Blocking mice?

[Glitch]

We've had mice on and off for years.
Definitely recommend steel wool. I plugged a gap where water and waste pipe come through the wall.
Mesh over air bricks also worth installing.

Tried retail poison and different traps and I know it's controversial but glue traps work best.

 

[Gant]

We heard rats in our attic, and called in the council. The gentleman put down poison, and the problem went away. Then the smell started. We had just put a new floor down in our front room, and we were not about to rip it up, but that’s where the rotting carcass lay. We suffered 6 weeks of stink, we couldn’t use the room, and then a plague of huge houseflies.

What we learned:
Rats and mice crawl up wall cavities and down-pipes.
Don’t use poison, use traps

 

[Rorschach]

We heard rats in our attic, and called in the council. The gentleman put down poison, and the problem went away. Then the smell started. We had just put a new floor down in our front room, and we were not about to rip it up, but that’s where the rotting carcass lay. We suffered 6 weeks of stink, we couldn’t use the room, and then a plague of huge houseflies.

What we learned:
Rats and mice crawl up wall cavities and down-pipes.
Don’t use poison, use traps

Poison is great for outside but not inside a house, the council chap should have known that.

 

[MusicMan]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I've ordered steel wool and expanding foam, and though I can't find any obvious external holes or air bricks I shall get the lower level of the house walls repointed (it is render above about 12" above the soil).

There is no grass nearby but there is a fruit tree on one side of the house. I'll investigate to see if there is access to the eaves from there.

 

[johnny]

A hole big enough for a pencil is big enough for a mouse, allegedly. I am overrun with cats, and mice, and sometimes rats. The most effective solution is poison. I would worry that expanding foam would just make a warm, snuggly mouse house - perfect nesting material.

I hope that your suggestion of using poison doesn't extend to cats !??? if it does that would be extremely offensive to most Brits who are a nation of animal lovers by and large. perhaps you might wish clarify your statement lest you leave a wrong impression of yourself on this forum

 

[Trainee neophyte]

I hope that your suggestion of using poison doesn't extend to cats !??? if it does that would be extremely offensive to most Brits who are a nation of animal lovers by and large. perhaps you might wish clarify your statement lest you leave a wrong impression of yourself on this forum

Ah, yes. I can see how I may have misworded that. Cats are not intentionally poised, and I actually try really hard to make sure that they don't find poisoned rodents, despite the fact that they are rubbish at catching mice and rats. Snakes, lizards, baby tortoises, endless insects are all murdered enthusiastically by the cats but they seem to have some sort of rapprochement with the rodents. Still, we have owls who eat cats, so the cycle of life turns on. Never a dull moment here.

 

[D_W]

Source elimination here, closing and then poisoning of the mice (or trapping). The rubber hits the road on this stuff on larger farms (mice and rats - especially when rats become a problem) and poison is the only thing that works in that case.

Typical here on a diversified farm for the older folks to be scared of all snakes, kill all the saw and then keep 50 or so unhealthy cats outside on the property with the runs and gooey eyes, etc. I thought the cats were almost as bad as the rats at that point, and no pile of sawdust wasn't filled with surprise (cat) turds.

Rounds of poison are generally done in that case. We had a few mice in the house (attic - I guess they went up the walls) when I moved to where I am (no outdoor cats around - in our 100 house section of the neighborhood I have only once in a while seen a single gray and white cat - people don't have outdoor cats here). I poisoned them - 15 years later, I haven't seen them back. Same for the birds - rarely see any large birds in the middle of the dense housing other than crows. Hawks are too timid and stay in the outlying areas and parks.

 

[D_W]

(or maybe we just poisoned all of the neighborhood hawks and owls!!)

 

[Ttrees]

An interesting fact about raptors (I thought)...from an Irish raptor website,
was that they have no interest in killing anything after they have had their dinner,
and will happily share a space with a pigeon without even looking at them.

So as long as you have enough mice, they won't go for anything else which you might like to have around.
I hope this is true, well 'our' buzzard, happily shares the same trees with the magpies, maybe I should have said that the opposite way round.

Don't really see any other 'companion' birds doing so, although the brave robins and sketchy blackbirds don't seem to care.
Haven't seen a finch or bluetit in some time though.

 

[tdsoldgit]

We had a couple of mice a day in our humane traps even though we left the mice miles away. (Not every day, but annoyingly often). But more kept coming.
So I got some stainless wire mesh and 'no nails' glue and attached the mesh to the air bricks. I've not seen a sign of them since.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/30346548...=sys&xt=Trmt_EmailConfirmation_FooterUpdate_1
Good luck.

 

[Titan_uk]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I've ordered steel wool and expanding foam, and though I can't find any obvious external holes or air bricks I shall get the lower level of the house walls repointed (it is render above about 12" above the soil).

There is no grass nearby but there is a fruit tree on one side of the house. I'll investigate to see if there is access to the eaves from there.

like others have said hard to keep them out.. make sure there's no nests in your attic first or you'll be trapping them in. Then you'll need to investigate any air hole bricks under the eaves .. they probably aren't tarzaning from a tree, they will probably be simply walking up your wall to where a hole about a 1.5 x a 1p pence is so make sure any mesh size is less than that also and bear in mind it's entirely possible they've snuggled down inside your cavity wall if you have one.

 

[Woody2Shoes]

Poison is great for outside but not inside a house, the council chap should have known that.

It's suboptimal for outside too.

 

[Woody2Shoes]

The thing you really don't want in your attic is squirrels (damhikt)...

 

[Rorschach]

It's suboptimal for outside too.

Well yes, but it's a lot better than trapping generally, and is easy for anyone to do themselves.

 

[Oraclebhoy]

If you are not willing to kill them then you are not going to solve the problem. Mice communicate, once one has made a path into your property they will keep coming until you kill off enough them to break that chain. Sealing a house against them isn't impossible but can be very difficult as others have pointed out they need only a tiny gap to squeeze through.

A chap I worked with bought some catch and release traps. He was releasing the mice he was catching in the field at the bottom of his garden, After a month of doing this he started to mark the mice with some lipstick on its back. Sure enough it was the same bunch coming back after he released them away from the house.
He changed the traps to the other kind.
No more issues

 

[OBr]

Use copper mesh from Amazon to block holes. https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00VIIX4OC/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_imm_awdb_G1N89YA997Q88SPXRY36
You can also use uv fluorescent powder to find where ingress occurs.

 

[pgrbff]

Couldn't you eat those?

We have those too. Despite being an absolute menace they are protected in Italy.

 

[pgrbff]

Whilst it sounds like a fairy story a friend of mine had mouse issues in an old suffolk thatched cottage, beleive it or not he used very strong double sided tape on areas like beams where a trap was not viable and he caught and disposed of several dozen over a winter. When he got up the little critters were solidly stuck to the tape, remove dispose and replace tape.

You can buy tubes of non setting glue to put on pieces of card or board. Not a nice way to go.

 

[Oraclebhoy]

I constantly have four mice traps down in the garage as we get them coming from the surrounding fields.
We occasionally get rats cutting across our back garden, they seem to go between houses either side of us. Our neighbour had an air rifle set up next to the backdoor to take shots at them as the walked from our fence to his other neighbours fence.
Never liked rats, made the mistake of cornering one when I was working in a warehouse, only way for it to escape was to run and jump towards me. I ducked . Spent weeks using poison and collecting the bodies. Not a fun job.

 

[JAW911]

We have a very old house with no way to have blocked mice from entering. So four or five years ago I bought three or four of those plug-in pest deterrent devices and set them around the house, with one in a cupboard which always gad droppings appearing. The nightly scratching in the attic continued for perhaps two weeks and then no mice anywhere in the house since. Also incidentally almost no spiders either, as advertised.