Well, here's what I can tell you about mice. When we designing a new 2,500 square foot research lab at NREL, we learned that mice can get in a hole 1/4" in diameter. So it doesn't take much for them to get in.

I use stainless steel sponges to stuff up cracks as it doesn't rust. http://www1.mscdirect.com/cgi/NNSRI...?PMAKA=09245929&PMPXNO=8467544&cm_re=ItemDetail-_-ResultListing-_-SearchResults You can cut it with scissors and a 6-pack of these things goes a long way.

An old boss of mine at NREL advised against using poison as the little buggers will go find a place to hide when they start feeling the effects of the poison. Then they croak and stink to high heaven as they rot.

The problem is that barns are notoriously full of holes making it easy for the little buggers to get in.

 

I have had good luck with using moth balls in and around equipment and cars. This is the first I heard of using laundry sheets for mice, I have heard of the sheets working on spiders though. The mice just don't like the smell of the moth balls. I have not tried using them to protect a whole building. I did use moth balls when storing a car outside, it work great. Placed them in the interior, trunk, and engine compartment.

 

I second this remark. You can put the moth balls/crystals where ever you need them. Will keep rodents away without fail.:thumbup1gif:

 

Mine are killed by shocking them to death.

 

I'm thinking about one of these. Does anyone else have one?

 

It might not work for everyone, but the best suggestion I have heard/ seen is a Cat.

 

Neel,
The last cat my family had lived in our barn and kept the mice out. Unfortunatly it marked it teritory all over the cover to our old boat. Not real cool! With the items I have in this barn, it would have to be declawed and I am unsure how that would work out.

I checked last night and the fresh PB traps did not get anything. I am hoping that the two I caught were ones that came in from outside.

The war is still on!

 

I know they wont work for everyone but for some it is a good fix to the problem.

Nothing beats a good outside barn cat (or two). :good2:

At my old ranch I had two female cats. Actually sisters. Fixed but fully clawed. I added cat doors on my 40 x 60 barn and double car garage so cats could enter/exit freely. My vet told me at one annual checkup that my cats were very healthy and probably were eating 20-30 rodents a day. As cats do they like to bring you their kills and show their hunting status before the bite their victums heads off and devour them completely. My cats never damaged or sprayed anything. I gave them scratching posts of their own. When I sold the ranch the new owner kept the cats. They continue to patroll the property and perform their duties admirably. I go visit from time to time. They are happy cats.

Another thing cats are good at is keeping snakes away.. found a couple in a barn on a friend of mine's farm and a week or two later they got 2 barn cats and no more snakes or mice the rest of the year, or to this day that I am aware of. But as said they won't work for everyone.

 

Nothing beats a good outside barn cat (or two). :good2:

At my old ranch I had two female cats. Actually sisters. Fixed but fully clawed. I added cat doors on my 40 x 60 barn and double car garage so cats could enter/exit freely. My vet told me at one annual checkup that my cats were very healthy and probably were eating 20-30 rodents a day. As cats do they like to bring you their kills and show their hunting status before the bite their victums heads off and devour them completely. My cats never damaged or sprayed anything. I gave them scratching posts of their own. When I sold the ranch the new owner kept the cats. They continue to patroll the property and perform their duties admirably. I go visit from time to time. They are happy cats.

 

Nothing beats a good outside barn cat (or two). :good2:

I second that!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have 3 barns (with cat doors). My cat house is on wheels and I just roll it from one barn to another

 

Field Mice

I live next to the Yakama Indian Reservation and a creek. It's like "wild kingdom" at my place. I live and let live, as long as whatever it is, doesn't bother me or my things. I buy those bulk plastic buckets of One Bite Mice Bait at my local COOP. The bucket contains a bunch of those little throw packets. I keep all my out buildings well stock with the packets. I also put out the PB baited Victor smack-um-dead traps along the inside walls. The old horse barn, with dirt floors, I use to park my truck, tractor, off set mower and some other things which are of mouse non-interest. Fall is when they seem to start winter house hunting and that's when I load up the out buildings with the bait. I keep putting it out until it's no longer taken and then monitor the packets thereafter. I had one die in my Jeep one year and it did stink it up for a week or so. Critter problems are different around the country. Come Spring, my annual battle begins. Gophers, Moles, Woodpeckers, Magpies and those Gray Ground Squirrels become the focus of my attention. One year, when the kids were still home, I offered a $5 bounty for every gopher they caught. My number two son made $15 in three days! Dad was a bit slow to catch on, that I had paid bounty for the same gopher, three times!! From then on, I kept the gopher. That ended my son's, short lived, gopher-bounty-business. You just can't beat living out in the country

 

Mice have been bad this year or so my neighbor tells me... He has this perpetual battle with rodents and racoons tearing up his things He traps and poisons but still has lots of troubles. A racoon "ate" the seats in his boat last year, completely destroyed them :thumbsdown:

We have two barn cats and a dog and the only issues we seem to have are dead things being left at the door for us to admire. The cats take care of the little stuff and the dog's gotten two ***** so far this spring. I guess thery're not for everyone but they sure are good at what they do.

 

i usually use a peppermint water spray in a water bottle (spray around the perimeter) or an air freshener it works for my 2 car garage if that doesn't work get a tom cat

 

I have 1 garage 2 storage sheds and 1 large pole barn They are build real tight but with mice is a constant battle .The only place mice proof /were i keep what i think mice would eat is my 2 20ft shipping containers :shift:

 

I just use traps and my wife recently brought home a cat. In the winter, when the snow is on the ground but not too deep, you can actually see trails in the snow where they are travelling under the snowpack and slightly pushing the snow up. They are EVERYWHERE outside of the home, but it's been a few months since I caught one.

My parents spread out mothballs all around their camper (which they store in my yard in the off-season) - haven't heard them mention any rodent issues yet.

 

Run a length of wire through the holes in a couple baits, and wrap 'em around the base of the barn poles.
Toss a couple in the corners and under things.
Run a nail through and nail them to the studs in the garage.
Toss a couple in the truck and both tractors.

I keep one under the air filter, in the filter box of both Jeeps and the truck.
The Voles here, like to stash corn and shucked acorn hearts in there.

Also have a couple bucket traps in the barns, that catch 3-4 a week.
I missed at least one, because I discovered a nest in the 5425, right between the engine block and cab.
It's bad this year.

It was a HEAVY Mast year for the Oaks, so there are acorns out the wazoo for the mice and voles to eat all winter....which means a population explosion.
Mouse and vole populations going up sharply, means the Tick population will explode as well. The Tick Nymphs use the Mice like a greyhound Bus, and place to overwinter.

If you have mice, control them now, or you'll be fighting Ticks come spring.

 

I use moth balls and dryer sheets in my boat, work great. For the rest of the garage I stay away from poisons because of dogs. I use sticky traps and five gallon pails traps.

Pail traps: I thread a wire through a beer can lengthwise, the run it across the top of the five gallon pail. The beer can should spin freely. I then add 2 gallons of water or water with RV antifreeze in the fall. Put in an area where the mice travel and install a small stick to work as a ramp so the mice can get to the end of the wire. They go up the ramp, across the wire and to the baited can. The can spins, they fall in and drown. I just dump the bucket in the woods and refill. Does a nice job and the dogs ignore.

 

When we first bought our place you could see holes in the dirt floor in our barn. Wasn't long a stray cat showed up and after the 2nd day I started feeding it. It stuck around and the holes started to disappear. I've had a barn cat ever since. I'll feed and water the cats in the barn and made a cat door in the garage so they can get in out of bad weather. Once every couple years I'll see a partial mouse, fur or feathers but we don't have a problem with mice or rats.

 

I like Levi's approach, but I would suggest having it spayed or neutered. My FIL has a ton of in-bread cats and doesn't have the hart to get rid of them.

 

These 3 are very good at keeping the little buggers away from our main yard.

-J.


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View attachment 40213

These 3 are very good at keeping the little buggers away from our main yard.

-J.


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3rd one was hard to see:laugh:

 

I have a cat but in my place it would not make out one night-bobcats,coyote.Daytime huge hawks and bold eagles:hide:

 

Around here cats are used to bait coyote traps. Can't keep a barn cat, since if it wanders out at night a coyote or owl will pick it off, and if a coyote killer catches a cat, it will be on the coyote trap menu. A nearby trapper breeds stray cats and uses them and the kittens in his traps. Even the occasional stray small dog.

A nice black snake in the barn is OK, but doesn't take care of nearly as many mice as a cat will.

 

We have a barn cat but she can't keep up with the mice this year. Something was eating the leftover food in her bowl and leaving weird looking poop behind. I set a trap and caught five shrews over the next five days. I must have caught a dozen mice this year. My favorite traps now are the white plastic Tomcat Press-n-set traps. They work unbelievably well. Where the cat or chickens can get to them I just set an empty milk crate over top and the mice can easily crawl through.

 

Had a huge problem with mice in my last school. Building was right next to a dairy farm, and the school lunch area was just outside my classroom door, my classroom was mouse metropolis!
I used old fashioned Victor snap traps, and I would cut slices of tootsie roll off with a scissors and SUPER GLUE them to the trap trigger. Mice couldn't resist the smell of the tasty tootsie treat, and that stuff NEVER rots! :laugh:
Dump the dead mouse and reset the trap - same old bait time after time, caught at least 50 mice per semeseter in my room.

To get them out of my room after the summer, I would do my best to plug up all the holes and rags under the doors, then set out 20 lbs of dry ice in the middle of the floor on a friday night. This much dry ice makes many hundreds of cubic meters of CO2 which is heavier than air, hugs the ground, and does not disburse well. They leave or they die - there's no third way, and no place to hide. :nunu:

School wouldn't let us use poison of any kind, and keeping a kitty (or any sort of animal) was an absolute no-no. :flag_of_truce:

Kinda old fashioned, but it works where other solutions (like mothballs or poison bait) wouldn't.

 

I have the same from around here with field mice as 2 sides of my home is surrounded by corn or bean fields. In the the fall when the cold sets in they come looking for a warm place to call home. I use the chunk baits as others have suggested. I put them around the outside of my home and shop, some in garage and shop also for last line of defense.
I see a lot of dead ones around outside, none inside yet!

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Thant's OK, as long as you don't have pets that can get into the same area. I won't use bait due to the risk of something I care about getting into it.

 

It is not only something you care about getting into the bait but also something you care about eating a dead mouse. The poison can be passed on.


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Cats, cats and more CATS!!!!!!!!!

Get a cat, put it in the barn, and leave it for about three days,(with out cat food, mind you) then come back and let it out and, viola!!!!
No more mice!!!

No, wait, get a RAT and train it to kill mice. Rats are mice magnets and will attract all kinds of mice. Then they will kill them, and eat them!!! The mice will not know what hit them!!!!

 

My only concern with using poison is after a mouse eats it, the critter will find some hard to reach place to curl up and die; then it will stink to high heaven.

 

The neighbor's cats come over to visit my place. They do a good job and I don't have to feed them.

 

I think my neighbor has gotten a barn cat. One day I found a dead mouse on our front stoop that I attribute to the cat offering up proof of a job well done. The mouse was scooped up in a shovel and flung into the front yard.

 

They do like to report their accomplishments, don't they??

My boxer bought a whitetail spine, ribs, and skull base up on our deck while a friend was house sitting!!!....at night.... She wasn't impressed, actually scared as hell!!

-J.




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Oh, Oh . . . Gotta' Tell You What I Do With Dead Mice!!

Of course I'm in a rural area of the county. While I don't farm there are fields all around my place. Wheat, oats and clover seem to be the crops of choice. I run a trap all the time in the attic still and during harvest two to four traps in various places. I would get 15 mice in a few days.

Now I have a couple of cats and mice problems are @ a minimum. I do keep a trap in the attic and when I do trap one I flush it . . . . That is unless one or more of my family 'female members' are coming over (daughter, grand-daughters, daughters-in-law). :shhh:

Then I unload the little critter into the toilet and close the lid . . . . And wait for the scream.:munch: . . . . :laugh::laugh: They've all gotten accustom to my little prank but when I don't do it for awhile and then restart, the laughs begin.:lolol:

 

Rdgross; The women in your area must be sissies!! :lol: I'd fish it out, and throw it out for the buzzards to have the next day!

(insert company airplane here!!)