Cornbread rat cure

[londrajs]

For more than a month now I have been using 50% Jiffy cornbread mix with 50% baking soda and a small handful of sugar mixed in, as recommended by a farmer who told me how to control rats. “Rats can’t burp a fart,” he said. I have scooped up 6 rats so far—2 dead and 4 barely alive. I have not seen a rat, either. But I know they are eating the mix because I see the excrement. Let them. They’ll die. I don’t like killing anything but I had to do something. The hens have half a garage and a run. I put the mix in the half of garage they cannot get to. It isn’t the greatest thing for your dog or cat to eat but it is NOT poison, and if an animal eats a dead rat, the ingested mix won’t kill the animal. I can’t think of a better way to do this. I still spray coop twice a week with a peppermint mix spray. It just smells so good! Photo: those are my barn cats. They find rats and mice distasteful and will stick to the occasional butterfly.

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

Wish I had heard about this when I had a rat problem and a useless outdoor male cat…would have been happy to do some science on my local rat population hahaha

 

[old mama hen]

For more than a month now I have been using 50% Jiffy cornbread mix with 50% baking soda and a small handful of sugar mixed in, as recommended by a farmer who told me how to control rats. “Rats can’t burp a fart,” he said. I have scooped up 6 rats so far—2 dead and 4 barely alive. I have not seen a rat, either. But I know they are eating the mix because I see the excrement. Let them. They’ll die. I don’t like killing anything but I had to do something. The hens have half a garage and a run. I put the mix in the half of garage they cannot get to. It isn’t the greatest thing for your dog or cat to eat but it is NOT poison, and if an animal eats a dead rat, the ingested mix won’t kill the animal. I can’t think of a better way to do this. I still spray coop twice a week with a peppermint mix spray. It just smells so good! Photo: those are my barn cats. They find rats and mice distasteful and will stick to the occasional butterfly.

Thank You! Heading to the store to buy some Jiffy cornbread mix! I have mint that I am also going to plant on the outside of the chicken yard. The rats are terrible and now I'm afraid mites have transferred from the rats to my hens.

 

[londrajs]

Thank You! Heading to the store to buy some Jiffy cornbread mix! I have mint that I am also going to plant on the outside of the chicken yard. The rats are terrible and now I'm afraid mites have transferred from the rats to my hens.

I saw a rat today first time in a while but I also saw that the jiffy/baking soda mix had been “hit” during the night so I figure this guy is toast. There will always be a new rat arriving I suppose, so this is my control. Another trick: The goo in frozen packaging to keep things cold—If you have it defrost and cut a corner off and goo it down a rat hole, they will move FAST. This works great on gophers too. Doesn’t kill them; just moves them.

 

[Al Gerhart]

Folks, before falling for these old wives tales and spreading false information please take one minute to Google the information.

First, rats do fart.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RATS/comments/17p813y/til_that_rats_can_fart

https://www.ratforum.com/threads/so-umm-do-rats-fart.39925/

https://halcyonwandering.com/2018/02/do-rats-fart/

And no, baking soda or cement or plaster of paris or any other old foolishness put in feed or bait doesn't harm the rats under natural conditions.

https://bobseyes.net/baking-soda-doesnt-kill-rats-2/

Now, sodium bicarbonate, AKA baking soda, CAN kill a rat if they eat 20% of their body weight of baking soda. Even more ridiculous, the OP's receipe of 50% baking soda to cornmeal, requiring the rodent to eat 40% of its body weight.

Google this term "scientific study rodenticide sodium bicarbonate" without the quote marks. Gemini will come back with a result disproving the idea of baking soda as a rodentcide and many studies where rodents are GIVEN baking soda to stop a poison dose at just the right level for a study, as an antidote to other poisons, or to prevent the rodents from passing food to quickly during scientific studies.

A forum search will turn up another white paper I published a link to that details the amount of baking soda needed to kill a rat and another scientist that tested plaster of paris. The result, some sore rat biden holes but otherwise healthy rats.

 

[Susan Skylark]

This is the strangest thing I’ve heard in a while! My question is how to get the rats to eat that much bicarbonate? It tastes awful, and rats are smart! I’d guess eating 20% of their own body weight would either cause salt toxicity or throw off their blood pH. Rats can certainly burp and fart, though horses can’t vomit (just an interesting fact not relevant here!). An interesting idea but I’m not real convinced it is feasible, as for your dead rats, could be a virus or something else going through if they are overpopulated (think distemper through barns cats), interesting but needs more research.

 

[Al Gerhart]

Here is a link from April 20th where this same misinformation was addressed yet the very same info got re posted here.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/serious-rat-problem.1534990/page-4#post-28551017

To understand what eating 20% of your body weight is, that link did the math, a 120 pound person would have to eat 24 pounds of baking soda and cornmeal.

People, what works for rodents is one of three methods, Howard E. had made this very clear ten years ago here on the forum:

Sanitation, bulk feed in metal drums, a treadle feeder that is actually rodent proof, and clearing up the pathways to allow natural predators to get at the rodents as they travel from nest to their food. Going to cost you a couple of hundred bucks to pull off unless you can build your own treadle feeder.

Exclusion, building a Ft. Knox coop. Hardware cloth everywhere, 360 degrees, no free range, no gaps over the size of a dime. On occasion some have reported rats chewing through hardware cloth but I have never witnessed this in person. it is going to cost you a lot of money but it can be done.

Or Elimination, traps, poisons, and there is no end to it. Should you wipe out a population, a new colony will take over the territory. Rodents learn quickly, they will stop taking the bait and falling for the traps after a short time. However, coupled with one of the two other methods, it is a quick way of whittling down the colony size once the rats are starving and more likely to take risks.

 

[The Moonshiner]

I've tried a similar concoction before.
Cornbread mix, powdered sugar and baking soda. It didn't work and made the problem worse. The cornbread mix kept them well fed and in good condition. The powdered sugar just hopped them up which I think made them breed more and faster. Idk if the baking soda did anything except get rid of their dingy yellow teeth giving them pearly whites.
I actually caught one in a live trap and kept him on this diet for about a month. He never died. I also heard chocolate would kill them so I switched him to a Hershey's chocolate syrup liquid diet. That didn't kill him either but it made him crazy. He'd go vicious when he seen me with the bottle. He was addicted to it or something.

 

[Al Gerhart]

This is the strangest thing I’ve heard in a while! My question is how to get the rats to eat that much bicarbonate? It tastes awful, and rats are smart! I’d guess eating 20% of their own body weight would either cause salt toxicity or throw off their blood pH. Rats can certainly burp and fart, though horses can’t vomit (just an interesting fact not relevant here!). An interesting idea but I’m not real convinced it is feasible, as for your dead rats, could be a virus or something else going through if they are overpopulated (think distemper through barns cats), interesting but needs more research.

People fall for the silly things for some reason. And once they are convinced, there is no changing their minds.

Here is the white paper from University of Illinois on a history of rat control and that tested plaster of paris and cement powder mixed with feed for bait. And carbonated soda, imagine rats being fed nothing but fresh soda for two weeks with zero mortality. The paper covers ultrasonics, moth balls, and strong odors, none of which worked. Even predator urine, it turned out to draw in more predators than before!

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1030&context=vpc14

But, free speech is a good thing. Silly ideas have to run a gauntlet of reason and common sense with the idea that people realize that looking foolish doesn't earn many friends.

 

[Al Gerhart]

I've tried a similar concoction before.
Cornbread mix, powdered sugar and baking soda. It didn't work and made the problem worse. The cornbread mix kept them well fed and in good condition. The powdered sugar just hopped them up which I think made them breed more and faster. Idk if the baking soda did anything except get rid of their dingy yellow teeth giving them pearly whites.
I actually caught one in a live trap and kept him on this diet for about a month. He never died. I also heard chocolate would kill them so I switched him to a Hershey's chocolate syrup liquid diet. That didn't kill him either but it made him crazy. He'd go vicious when he seen me with the bottle. He was addicted to it or something.

That is hilarious, an addicted rat. Great job on the real life testing.

I always take some scientific studies with a grain of salt unless the results have been replicated. Your experience validates what the other studies found.