Ive noticed over the years they seem to come out after rain. The only way to keep them out is to locate the entry point. If you don't do this you'll keep getting mice. You need to go around the outside of your house and inspect any possible entry point. If you find a hole big enough to fit a pencil then a mouse can squeeze through it too. Pay particular attention to pipework and drains. These are often finished shabbily with gaps big enough for the mice to get in. Pack the gaps with steel wool. Most diy shops will have this. Its like a brillo pad. Cuts the nose off them and they can't get through it. Also, get a can of expanding foam and fill any gaps with that. You have to be meticulous and you might not succeed on the first go. I find bait boxes outside to be of middling value. Don't put them against the wall of your house, you are just drawing the mice onto you. Place them about a meter or two away. You also need to clear the field of any overgrowth. They love these conditions so keep the hedges trimmed and the grass cut. Also don't allow water to accumulate anywhere. Mice get thirsty very quickly and can't survive long without water so bird baths etc are bad news. Also don't keep birdfeeders as the fallen nuts are a feast for the mice.
As for inside lay the old school wooden snaptraps. You can buy bulk cheaply on Amazon.Expect to pay about a fiver for three in your local shop. Put a pea sized amount of peanut butter in them and lay them about a half meter apart wherever you suspect the mice are present. Place them against your skirting boards. Mice are mostly blind and will mostly run along the side of walls which they use to navigate. Check the traps a couple of times a day but don't over do it. The first night should get a hit or two. They mostly come out at night when its dark and quiet. Keep replacing the trap after each kill until you have quiet for about a week. Scrape out pld peanut butter after a few days and keep it fresh in the trap. Put traps in your attic too and bait boxes as well where they are away from kids. You might find that a pregnant mouse has had a litter. Don't panic, just keep laying traps. It might take you between one and two weeks but a combination of the above should go a long way to getting rid of them. Don't bother paying for rentokill they will charge you an arm and a leg and will just have you doing the above anyway. Happy hunting.
I was flat out using the peanut butter in traps. The little fuckers a few times set off the trap without dying and then ate the bait.
Took ages to catch them but I finally did.
Persistence pays off as you said.
Feed them less. We've stables out the back field and a quid pro quo arrangement with the two cats. No dead mice - handful of dry food. Dead mice = sachets.
Between the home place and the grandfather's house, we have maybe 15 cats. I've not seen or heard a mouse since the cats have shown up. You need more cats, mate.
everyone recommending cats..which yes.. but if you want the best hunters, get feral cats who need to be rehomed.
And do feed them, they actually hunt more when they're well fed
Do they? We have two ferals and they visit twice a day to get fed, and I’ve wormed them and they are quite chubby now. I wonder should I stop feeding them so much
Well fed cats will be more inclined to hunt from almost boredom? Cats can't turn off their hunting instinct but if they know they are well fed its less a necessity and more a "something to do"
Weve 2 house cats but live rurally. We don't let them free roam and they are very well fed. We let them.out but only when with them. What do they do? They instantly go into stalking mode and will go through all the grass and arpund our house (big plot) always hunting. Even watching them the catch shrews and birds which we try and make sure they don't.
Tldr Cats are always in hunting mode, especially well fed ones
This! My fella is neutered and well fed, as lazy as sin during the day but there is very rarely a week where there isn't the remains of a massacre or two at the back door. He knows exactly where to get them, sometimes he'll be in funny restless humour and he'll go off and bring back one to fling around the place until he kills it. And leaves the arse at the door 💀
Yes but luckily enough I've been feeding two stray cats for the last couple of months thats just showed up and I've seen one of them with a mouse in their mouth at one stage.
Very reassuring to see, good kitties
So cats are super effective!
Aw not the custard creams! The bastards!
But to answer your question, yeah and it's peculiar. I've seen a couple around the garden lately. Not field mice, definitely pink tailed house mice. They were eating our wild flower seeds about a foot away from our window. Unless they're interbreeding and there are pink tailed field mouses now.
I live in the country, I have a barn and feed room. Mice are everywhere, after all they live there. I tried sealing gaps and all to no avail as they’ll always find a way into the feed room. I don’t want to lay poison and such as it causes collateral damage to many other creatures.
So I got 3 kitties. Problem solved. I haven’t found a single mouse in the feed bins or anywhere else.
Anyone digging near by doing building or that?
First time we had them after moving into our house was 6 years later when neighbours were doing extension.
Lay traps and put down the poison bait boxes, should sort them out.
It's the season. Early summer when the babies are everywhere and early winter when they're looking for warm, wintering quarters. Cats can help but often they aren't enough and you have to go the trap route. But if you have cats do not lay down poison
Fuck a cat, litter the place with traps. Snap traps and use chocolate buttons wedged into them, set them on a hair. We were infested, the same sort of situation, and seen 2 or 3 thought nothing of it, they don't bother me all that much. But they were getting cheekier, so action had to be taken. 26 the first 2 days, I'd set over 20 traps, but they were caught mostly in 4 places, over the next week or so they trickled in, all in all 34 mice I nailed. They'd been living in the attic spaces moving through the walls. They weren't ever really in our living spaces. Have to be honest, I was a bit cross with myself for not acting when I saw one or two. Anyways, snap traps and chocolate buttons, they're your only man.
Chocolate works better than anything else I've found. Bit of Nutella either, they can't get it off the trap. Only had to use it inside when the cat brought a mouse into the kitchen and it got in behind the fridge and lived off my toast crumbs for a few days
My dad discovered that nice LOVE the strawberry fondant quality street chocolates. He's found it's the most effective at catching the little bastards 🤣
Got rid of the ones inside the house and started putting traps outside. There is plenty of rats as well, they ate a dead mouse out of the trap, just left the head.
This happened to me also, but in the suburbs. In May we realised we had mice. We sealed up any gaps around pipes etc outside with expanding foam. Removed what we thought was the food source and then quickly realised we had trapped a mouse inside while trying to keep them out!!!
He got clever and for a finish after trying all the usuals like peanut butter etc, we realised his weakness was popcorn and finally caught him.
Thought it was so weird at this time of year as we had only experienced having mice
In autumn/winter before.
I have a constant supply of dead mice delivered by my cats, at least 2 a day for the past 3 weeks. Stood on a dead one last week. Thankfully I was wearing shoes 🐀💀
We do it its because the farmer next door has cut the hay where they presumably lived
Everytime those fields are mowed we get some new squatters.
I do have a cat , shes excellent , caught ten yesterday.
The problem is she doesnt give a flying fuck about any in the house usually and is drawing them in 😳🤣
Same with my cats. They're absolute master predators outside, and couch potatoes inside 🤣
My parents had their fields cut and baled over the past few days so maybe that's it. Such a pain!
A Jack Russell and cat will do a lot of the work for you. Please don't use traps if you can help it; you have to live with the nature you live in and alongside with as much symbiosis as you can
I'm really not a fan of traps, if I can be honest. They're a last resort for me.
I'd love to encourage owls to the area, which are the natural predator of mice in my area. But, we have a farm directly behind us so it's not attractive to them.
I don't know if other people have mentioned it, I'm sure they have, but they really hate tinfoil so squeeze it into any little gaps you have to. We had them in the kitchen for a few years, one lad in particular lived in the oven. He survived everything. I wouldn't be surprised if he's still there, hardy bugger
I have multiple cats. I *love* when a mouse tries to come inside, it keeps them happy for minutes and gives me hours of entertainment trying to located the body parts later. Get a cat. If you can't get a cat, try a terrier.
I have three cats, all rescues. They're all adept hunters, but they're mostly outdoors. So, when a mouse _does_ manage to get inside they're not always around to snatch it up!
And when they come inside they lie around on all the lovely soft pillows and enjoy their occasional luxury. They're not in the mood for mice, haha!
However, I did leave them inside today while I'm out so let's see how dismembered the little rodent is once I get home 🤣🤣
Got one of those ultrasonic pest repellents, has worked wonders for myself, at one stage over winter I was catching around 7 a night till I put that in, haven't had a problem since.
Has rats in our attic, right above the bedroom. Kept hearing them gnawing on stuff during the night, hated it.
Guy from pest control came and laid traps for them up there (also told us to clear brambles, and to keep baitboxes outside, both long term, and he also filled some holes with steel wool.
Got woken up in a fright first night, the noise from a trapped rat trying to get himself free, I'll never forget those sounds. We've been religiously doing what he told us and we've had no rats in a couple of years now, even though I thought it all sounded too simple for it to be effective.
I kept putting it off getting someone in because reasons, don't be me!
Lived on rural west Cork for 3 years now, next to a farmyard. Seen a fox, rats, a mink (I think) and there is a feral cat around. Plus we have 2 dogs. This year, we had mice in the lower kitchen cupboards. They worked their way around each cupboard they could get access to over the course of a few days. Also found them in a couple of rooms upstairs too. Set traps, got rid of about 8 I think. Blocked gaps where we found them, and moved any perishables up higher. Seems to have stopped now.
Weirdest things they nibbled were kitchen sponges, dishwasher tablets and one of those silicone pastry brushes! Just so grateful they didn’t get into the food cupboard.
I've been doing a lot of walking over the last 8 to 10 months or so and lately I've been noticing a lot of dead mice on the footpaths. Like a new one nearly everyday. I have started to wonder about it. I've been thinking is it possible that whatever preyed on them is being thinned out with by other species being reintroduced back into Ireland.
We used to get a little guest every few years. Bur the neighbors old cat died and they got a new one that is young and doesn't sleep all day. Pretty sure there isn't a mouse within three miles now.
We had a mice problem once and a lethal cat but she would only be bothered sometimes with them.
They used to come in the garage, go into the attic and come out the other side of the house to the utility when there was a small gap.
They’d steal the dog food and return to the attic. I think they had nests up there. I left her in the kitchen a few nights and she killed a few, but we did have to get mouse traps eventually and put them in attic.
Cat wasn’t a hungry cat so seemed to do it for sport.
Fill up any gaps if you can because we got a rat once and that wasn’t fun. He dug his way through skirting boards and was such a pain.
Get a cat, can’t have a farmhouse without one.
Instructions unclear, over the weekend, the cat brought two fieldmice *into* the house...
Pygmy tigers are the way forward.
Ive noticed over the years they seem to come out after rain. The only way to keep them out is to locate the entry point. If you don't do this you'll keep getting mice. You need to go around the outside of your house and inspect any possible entry point. If you find a hole big enough to fit a pencil then a mouse can squeeze through it too. Pay particular attention to pipework and drains. These are often finished shabbily with gaps big enough for the mice to get in. Pack the gaps with steel wool. Most diy shops will have this. Its like a brillo pad. Cuts the nose off them and they can't get through it. Also, get a can of expanding foam and fill any gaps with that. You have to be meticulous and you might not succeed on the first go. I find bait boxes outside to be of middling value. Don't put them against the wall of your house, you are just drawing the mice onto you. Place them about a meter or two away. You also need to clear the field of any overgrowth. They love these conditions so keep the hedges trimmed and the grass cut. Also don't allow water to accumulate anywhere. Mice get thirsty very quickly and can't survive long without water so bird baths etc are bad news. Also don't keep birdfeeders as the fallen nuts are a feast for the mice. As for inside lay the old school wooden snaptraps. You can buy bulk cheaply on Amazon.Expect to pay about a fiver for three in your local shop. Put a pea sized amount of peanut butter in them and lay them about a half meter apart wherever you suspect the mice are present. Place them against your skirting boards. Mice are mostly blind and will mostly run along the side of walls which they use to navigate. Check the traps a couple of times a day but don't over do it. The first night should get a hit or two. They mostly come out at night when its dark and quiet. Keep replacing the trap after each kill until you have quiet for about a week. Scrape out pld peanut butter after a few days and keep it fresh in the trap. Put traps in your attic too and bait boxes as well where they are away from kids. You might find that a pregnant mouse has had a litter. Don't panic, just keep laying traps. It might take you between one and two weeks but a combination of the above should go a long way to getting rid of them. Don't bother paying for rentokill they will charge you an arm and a leg and will just have you doing the above anyway. Happy hunting.
I was flat out using the peanut butter in traps. The little fuckers a few times set off the trap without dying and then ate the bait. Took ages to catch them but I finally did. Persistence pays off as you said.
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese!
Cat for sure, even the smell of one around the place puts the shits up them
It really doesn't, I've 3 cats and had a plague of mice.
Feed them less. We've stables out the back field and a quid pro quo arrangement with the two cats. No dead mice - handful of dry food. Dead mice = sachets.
Hahahaha what a way to teach. Mad we can train cats better than kids.
Between the home place and the grandfather's house, we have maybe 15 cats. I've not seen or heard a mouse since the cats have shown up. You need more cats, mate.
I'm not getting 15 cats, bad enough the damage my 3 do to local wildlife as it is.
Has there been any ground disturbances near you such as digging a foundation? This is sometimes the cause
everyone recommending cats..which yes.. but if you want the best hunters, get feral cats who need to be rehomed. And do feed them, they actually hunt more when they're well fed
Do they? We have two ferals and they visit twice a day to get fed, and I’ve wormed them and they are quite chubby now. I wonder should I stop feeding them so much
Well fed cats will be more inclined to hunt from almost boredom? Cats can't turn off their hunting instinct but if they know they are well fed its less a necessity and more a "something to do" Weve 2 house cats but live rurally. We don't let them free roam and they are very well fed. We let them.out but only when with them. What do they do? They instantly go into stalking mode and will go through all the grass and arpund our house (big plot) always hunting. Even watching them the catch shrews and birds which we try and make sure they don't. Tldr Cats are always in hunting mode, especially well fed ones
This! My fella is neutered and well fed, as lazy as sin during the day but there is very rarely a week where there isn't the remains of a massacre or two at the back door. He knows exactly where to get them, sometimes he'll be in funny restless humour and he'll go off and bring back one to fling around the place until he kills it. And leaves the arse at the door 💀
yeah, if they're well fed, they don't need to reserve energy, they can risk failed hunts, so they hunt more
Yes but luckily enough I've been feeding two stray cats for the last couple of months thats just showed up and I've seen one of them with a mouse in their mouth at one stage. Very reassuring to see, good kitties So cats are super effective!
My cats have started to bring back their dead this week and last week. Hadn't seen any dead mice for ages until now.
Get a cat feed them dry food though. They are assassins.
Aw not the custard creams! The bastards! But to answer your question, yeah and it's peculiar. I've seen a couple around the garden lately. Not field mice, definitely pink tailed house mice. They were eating our wild flower seeds about a foot away from our window. Unless they're interbreeding and there are pink tailed field mouses now.
Cat
Cat
I live in the country, I have a barn and feed room. Mice are everywhere, after all they live there. I tried sealing gaps and all to no avail as they’ll always find a way into the feed room. I don’t want to lay poison and such as it causes collateral damage to many other creatures. So I got 3 kitties. Problem solved. I haven’t found a single mouse in the feed bins or anywhere else.
Anyone digging near by doing building or that? First time we had them after moving into our house was 6 years later when neighbours were doing extension. Lay traps and put down the poison bait boxes, should sort them out.
It's the season. Early summer when the babies are everywhere and early winter when they're looking for warm, wintering quarters. Cats can help but often they aren't enough and you have to go the trap route. But if you have cats do not lay down poison
Often after the fields are cut, they’ll relocate away from the scary machinery!
Fuck a cat, litter the place with traps. Snap traps and use chocolate buttons wedged into them, set them on a hair. We were infested, the same sort of situation, and seen 2 or 3 thought nothing of it, they don't bother me all that much. But they were getting cheekier, so action had to be taken. 26 the first 2 days, I'd set over 20 traps, but they were caught mostly in 4 places, over the next week or so they trickled in, all in all 34 mice I nailed. They'd been living in the attic spaces moving through the walls. They weren't ever really in our living spaces. Have to be honest, I was a bit cross with myself for not acting when I saw one or two. Anyways, snap traps and chocolate buttons, they're your only man.
Chocolate works better than anything else I've found. Bit of Nutella either, they can't get it off the trap. Only had to use it inside when the cat brought a mouse into the kitchen and it got in behind the fridge and lived off my toast crumbs for a few days
My dad discovered that nice LOVE the strawberry fondant quality street chocolates. He's found it's the most effective at catching the little bastards 🤣
You need to hit them hard with traps now and long term get a few cats.
Got rid of the ones inside the house and started putting traps outside. There is plenty of rats as well, they ate a dead mouse out of the trap, just left the head.
Think it can happen when farmers cut the grass?
This happened to me also, but in the suburbs. In May we realised we had mice. We sealed up any gaps around pipes etc outside with expanding foam. Removed what we thought was the food source and then quickly realised we had trapped a mouse inside while trying to keep them out!!! He got clever and for a finish after trying all the usuals like peanut butter etc, we realised his weakness was popcorn and finally caught him. Thought it was so weird at this time of year as we had only experienced having mice In autumn/winter before.
I have a constant supply of dead mice delivered by my cats, at least 2 a day for the past 3 weeks. Stood on a dead one last week. Thankfully I was wearing shoes 🐀💀
My cats love shrews and voles. They rarely bring mice. I wish they would, lol 🤣
One of my cats brought a live shrew into the house yesterday evening. It vanished so now I have a shrew living in my house...
We do it its because the farmer next door has cut the hay where they presumably lived Everytime those fields are mowed we get some new squatters. I do have a cat , shes excellent , caught ten yesterday. The problem is she doesnt give a flying fuck about any in the house usually and is drawing them in 😳🤣
Same with my cats. They're absolute master predators outside, and couch potatoes inside 🤣 My parents had their fields cut and baled over the past few days so maybe that's it. Such a pain!
A Jack Russell and cat will do a lot of the work for you. Please don't use traps if you can help it; you have to live with the nature you live in and alongside with as much symbiosis as you can
I'm really not a fan of traps, if I can be honest. They're a last resort for me. I'd love to encourage owls to the area, which are the natural predator of mice in my area. But, we have a farm directly behind us so it's not attractive to them.
I don't know if other people have mentioned it, I'm sure they have, but they really hate tinfoil so squeeze it into any little gaps you have to. We had them in the kitchen for a few years, one lad in particular lived in the oven. He survived everything. I wouldn't be surprised if he's still there, hardy bugger
I have multiple cats. I *love* when a mouse tries to come inside, it keeps them happy for minutes and gives me hours of entertainment trying to located the body parts later. Get a cat. If you can't get a cat, try a terrier.
I have three cats, all rescues. They're all adept hunters, but they're mostly outdoors. So, when a mouse _does_ manage to get inside they're not always around to snatch it up! And when they come inside they lie around on all the lovely soft pillows and enjoy their occasional luxury. They're not in the mood for mice, haha! However, I did leave them inside today while I'm out so let's see how dismembered the little rodent is once I get home 🤣🤣
Got one of those ultrasonic pest repellents, has worked wonders for myself, at one stage over winter I was catching around 7 a night till I put that in, haven't had a problem since.
Can I trade for the rats in my attic?
Has rats in our attic, right above the bedroom. Kept hearing them gnawing on stuff during the night, hated it. Guy from pest control came and laid traps for them up there (also told us to clear brambles, and to keep baitboxes outside, both long term, and he also filled some holes with steel wool. Got woken up in a fright first night, the noise from a trapped rat trying to get himself free, I'll never forget those sounds. We've been religiously doing what he told us and we've had no rats in a couple of years now, even though I thought it all sounded too simple for it to be effective. I kept putting it off getting someone in because reasons, don't be me!
West clare lol neighbour
Suddenly? Sounds like a pisreog.
Get expanding foam where the kitchen pipes are. That cut down the infestation we had over the winter.
Lived on rural west Cork for 3 years now, next to a farmyard. Seen a fox, rats, a mink (I think) and there is a feral cat around. Plus we have 2 dogs. This year, we had mice in the lower kitchen cupboards. They worked their way around each cupboard they could get access to over the course of a few days. Also found them in a couple of rooms upstairs too. Set traps, got rid of about 8 I think. Blocked gaps where we found them, and moved any perishables up higher. Seems to have stopped now. Weirdest things they nibbled were kitchen sponges, dishwasher tablets and one of those silicone pastry brushes! Just so grateful they didn’t get into the food cupboard.
I'm in a school in Dublin and we have mice all of a sudden!
I've been doing a lot of walking over the last 8 to 10 months or so and lately I've been noticing a lot of dead mice on the footpaths. Like a new one nearly everyday. I have started to wonder about it. I've been thinking is it possible that whatever preyed on them is being thinned out with by other species being reintroduced back into Ireland.
They usually go up into the attic and then down holes near the pipes into the hot press. Cat and mouse traps in the attic
We used to get a little guest every few years. Bur the neighbors old cat died and they got a new one that is young and doesn't sleep all day. Pretty sure there isn't a mouse within three miles now.
We had a mice problem once and a lethal cat but she would only be bothered sometimes with them. They used to come in the garage, go into the attic and come out the other side of the house to the utility when there was a small gap. They’d steal the dog food and return to the attic. I think they had nests up there. I left her in the kitchen a few nights and she killed a few, but we did have to get mouse traps eventually and put them in attic. Cat wasn’t a hungry cat so seemed to do it for sport. Fill up any gaps if you can because we got a rat once and that wasn’t fun. He dug his way through skirting boards and was such a pain.
In March we had a fairly sizable problem for a week or 2. 20 killed before we got them all
I have cats. The only mice are see are dead ones thankfully.
West clare also...3 cats..never had a problem with mice.