Do you want to know how to attract rodents more efficiently? Maybe you have tried a few ideas already and some have worked while others didn’t. After talking to experts in the pest control industry, we have compiled a list of surprising tips and methods professionals use on a daily basis. Hopefully, we can help resolve the mystery of how to lure rodents into your trap. Enjoy!
Tip 1: Make your traps smell like nature
You might be using the right bait already – but the chemical smell of fresh plastics is scaring the rodents away. When you buy snap traps and bait containers they are squeaky clean and give off a strong chemical smell. You yourself may not notice that too much but a rat’s sense of smell is more than three times as good as yours. Rats are smart creatures. They do not trust objects that seem new and out of place. A good way to make your traps seem more trustworthy is to expose them to the elements. Put them outside for a while and let fresh air and rain do their thing. Try to get your equipment dirty to gain the rat’s trust. Note that this method is not allowed when using your equipment in food production environments, though.
Tip 2: Should you use gloves when handling traps?
At some point in evolution mice and rats started developing a great sense of smell – instead of eyesight. So while it isn’t too important how your traps and bait boxes look, you should make sure their smell is attractive. Your human odor is not a factor in this, though. In fact, humans have touched all the food that rodents eat at you house. They don’t particularly care about human smell. You should use gloves anyway, though, since you could catch any of the 35 known diseases that mice and rats spread.
Tip 3: Observation is key: inspect and learn
Try to find out what the rodent population you’re trying to exterminate likes to eat. Find the food source that gets raided most often by your unwanted guests and use that to bait mice and rats into your trap. You could try to find a chemical bait that smells close to the actual food but keep in mind that mice and rats are capable of noticing very subtle differences in odor.
Tip 4: Flavor Drops are your best friend in a challenging environment
When using baits, you are always competing with all other food sources available to your local population of mice and rats. This can get tricky, if there is plenty of food around – for example in a supermarket. Flavor drops are a possible solution because of their incredibly strong smell. Drip a few of those onto your snap traps to get the rodent’s attention. If you place the drops further back on the tongue of the snap trap, a mice or rat has to stretch to get to the interesting smell which increases your chances of getting a clean kill.
Tip 5: Use the right amount of bait
Place enough bait in your trap to get the pest’s attention but try not to overdo it. The rodent shouldn’t be able to get the food out of the trap without it setting off. Did you know that rats collect food at a safe place while mice depend on always being able to find a food source when they get hungry? Rats taking their food with them actually poses a big problem when working with toxic baits since baits removed from the bait container box can be consumed by non-target organisms (think cats, dogs, birds) more easily.
Tip 6: Try attractant spray to lure rodents over a larger distance
Imagine trying to get rid of rats in your garden or in a field. Where do you even start placing your traps? Here’s an idea that has been proven to work: create a trail with attractant spray (e. g. Nara Spray) leading to your trap. That way you can cover a large area with just a few traps. Rats will smell the spray and follow the trail straight into their demise.
Tip 7: Place your traps right
Rodents experience their environment mostly through their senses of smell, hearing and touch. They don’t like open areas as these expose them to predators. For that reason mice and rats like to follow walls that they can feel through their whiskers. Like many other animals they establish paths (marked by odor) that everyone in their colony can use. Placing snap traps on an established trail makes them easier to discover. Sometimes you don’t even need bait at all if the local rodent colony places a lot of faith into the path you have intersected.
So, did you learn something new? Have you tried any of these methods in the past? Either way – let us know in the comments! Want to learn more about efficient use of snap traps? Then www.traplinked.com is the place for you!