As I read Sara, from Farming Friends blog about rats that are inevitable when you have a farm it made me think about my own rat story.
I knew we had rats here as I see the odd one scurrying around the goat house at dusk.
Setting traps seems to be an exercise in futility and up to now I thought poison was not advisable. I now think if I set it out in a safe, away from every thing else manner, it may be the best way to control the rat problem.
We are re-building the goat house. It started out as a simple add 4 ft to the back of the structure and replace the floor.
In hind sight it would have been easier I think to pull down the house and start from scratch because taking the back wall off affected the sides, which affected the roof etc.
Any way, I digress from the rat story I was going to tell.
It was my job to pull up the old floor which had been put down in sections.
The first couple came up with out incident. I came to the first center section, as I started pulling it up, a HUGE mother rat flew out causing me to scream. My scream sent goats and chickens running in every direction which startled Rob who wasn't too pleased with me screaming at a rat anyway!
The rat had a nest with half a dozen or more new Born's in it. The ducks took care of them and I continued on cautiously lifting more of the floor.
If Rob thought the first scream was bad he at least understood the second one. 8 to 10 juvenile looking rats flew out from under the next section of floor that I was lifting, all heading in my direction, I had visions of them running up my legs, eeew it was awful.
I was shocked to see just how many rats there were out there and that is I when I realized that I need to get serious about controlling the problem with poison.
I will remove the rest of the old floor today. I am hopeful there will be no more surprises under it.