Home remedies to repel rats and mice
Handy Hints - Household
First option is the home remedy that is pet friendly and has no toxins (but is basically a poison for rats) it consists of mixing canned cat food in with peanut butter (the cat food is toxic to their system and will kill them. where the peanut butter is a treat they can't resist.
Go around your house and seal any holes they can get into. They can jump and crawl up structures to get into your house or enter through a hole in your foundation. Seal it with something that they can't eat though. I read that steel wool is a good start and to replace it with wood filler once you find all the holes Mint.
•Mice do not like the scent of mint leaves, mint oil or peppermint oil. Although it's impossible to coat your entire house in mint, it is possible to leave mint where mice tend to enter or frequent. Try planting mint leaves around the outside of the house, at the foundation level where mice tend to enter and exit. A mouse will be less likely to want to enter your house if it smells like mint, and will most likely pick a different house instead.
Inside the house, you can place mint leaves or dab peppermint oil in drawers, corners, under the refrigerator and anywhere else mice tend to frequent. Luckily, mint smells delicious to humans, so your house will smell lovely and you can avoid having a rodent problem at the same time. As soon as the mint leaves lose their scent, replace them.
As soon as you can't smell the oil, put more oil in its place.
Mothballs
•Mice, like moths, dislike the smell of mothballs. They will not want
to populate or make a home in an area that has mothballs, so place lots of mothballs in the corners of your garage and basement, where mice tend to hide and live.
If you don't mind the smell of mothballs yourself, you can place them in your kitchen drawers or underneath your refrigerator. The upside to mothballs is that they will stay potent longer than mint leaves or mint oil, which needs to be replaced more often. Mothballs, however, have a strong smell that most people dislike.
Steel Wool
•Steel wool is effective in keeping mice out of even the largest
openings. Stuff steel wool into every pipe hole, crack or crevice where you think mice are entering your home. You can use steel wool both inside and outside the house, and it does not need to be replaced unless it is in a moist area and rusts.
Mice are not able to eat through steel wool and they do not like how it feels. If they find that steel wool has been stuffed into their pathways, they will not use the hole or path.
Bay Leaves
•Bay leaves may be purchased at any grocery stores and used as a house repellent. Just sprinkle the bay leaves around your kitchen pantry to keep them away. The mice do not like the smell of the leaves.
Sprinkle baby powder on the floor around the place you suspect mice are getting in. Set a cracker with peanut butter on it in the center.
The mice will walk across the powder to get the cracker and you'll be able to tell from their footprints where the mice are coming in. This way, you can block their entrance.
By using ingredients that are completely safe for people and pets you can still poison all the rats in your home. Below are the ingredients for the edible homemade rat poison.
1 Cup flour
1 Cup Sugar
1 Cup Baking Soda
Those three ingredients, which everyone has around the house, are all you need to get rid of your rat or mouse infestation.
Once the ingredients are mixed together, place small amounts in tiny bowls, and store them in places where rats are leaving their droppings.
The reason that this edible poison will kill rats is because the bicarbonate in the baking soda will mix with their stomach acids and kill them. Rats cannot burp or belch, so they will die.
If you can fix a small trap to put the poison in, the rat will not be able to go off and die, causing a smell. If you want safe rat poison, try this recipe.
Another home remedy is to mix some corn meal/ mielie meal with powdered rattex. Sprinkle where you notice the droppings of the rat.
TRIED AND TESTED HOME REMEDY
Mix together mielie meal/corn meal, rattex powder, brown bread and the sawdust from the meat slicing machines, which can be bought from the Butcher Shops. Form into small ball and put in places where the rats or mice are.
Cats keep mice away….
Yes by keeping a cat you certainly won’t have any mice or rats as generally, yes, the scent of a cat, even one that's a crummy mouser, should help keep mice away.
Article got from Radio Islam
