I'm really annoyed to have seen a common brown rat in my garden today.
The cheeky blighter was only 9ft from my patio doors :o

I am sure it (& possibly friends/family - althou only seen 1 so far)
is living under neath the garden shed as all my dogs are going nuts and trying to dig under the shed...

My OH wants to put poison down - no way do I want to do this as I fear what could happen not only
to my dogs but also to the neighbours cats/dogs etc if they manage to get hold of a poisoned rat...
or worst still the bait

Is there anyway I can find out if a working terrier person would come and get rid of them in an enviromentally
friendly way...?? (by using their dogs)

My only suggestion is to contact your nearest hunt (if you have one), someone there might know or your nearest farmer. Good Luck.

It's unlikely you will only have one rat - they normally live in families with 8 or 9 in each nest. One nest very rapidly grows!

TBH, your best bet will be to get a professional pest control company in. I had a rat problem caused by bird feeders and had to do this recently. I was anxious about my dogs but was reassured by the pest man. The bait was placed inside the burrows and then covered. They also used granules as opposed to sachets and I was told cats and dogs would need to eat a fairly substantial quantity to have any ill effects. He also suspected some under my shed so an amount was placed under there and then the area was secured with planks of wood to stop cats going under there. He returned a week later and checked all the burrows and removed the bait from under the shed as it was untouched. Rats were completely gone within a week

There is bait you can buy online which is safe for cats and dogs called Eradirat. Some claim it's not effective but others swear by it.

Although terriers are great ratters, I'm not sure how successful they would be at taking out a whole nest at once?

Best tip I have had with a recent under shed problem was to put a hosepipe in the entry hole, this forces them out.
Friend of mine was told to do this when the had a rat problem under their chicken house

I've got this problem as well at the moment and can sympathise. I've got electronic rat killers down in my shed, which have only caught a couple of mice so far! I've also got bags of Eradibait around the garden of which a couple of bags have disappeared, but I'm still seeing rats. Then I've put rat traps out and killed 2 hedgehogs, so I've removed those!

Hattie (Dobe) actually caught one the other day, but didn't quite finish it off, so I had to!

Like you I don't want to use poison, having dogs, goats, chickens and ducks in the garden. It's undoubtedly the chicken feed that's causing the problem in the first place and I'm currently taking that in and out so there isn't a constant supply of food available to the rats.

The trouble with rat traps is that rats are very neophobic and treat traps with great caution. I caught a vole in my trap and was horrified to find the rats had then dragged it half way down a burrow and eaten most of the vole!

Pedlee, if you have burrows then the rat bait is honestly not a problem (providing they use the granules). They pack up the rat burrows with bait and then back fill them so nothing can stick their noses down there. The estate I live on use sachets and did offer to bait around my cottage. However, the sachets carry a bigger risk as they go into bait boxes and the rats take them from there into their nests. A small disturbance could see the rat drop the sachet and the risk of another animal picking it up.

The pest company I called were extremely careful and reassuring - probably because I spent their whole visit following them around saying "are you sure this is okay for my pets"! The rats were gone in less than 7 days! This was after 4 weeks of me trying to trap them and having removed their food source (bird feed). The "rat man" located burrows I didn't even know were there - I estimated a few rats - he told me it was likely I had in excess of 100 over 10 burrows (I had found 2!). It cost me £60 and that covered me no matter how many visits they needed to make. In the end, I only needed 2 visits to see the wee blighters off He also reassured me that, if my animals located a dead rat, there was no risk to them if they ate the carcass (not that I would stand happily by and allow that but I wanted reassured of what might happen!).

The final straw came for me when I found the rats were chewing through the concrete walls of my house! I had not noticed it initially because it was behind my kindling pile. I almost had a heart attack when I saw it! Not so much a risk in the summer but I had the problem over the really cold spell and this was them trying to find warmth - in my house! EEK!

It is a personal choice but I had SO many concerns about this I cannot tell you. However, I do think many of my concerns were unfounded. A reputable control company will select their method based on your circumstances and will not put any of your pets at risk.

I agree Colliecrew. We tried for months to get rid of rats near our boundary. One visit from the council guy ( £10) he found the holes, packed them, back filled them and put stones over so the dogs couldnt get any where near. We took down all the birdfeeders as peanuts contain Vit K and are an antidote to the poison if the rats get it. One week later no rats!

let me know your location and Ill put you in contact with a ratting terrier person. Theres heaps of us about

>>Best tip I have had with a recent under shed problem was to put a hosepipe in the entry hole, this forces them out

But then where would they go?! I'd be worried about them finding their way inside! We are currently battling with a large family of rats around our hen house and run. We move it around once a week or so and after a couple of days new holes will appear around the hut. Nightmare.

We put a trap down last week and on the first night we caught one - but nothing since. They've found a way of removing the food and elastic bands without setting the trap off but if definately does work as everything we've poked it with a stick it snaps it in half!!!

The trouble is Lucy, the rate they breed, it can so quickly escalate to having large numbers of rats! The fact you have more than one hole suggests you have a fairly significant number of rats (approx ten in each nest/burrow).

Would you be too concerned about a professional pest control company using bait? I really was totally against it also but my problem became so bad that I really had no choice.

I really want to keep hens but so many people have reported problems with rats and their henhouses I've never kept chickens before but assume they create a fair amount of mess with their feed? It was wild bird feeders that attracted the rats to my garden and I've since had to remove them. It's so sad but rats are one animal I loathe!

Some people can have the view that they are just another wild animal and no different to having squirrels in your garden. I find that view a little hard to embrace LOL

I'm also on a Scottish hunting forum, if your northern England/Scotland I may be able to find someone to help. A friend of mine has a similar problem, I put it on the forum and had several terrier guys volunteering, happy for the work

When they'd got all the 'easy' rats at my friends place they smoked them out. They used a diesel engine and a hose pipe, put it in the rat holes and the little terrorists caught what came out. I'd imagine that's what they'd do under your shed.

I've thought about getting someone round with a terrier but I didn't know how it would work you see... My hen hut is in what I call my "orchard" which is basically a 15ft square area with a fence along 2 sides and a dry stone wall along 2 sides. It's only got 2 tiny apple trees in it (I did have more when I started calling it the orchard but thanks to various horses it is no longer!!!). When we move the hen hut, generally 3 or 4 rats run out from underneath and straight through the wall. Would I be wasting a terrier man's time if they shot out through the wall and then they couldn't get them?

>>Would you be too concerned about a professional pest control company using bait?

It does worry me a bit. We used poison a couple of months ago. We put it down every whole we could find and then filled them with mud and put large stones on top thinking nothing would be able to come out.

A few days later I found my pup running around with a dead rat in her mouth. That really worried me but luckily she was ok. I don't know if it had been poisoned or if she'd just found one that had died from other causes but I was watching her like a hawk for days!!

The company I used said there was no risk to my animals if they did happen to eat a rat who had ingested the poison.

If I had only a few burrows then I would consider the terrier route. However, I wouldn't be confident that this way would be effective for a large scale problem (in my case, over 100 rats). Even leaving one breeding pair behind could result in a litter of 14 being born within 3 weeks!

I could be wrong, but if you told them in advance what happens then they will know what action to take to prevent this happening

One thing you can say for terriers, once they've done their job you know the rats have gone

lucy missy believe me its not a problem, we regularly do ratting call outs with our terrier/lurcher team and there are ways and means, and its very simple

Thanks for the advice - and I'm really sorry that I hijacked someone else's thread!!!

After yet another night with the food being stolen from the traps (they even managed to put the safety catch on!!!) hubby and I have discussed terriers. We live on the moors and there are loads of hunts etc that go on near us so we shouldn't struggle to get hold of someone who will do it.

Although frustrating it does make me chuckle to think of the rats with hard hats and a diagram of the trap trying to figure out how to get the food off without being caught!!!

My brother has trouble with mice pinching food from the traps (quick death-trap type) so he Glued some dog biscuit to the spike

He caught all the mice with ONE piece of kibble!

How would terriers cope with a large scale rat problem?

I've watched JRT's ratting in a hay store and they were very efficient with the ones they caught but, given there was rats running in every direction, many of them did not get caught. Do the ones that run off nest elsewhere given they feel their "safety" has been compromised?

I know the estate I live on have terriers which, I have been told, they have used for ratting. However, they seem to rely on baiting more than using the dogs.

Well couldn't find anyone in Southern Counties in time.
So ended up getting the Pro pest control peeps in.

Trays of poison (3) were put under the shed a week ago.
He came back today, half a tray has been eaten, along with a corner in one of the other trays.
So although it doesn't indicate a huge problem, we do have rats
Mr Pest Control thinks I'm not being helped by a neighbour whose garden is full of sheds and decking
ideal harbourage for rats and then his boat (in allocated parking space) with the stagnant water pond on the front top deck is providing
all the water - yuk.

We have completely stopped feeding the birds and I haven't seen any in the garden since.
However the dogs are still going a bit nuts at 4am...so they are probably coming into the garden then.

We have had to fence off the area around the shed to keep the dogs safe from harm.
Plus have told all our neighbours with animals too.

more poison has been put down today and we see in a weeks time if any more has been taken/eaten
or if it has stopped.

Oh gosh, that's a nightmare if you have neighbours and the rats are using your garden as a "rat run". Rats always travel using the same route and I can spot the trampled down grass etc easily as I live in the middle of nowhere.

Are your neighbours approachable to discuss with them?