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Farm News
When I walked into our storage area this winter I was reminded of the song Big Yellow Taxi, specifically the refrain “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got til its gone”. What I saw was all our cover crops seeds we had in storage scattered all over the floor. It looked like a cover crop seed bag massacre. Seed bag guts everywhere. We’re talking 100s of pounds of seeds. And the squeaks and squeals coming from under the pallets holding the seed bags exposed the culprits — rodents.
Why did this remind me of the refrain from Big Yellow Taxi? Because the thing that was gone — or more importantly the farm worker who was gone — was Fred our beloved cat. Fred was among the longest serving farm workers we’ve ever had. He and his brother Garfield — who left us a few years prior — must have done a phenomenal job keeping the rodent population in check. Of course we realized they did a pretty good job when they were young but after Garfield was no longer around and Fred was slowing down at the age of 19 we figured there wasn’t a lot of rodent control happening. And since we didn’t have a rodent problem after they were both gone there probably wasn’t a need for cat-based rodent control.
Boy was I wrong! Fred must have been doing a fabulous job. Since I no longer had cats I no longer went to the shed daily to feed and water them so when I finally did, holy cow did we have a problem.
I didn’t take any picture of the devastation — probably because I was so traumatized — but suffice it to say there were some very fat and happy rodents. Ugh.
I first tried setting traps. We have a trap we use for ground squirrels that has two snap traps inside a box. The rodent go into the box looking for the tasty, tasty peanut butter and if all goes to plan they do not come out. This trap was initially somewhat effective. I caught six rats using it — one time catching three together in one night even though there are only two snap traps! But after that I just fed peanut butter to the rodents. I’m not sure how they ate the peanut butter without triggering the traps; I guess they are much smarter than I.
As the ground squirrel trap became less affective I purchased two of the standard rat-size snap traps. I set the traps — only catching my finger once — and left for the evening. When I returned there was only one trap left and it had no peanut butter. Where did the other trap go? Being outsmarted by rodents is humbling.
Anyway, these traps weren’t very effective so I went online and looked at other types of rodent traps. I saw one where you put a tilting “shelf” on a five gallon bucket with a little peanut butter on the shelf. When the rodent walks on the shelf to get the peanut butter the shelf tilts and in goes the rodent. So I built one of these traps using left over supplies laying around the farm. I set it up one night in hopes of finding a bucket full of rodents the next morning.
Well, that first night I got two mice. Ok, I guess. Seems like it might work. But after that I got nothing. But I guess on the positive side they didn’t eat the peanut butter bait.
So back to the drawing board and back to the song. Obviously cats were the answer. So we found a cat rescue place and bought a couple of cats. These were three year old cats — one of which was a bit skittish and another that was very skittish. When the owner of the cat rescue place came by she said, “With the level of rodent pressure I think I need to lend you a few more cats!”
So for this past week we’ve had four cats wandering around our storage area — two permanent cats and two borrowed cats. At first I wasn’t sure if they were effective since I still heard rustling in the walls and ceiling and never found any direct evidence laying around. But as the week progressed I found more “evidence” and I heard fewer rodent sounds so I felt that this plan was working. Then this weekend I saw the less skittish cat eating what appeared to be a vole. Woo hoo, it’s working!
I suspect it will take a few weeks or maybe more than a month to get rid of all the rodents. And I suspect as the rodent population diminishes other nearby rodents might replace them. So our new cats have a lot of work to do. I’m also hopeful they’ll become more friendly and become more like Fred and Garfield, though that might be a bit too much to ask. Either way, I think we are on the right track to solving our rodent problem.
As always, do not hesitate to send in questions, comments, suggestions, payments, orders or anything else you think would be interesting.