Hedgehogs and rats
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Just passing through while Googling for safe ways of killing rats without risk to other wildlife.
One solution for those who are kinder to rats than I am was published widely in June/July 2019 about an engineer (Ben Hamm) who used AI (Artificial Intelligence) to create a cat flap that would discriminate between his cat carrying prey and same cat without prey and lock the flap if it was carrying prey.
You can find BBC links and many others if you Google:
Cat Ben Hamm
This may sound like science fiction but it isn’t that far-fetched any more. A Raspberry PI with night vision camera is available for around £60 and the image recognition ‘training’ to discriminate between hog, rat, mouse, weasel, cat and fox is simpler than Ben Hamm had to tackle.
Hopefully on Dragon’s Den in the near future….
BaldiHi Nic, I hope you’re still using this forum, as you seem quite knowledgeable. I wonder if you can advise me re rat bolt holes? We’ve had rats before, as we have decking. Currently have a hole under the decking, and borrowing a friend’s trailcam confirmed we have a rat visiting. Not completely sure though whether the hole has been made by the rat or one of the hedgehogs – although both rat and hogs were caught on camera, none were seen emerging from the hole. I would like to block the hole up, but what if it is used by a hedgehog to sleep in during the day? I guess the safest thing is to block it at night, once the hogs are out and about – the rat didn’t show on the trailcam until about 3 am both nights. In the past the rats have simply dug themselves a new hole, so not sure it would work, but worth a try.
I also plan to only feed the hogs at dusk, and not refill later on, in case that attracts the rat. They get hog biscuits – we have a cat, and I don’t want to encourage other cats into the garden, so I don’t want to put cat food down.
I do have sunflower seed feeders in the a tree above the hole – I restrict fat balls to the front garden, as the starlings are messy and that was attracting rats. Goldfinches do drop bits of seed though, so I’m trying to clean up at dusk, to deter the rat.
Do you have any thoughts on my ideas? Anything else you could suggest? Thanks very much.
Hi jilDD
In my experience it’s usually the bird food that initially attracts the rats, so that might be something you could minimise – cleaning up at dusk is good, but rats tend to start coming out during the day as well. The following is a link which contains several other links, some repetitive but I just put all the links I could find about rats at that time! But there are various ideas in there.
https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/forums/topic/rat-probelm/I think it’s unlikely that a hog would dig a deep hole like a rat would – they’re more likely to dig holes under fences or slight dips under hog homes on the ground, that sort of thing. Rat holes – even if only bolt holes look a bit like burrows. But also quite narrow (in relation to the size of a hedgehog).
What I have done with ones here (which were only ever single holes) is pour water down them before I filled them in. On the assumption that the rat would come out if it’s bolt hole got a bit wet – I wouldn’t want to bury the rat and anyway it would probably try to dig it’s way out if it was in there. No rats have ever come out – luckily! But I’m fairly sure they were only bolt holes, rather than where the rat was living. But they like to have bolt holes as a place to ‘safely’ escape to near where they’re feeding, so if they are all filled it, it just deters them.
The problem I imagine, though, is that there may be other holes under your decking which you can’t reach. So depriving the rats of any food in the area might be the best way to go.
But yes, you could have supervised feeding of the hogs. I used to do that anyway, and watch all their interactions. I used to find that quite a few seemed to turn up during the couple of hours the food was there, as if they learned that it wouldn’t be there later. That worked quite well and had the advantage that I actually saw the hogs, rather than seeing them on video in the middle of the night – useful if there were any problems. But you also see so much more of their behaviour watching in real time.
If the rats don’t find any food, they are more likely to give up. So if you stop bird food falling and have supervised hog feeding, the rat/s might just give up and try somewhere else.
Alternatively give your cat a good talking to! Although I find that the many cats who visit here, have never managed to be here at the same time as any rats!
Good luck. Hope you find something that works.
Thanks very much Nic, that’s really helpful. Last night before dark we found and blocked where we think the rat might be coming in, and I also put fallen leaves over the tunnel into the decking, not to block it, but just to see if they got moved. They didn’t, so I’m fairly confident it went elsewhere (I didn’t have a camera up). The tunnel does seem wider than previous rat holes though, so I’ll monitor it and follow your advice.
I agree that watching the hogs feed in real time is fascinating. From the start I put the food where I can see it from the conservatory window, and we’ve routinely had 4 or 5 there at once, and a couple of times we’ve had six! As you say, they get to know when the food is put out, and all turn up at the same time. After dark I just like opening the door a crack and listening to them. Thanks again.
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