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Peppermint oil & hedgehogs?
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Hallo I’m a new member!
I’d like to feed the hog in our garden using a crate with an aperture in it. However we have very large brown rats which we prefer not to encourage! I’ve read that rats don’t like peppermint oil. I’d like to put some round the entrance aperture & maybe leave a cotton wool ball with some on it in the crate. Does anyone know if essential peppermint oil is toxic to hogs? The hogs would enter & leave after eating (if they can smell the food through the peppermint!). This isn’t a hog house & nesting site. Thanks!
Hi Hope 2020
There are lots of topics about rats. I’m not sure whether there was mention of pepermint oil in any of them, but you can find a list of them within this topic:
https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/forums/topic/rat-probelm/
You might find you need to adapt what you’re feeding to something which the rats don’t like. i.e. some don’t like dried cat food (although others will cache it). But you could also try wet cat/dog food. But they might become accustomed to the smell of peppermit oil anyway after a bit, if they are hungry.
I’ve recently got the rat problem and was reading about the peppermint theory earlier. What I’m going to try is re-attracting the neighbourhood cats by putting cat food out for a while. I’m hoping when the rats get wind of the cats it’ll deter their visits. I dislike cats but I dislike rats even more.
Sounds a bit like the Old Lady who swallowed the fly. She swallowed a spider to catch the fly etc
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