water 3 days ago, I was quite surprised to catch a possum today.
I’m on pace to match your impressive 50 mice in one month, using the one or more mouse traps in tunnel trick. Hopefully that’ll stop soon and can then shift to the rats. I’m not sure I’ll be able to stomach the tactic of feeding the rats for two weeks though!
btw for home cooking, adding a bit of turmeric to rice isn’t so bad.