How to deter rats from your edibles

[mich1972]

 

 

 

 

 Good morning Workshop Community Friends !!!!!! 

If you are growing your own Edibles or you have a Chook Run or Bird Aviary, you will unfortunately have Rats and Mice hanging around and moving in. That’s life.

We have a problem with rats as we grow edibles and have chooks. Our Nextdoor neighbours have an aviary so the rats are living in luxury ! 

We have our cage trap set every night and we catch a few, but they are smart and start avoiding the cage. We also have a safe bait station that doesn’t cause secondary poisoning to pets. That works well. 

But this is something I would love to share with you all is a Rat deterrent. 

RUBBER SNAKES 

We have a beautiful Pomegranate in our chook run that is loaded with fruits. 
Unfortunately the rats were demolishing them. I had read about using rubber snakes as a deterrent and wanted to try it out. So I purchased a few rubber snakes and wrapped them around branches of the Pomegranate. This experiment has been running for nearly two months and I must say , the branches with fruits and snakes have NOT been touched at all !! 
The higher up branches with no snakes the rats have eaten. We are really pleased to say we have saved some of our fruits and will be adding a few more snakes to the tree. 

Once the Pomegranate has finished fruiting and goes fully dormant in Winter, we will be giving it a hard prune to control its growth and once it starts to set fruits again we will be ready for the snakes. 

The rubber snakes come autumn winter will be transferred to our Edible No Dig Garden and we will see how they go deterring rats from our vegetables !!! 

[Stuardo]

Hey @mich1972 that's a great idea for rubber snakes. 

I did a similar thing when I had Bush Turkeys digging up my new garden. I placed a big rubber red bellied black snake in front of the garden and they stayed away. Each year when new young turkeys come around I put it out on the lawn and move it each day, works a treat.

Cheers,

Stuart

[mich1972]

Thank You @Stuardo are they a problem in your garden, do Bush turkeys destroy it ?

[Stuardo]

I live beside a forest reserve and bush turkeys roam the suburb. They seem to know whenever you dig or put mulch on the garden and they dig it out and spread it everywhere. Can be heartbreaking when you just bought and planted a heap of new seedlings and plants.

[Jason]

I'm going to try this at our place @mich1972. Any tips on places to buy rubber snakes? I believe it's one of the very few things that you can't find at a Bunnings Warehouse!

Jason

[mich1972]

Definitely give it a try @Jason. I purchased my snakes on eBay. I wish we could sell them in our Pest deterring bay !!!!!!

[Taffy2]

Try the toy section at any $2 shop or KMart/Big W

[MitchellMc]

Great advice there @mich1972! However, please remember to take them down for the sake of future occupants before leaving the property. I recently advised an absolutely distraught lady about the two huge black snakes that had taken up residence on her tin shed roof. After a quick back and forth discovering that she had fruit trees, I deduced they were fake rubber snakes left by a previous occupant. She was still adamant they were real, and only after several hours of them not moving did she gain the courage to poke one with a stick. At least, she had a good enough sense of humour to come back and tell me they were indeed fake.

Mitchell

[mich1972]

Sorry @MitchellMc @I shouldn’t laugh but that’s funny 😄 

[mich1972]

@Taffy2  Yep my two small snakes are from red dot 🤣 and the large 1.3mts from eBay 😆