Mice in the Barn

Nikki S · Advanced

Mice in the Barn

Barbara F · Grand Prix

Well... after having pet rats, I'm really not keen on killing any little barn rodents, but, of course, I don't want them in the barn either. I do think barn cats do a great job of keeping rodents away, even if they aren't great mousers. The smell of the cats often does the trick.

Marlene · Advanced

We've always had at least one mousing cat, the larger the better. When he got lazy and decided he was an indoor cat, the mice got crazy around here, even though my dogs don't mind catching a few. So I switched his cat food to something he's not really keen on, so he went back to hunting. The problem is, most other methods are incompatible with a cat like poisons and most traps, and live traps are too gross for me. If you don't like cats, some terriers do as good a job, but I don't know if you have to teach them, they probably learn from their mother. With cats, it helps if the mother has taught them, otherwise they tend to do a catch, and release program that is pretty useless.

-- Edited by Marlene on Sunday 4th of November 2012 05:37:56 PM

Nikki S · Advanced

Thanks for the advice Marlene!

We have a house dog that was bred to catch rats on ships, and he is keen on chasing squirrels readily in our yard (he has caught a few, but didn't know what to do when he actually had them and they made a fuss so he let them go right away!). He also goes bananas for any toy that resembles a rodent, but I do believe that cats are much more quiet about catching a rodent around the barn and thus more efficient at it.

I worked at one facility that didn't have a barn cat and every morning when I went in to feed, there were mice trapped in buckets trying to hop out. We always took them way across the farm and let them go, although not really practical as they kept multiplying and returning hmm