If you have call for any rodent control be it mouse control or rat control then you need to be aware of recent changes on the labelling of rodenticides as a result of European legislation and directives.
On the receipt of new orders of rodenticides from our suppliers we have been seeing evidence of something referred to within the pest control industry as the “35 day Rule” which is rapidly creeping in to place.
It’s something that has been a long-time in the making.
Simply put, rodenticides should not be left in place for longer than a 35 day period for the control of rats and mice inside and outside.
What does this mean?
Firstly it means that a pest controller can not just visit you once and place a load of rodenticide in trays or bags where ever he feels is appropriate. He needs to make a second visit within 35 days to pick up any remaining bait.
Ideally he should also have visited you at least once after 5 to 7 days to try and locate any dead rodent bodies which he should also be picking up and disposing of in a suitable manor, bearing in mind that they contain poison.
Secondly at long last it hopefully means an end to unnecessary permanent perimeter baiting; which has never really be necessary in most scenarios and has been very much to the detriment of wildlife.
Permanent perimeter baiting is where large national companies have been allowed to place loads of bait stations around and within a sites perimeter and to fill these bait stations with rodenticide, and to then top them up on each visit.
The idea being that any mouse or rat heading towards the protected area will consume the bait and die before arriving – to hell with the consequences of secondary baiting.
The large nationals have made good money on the selling of the bait stations initially, the monitoring and filling takes minimal effort and they charge a fortune for doing it.
The idea of permanent baiting may appear to be a good idea to the uninformed – it isn’t.
The most likely creature to be poisoned is Apodemus sylvaticus the wood mouse or long-tailed field mouse, which in turn maybe consumed by the local kestrels, falcons or some other predator.
The wood mouse are not ideally suited to living within buildings and far prefer it out in the wild, though they may look to take shelter in the autumn and winter.
Any business operation that feels it needs something like this is obviously failing badly in another aspect of pest control – proofing.
Proofing should be the first line of defence, followed up with the monitoring of the environment. If during monitoring for rodents there are any adverse signs then rodent trapping techniques and possibly poisoning should be brought into play where necessary.
It maybe that part of the monitoring process uses trapping so that monitoring and control are carried out at the same time, as there are ways in which this can done.
Most importantly the pest controller used needs to be familiar with all aspects;
- they need to understand the businesses needs and concerns, so as to effectively protect that business,
- they need to understand the pests of concern so that the building can be proofed appropriately to prevent ingress of the pests,
- they need to understand how to monitor a site effectively so that they can prevent any infestation before it starts,
- they also need to understand the pests habits so that should a pest manage to ingress a building it can be caught and dealt with before it causes further problems – who would want a mouse running around constantly dribbling urine and leaving as many as 80 droppings a day for as long as three or four days when it could be trapped and dealt with within a day?