5 Ways to Help Prevent Rodents From Breaking Through Your Fence

Is your garden being terrorized by rodents? Are your pets getting sick because of all the diseases trekked into your yard? You don’t have to tolerate this kind of plague. Here are five methods for ridding yourself and your property of tiny, twitchy intruders.

1: Poison Your Posts

Liberal applications of pesticide should put a stop to minor infestations and burgeoning families. The trick is to keep applying it even after the rats have disappeared: You never know when new babies are being made, and it only takes a few weeks for rodent populations to multiply out of control. Look for poisons that include warfarin or chlorophacinone for maximum efficiency. This will help keep these little intruders from getting into your yard and ruining your flower beds, your garden. It also prevents the worst case scenario, letting these rodents find a way into your home.

2: Choose The Right Materials

Chicken wire fences are much more effective at culling rats than traditional wooden constructions. Not only are they sharper and stronger, but they also offer smaller areas of ingress. They can be buried deep, deep within the ground to prevent rodents from burrowing under their protection.

3: Bait Them Into Traps

Line your fence with traps, then tempt the mice into paying attention to their goodies. Note that cheese only works on television; a better alternative is peanut butter and believe it or not, dog food. Coat it onto a fine thread to prevent the rodents from simply licking it clean and running way. Thread will force them to use their paws and really work at it, giving the traps more time to spring. You also do not have to stick to the traditional snap traps. Besides, no one likes to pick up a dead mouse or rat out of a trap. You also risk snapping your own fingers, which really hurts. You can invest in disposable traps that all you have to do is pick up the trap and throw it away once it has been sprung.

4: Use Natural Remedies

Studies from Harvard University and the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research have proven that rats have an intense prey response to the smell of bobcat urine. If you’re worried about introducing pesticide to your yard, this is an all-natural alternative that will simply scare the rodents away from your home.

5: Introduce Owls To The Local Ecosystem

You’ll need to discuss this option with your neighbors, but if their yards and gardens are also being terrorized by rats, it may be an easy idea to sell. A few owls making nighttime sweeps of the neighborhood will decimate the local rat population in as little as two to three weeks. As a bonus, they’ll keep the rats under control in the future, too.

If you’re tired of waking up to droppings and gnawings, use these five tips to get rid of rodents for good. Just remember that dedication is the most important aspect of pest removal. Once you commit to a course of action, keep at it even after the problem is seemingly under control. The last thing you want is a re-infestation!

My name is Lizzie Weakley and I am a freelance writer from Columbus, Ohio. I went to college at The Ohio State University where I studied communications. I enjoy the outdoors and long walks in the park with my 3-year-old husky Snowball.

Lizzie was inspired to write this article by City Fence.