Nearby construction has driven mice into our home. So far about 120 bucks worth of dog food and maybe 250 bucks worth of food preps. I thought after the first go round I had contained all the untouched food in gasketed storage, but some double mylar packed kits from mypatriot supply got chewed through last night. I have what survived cleaned up and stored. I caught a bunch with traps but no luck with eradication. I’ve sealed up any holes they might be getting into the house by. Any thoughts?

Cats. And feed the cats that way they'll kill more mice.

Mouse traps

Baits can be effective, and if you have pets, there are stations for them that you can use to keep the bait away from the domestic animals.  The main problem with baits is that the poisoned rodents can leave the station and get eaten by pets,  or go outside and get eaten by owls or hawks, potentially causing secondary poisonings.

I have just used traps--both live and kill.  I bait the kill traps with peanut butter and the live catch ones with peanuts.  Both types of bait are good for weeks or months.  I have some traps that are hit often and some that have never captured a mouse in 2+ years.

I live a block away from fields and my garage door faces that way.  During harvest, planting and whenever it gets cold the first few times, there is an exodus into my garage.  I run 2 bucket traps, one on each side of the garage.  I have been using both the roller and the walk the plank trap.  Both work well, but the roller seems to catch more (about 2:1).  I wondered if there was some reason all the mice come in on the left side so I swapped sides and the ratio stayed pretty consistent.  I use peanut butter, (the more generic the better), 6 gallon buckets, and old antifreeze (traps run year round and the garage isn't heated).  I don't have any animals that could get into the antifreeze.  I wish it was easier to set up a cold rated wired motion sensing IR camera in my garage, but it is still rewarding fishing the little bastards out with the ladle...LOL.


and


If you have animals, and use antifreeze as your medium, buy the taller buckets (6-7 gal), cut holes in the sides 6 inches from the tops for the entrances, and then cover the top with a screen or something.  If the animals are big, bolt the bucket to plywood or something so it can't be tipped.

Plain old mousetraps with cheese for bait are EXTREMELY effective IF IF IF you wash your hands and put on surgical gloves BEFORE you handle/set them. Any human odor at all can/may/will render them useless.

Been using real snap traps. They work. I will re-bait while wearing gloves.

I use traps baited with PB in my camp, as well as baits (happy meals). The combination seems effective, after a year of this, the corpses are pretty much non-existent. I like the anti-freeze bucket idea. We'll see next weekend, heading up for the first time since New Years.

During Field Sanitation training we where told Pine Sol ( the one with pine oil) would keep mice away.

Our house and neighborhood, with lots of fruit trees, have been plagued with mice problems for years.

Traps and poisons only worked so much.

Only way we got rid of them was to get a cat.

Cats work.
We usually adopt a stray (simply by giving it some food) and keep the cat as an outdoor cat (partially feral), they work great.
I have noticed cats hunt and are most successful at the same times we hunt for deer (dawn and dusk).

Our cat recently took care of the vole problem in our garden as well.

However, you have dog(s), so getting a cat may be a problem.

Go to a farm/ranch store and get some poison for the indoors.
Something like Rodentex, they are large bars that you break into smaller chunks, put them in your attic and places where your dogs (or kids) cannot get to them.
Put them behind your food storage, etc.


ETA: Stray cats are nice (even young ones), cause they already have their hunting skills.

The Victor "Tin Cat" works well.

Have several.

Check a few times per year.

Always a dozen or so bodies.

Try rolling the peanut butter into a small wad of cotton and tangle it into the trap pan.
They snag their teeth on the cotton, setting off the trap.
I think I learned that here.

Shawn Woods (link to his youtube channel) is the go to source on catching mice. He tests all sorts of traps, from the 1800s to modern. If you want to learn about trapping mice that's where to learn.

They are getting in somewhere.  Find it and seal it up.  They can get into anything
the size of a dime.  Do not use steel wool.  You need to seal it with caulk, wood,
mesh and make sure they can't move it.  Check your weep holes if you have them.

It's funny you mention the old school mousetrap. If you check out the youtube channel above you will see that some of the most effective traps are old designs... mousetraps have been redesigned over the years to be cheaper, more humane, etc.

Yet at the same time, some equally effective traps use modern technology. In one of his recent mousetrap Monday videos he tested a digital, sensor based walk-the-plank trap that dumps the rodent when they walk out to get the bait and just touch a touch sensor (way more sensitive than any mechanical trigger) then it resets a few seconds later to be ready for the next intruder to visit the plank.

In team there is a thread on rodents, so worth going in there and reading if your membership is active.

I do not disagree on the cats, but they can't get everything if it is a big run all at once.

I have always said metal and glass for food storage.  Sure an open top 55 gallon drum with a lid is not perfect, but it being metal keeps most stuff from chewing through it and that means my mylar bags live to see tomorrow.  I also like galvanized garbage cans, research using wax paper and gasket maker material for car engines to make a gasket for the lid that only sticks to either the lid or the can.  The drum is better use of space but the galvanized can is easy to find at wally world.

Canning jars for small amounts of stuff and vacumn sealed works for a single feller.  Sure you can even can in em, but the glass jar and metal lid keeps a lot of riff raff out.

To some extent it comes down to all the above at times.  Even with things well protected and a cat or 4 around I would probably keep some snap traps out where the cats won't get into em and if something like harvesting is going on then bucket traps would also come out to play.

I have some sticky traps out and the cat could barely reach one.  Cat learned not to do that.  Was easy to follow the thwapp pause thwapp pause thwapp noise.  Sounded like a kid wearing flippers at the pool as he walked around he pool.  Temps need to be warmish for these to work.

Try fresh cab. I was skeptical but received a few recommendations.

We have a camper usually in a pole barn at our property. I put cab fresh in the camper after having a mice invasion when it was parked outside.

I have kept traps in the pole barn and always caught some or had them tripped. Once I started using cab fresh I haven't even had one tripped.

It has a pleasant smell too.

https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/fresh-cab-1-botanical-rodent-repellant-10-oz

Cats work. I hate cats, but I allow my neighbors cats free roam on my property that is next to The Manistee National Forest

Cats will make your house smell like ammonia...no thanks...

Mouse traps (killing one's, not the have a heart) with peanut butter rolled in bird seed will do it.

The trick is to place them properly. With.the bait facing the wall.

First post nails it... I have 4 cats, no mice, lizards, snakes, moles... And birds occasionally... 5 acres... Cats evens help on neighbors barn and areas...

OG mouse traps. I've eradicated dozens of mice after having moved into rental homes that supposedly had no mice.

What a lot of people don't realize is that if you *see* (or know of) one, that means you actually *have* five or six.
If you *see* (or think there might be) two, then that means you *actually have* 10 or 12 - or more.
The point being: they multiply rapidly, and in significant numbers.
Also, they can crawl through the smallest of openings, MUCH smaller than you'd guess.
And they're very, very good at hiding.

Therefore, buy a bunch of the old-school traps (20, 30, 40...) and set them all.

Three keys:

1. Bait them with peanut butter

2. Before you "activate" the spring mechanism and place the trap, put a slight "backward bend" in the vertical piece that holds the "arm" in place.
This effectively creates a hair-trigger making it much easier to trip the system. The "standard setting" from the factory is way too "coarse".

And if you don't tweak it, then there's a 50/50 chance that the mouse might eat all the bait - and then walk away.

3. Place traps in PAIRS, side by side, facing the same direction and butted up into walls or baseboards, in various locations, in as many rooms as is necessary. Also, pay close attention to closets, pantries, areas near cupboards... wherever you think they may be travelling.

They tend to run around hugging the walls in an attempt to stay out of sight, which is why you want to butt the bait-ends into the walls / baseboards. And it's a really good idea to set them in pairs, two together, almost touching, side by side, facing the same direction.
That way, if a mouse eats from the "first" trap, and it fails to go off, the mouse will then most likely try to crawl over that first trap in an effort to get to the second one. And when that happens, it will most certainly set off one or both traps.

Then, whenever you catch one, simply consider the trap disposable and throw the whole thing, along with the mouse in it, into the trash. Don't bother trying to re-use the trap. Mice are dirty rodents and they can be carrying some nasty stuff.

If you approach the situation aggressively, then you'll most likely have things completely under control in a week's time.
And at that point, maybe consider getting a cat for routine, random "maintenance" if you think that's necessary or desirable.

Cats can be outside in some cases.  I never understand people who kill snakes no matter what the snake is, they eat a lot of mice and stuff as well.  Heck, catch a snake and send it down a known mole tunnel.

anyway, on the bend of things on mousetraps when brand spanking new take em and mess with them.  You can figure out how to make it hair trigger or search for blueprinting a mouse trap.  The basic concept last time I looked is you should have to try 2 or 3 times to slowly "slide" the mouse trap into place.  If you try and set it into place just putting it straight down it should go off.  Sliding it into place just lets most people be more smooth when setting it down.

Putting a string or piece of yard through the bait loop and then coating it in peanut butter or whatever should cause the mouse to tug on it and set it off.  But messing with them and making them go off o so easily helps in my opinion.

Cut back on places to enter your house, remove any brush and weeds back away from the house. Baits and traps work well. as do snakes and hawks

In hot temps a bucket trap becomes one heck of a nasty mess.  So if you use one empty it frequently or use your gas mask.

Outside I use

Kness 101-0-002 Ketch-All Mousetrap

Have 8 around shop clean out about a dozen each week

Inside snap traps with peanut butter. Get a few in spring and fall.

Removing the brush and leaves around the shop also helps

Good luck

There's a guy on YouTube whose entire channel is devoted to mouse traps
His videos should be plenty of inspiration for you in setting up some traps of your own
Edit...beat by an earlier post

Don't get pellet bait, they just relocate it. Use the green "block" so they eat it on the spot.

Go full spectrum to ensure you are getting them all: sticky traps along walls/entrance cracks, block poison, traps w peanut butter.

Sticky traps aren't only ineffective, they're the most inhumane trap invented...they're just awful. Yes, mice suck, and I have no problems killing them, but they literally stick the mouse down and it dies of dehydration over the course of several days.

By then the mouse is in the trash can outside waiting to be taken to the dump

Not always. Sometimes the half-stuck mouse drags itself and trap to a location where you can't find it until mouse dies and begins to stink.

And putting mouse into the garbage (unless you're humanely euthanizing them) doesn't make it anymore humane. It's still an awful way to kill a mouse. There are more effective and more humane means.

But don't take my word for it, watch this video to see how many mice step on the trap, get stuck, and are able to subsequently free themselves, leaving them covered in sticky goo, and note the state of the one that couldn't get free.

I'm not really worried about being humane to a mouse. If my cat was still here she'd play with the mouse for a while before eating half and leaving the rest for me to find.its a rodent with little redeeming value to me

Yes, you've made it clear that morals and ethics are merely suggestions that you don't care about.


Ah, comparing yourself to the mental aptitude of a domesticated cat. Lol... I couldn't have painted a better picture if I tried, thanks for painting it for us!


Just because it has little value to you doesn't mean you have to willfully and wantonly subject it to inhumane treatment. That's the difference between ethical behavior and not. Good to know where you stand. Do you treat everything with little value to you in that manner?



Back on topic. Shawn just posted this bucket trap the other day. It's quite effective, he caught ~40 mice over the course of a couple days. It's not "cheap" but for its effectiveness it appears to be a good value.

OK mister PETA member. Rodents have NO value to anyone or anything. All they do is spread disease.

Clearly you fail to understand the point so I will dumb it down for you and any other intellectually challenged person that cannot grasp the concept.

I am not a member of PETA, I kill many animals every year, many of them for no reason at all other than to eliminate them from my environment for my own convenience (mice, coyotes, raccoons and more). I will happily and readily put my size 11 boot onto a mouse and joyfully listen to his bones snap as he is crushed to death. The difference is that I will NOT intentionally delay, prolong, or increase the pain in the death of a living creature when there is a faster, less painful, more ethical and more humane way of carrying out that task. Value of the animal has absolutely NOTHING to do with it. I hate mice just as much as others. They cost me hundreds of dollars in damage every year. I trap them by many methods, and I trap to KILL them. But if you think that the VALUE or lack of value of an animal, or your level of disdain for that animal gives you some Godly right to treat them in a manner that intentionally causes pain and suffering then you're a miserable person. A person that cannot uphold their morals, ethics, character and humanity when presented with the challenges of life is the type of person that will compromise those things for anything. I would hope to never have to interract with those types of people when the chips are down.

Now, if glue traps were the ONLY effective means of trapping rodents, then using them and doing everything in your power to dispatch the mice humanely once caught would be an ethical choice. But because they aren't effective and there are many, many better options, it isn't ethical to use them. Furthermore, I was responding to member that openly admits that he throws them in the trash to suffer BECAUSE he doesn't care about them.

And let me be fully honest and clear, there was a point in my life that I also used glue traps, and wasn't concerned about the suffering of the mice. However, once I was enlightened I realized my folly and corrected my actions. A man who takes enlightenment and doubles down on his unethical actions deserves no respect. And I'm going to stop there bc this is a tech forum.

You also catch snakes in glue traps, which is counterproductive if you have a mouse problem.  I prefer the snap traps.

I'd be wondering what a snake was doing in my house in that scenario

Like all other predators, snakes follow food sources.

I've never had a snake wander into my home.

I have, twice.  Gave me a heart attack both times thinking I had an escapee to deal with until I managed to grab it and realized it was a trespasser not a pet.

I 3d printed a "walk the plank" style mouse trap to use with a 5 gallon bucket and cleaned out the barn in two nights. I have not seen a mouse in weeks.

There are also plans for wood ones if you don't have a 3d printer.

Get some cats.

I've always had the best luck with the fashioned wooden mouse traps.  I smear a little bit of peanut butter on the trigger, and presto, dead mouse.

This.  Cats keep the mice away.  I let my cat out nightly (if it wants to go out.  If it's raining the cat perfers the warm indoor).

Your food needs to be protected first.

METAL garbage cans with lids for all your preps.

Then start eradicating. I guarantee your house isn’t sealed against mice. But—if they can’t get to food ( and almost anything is-except STEVIA) they might go looking elsewhere.