Time to tackle that gnawing problem

Controlling rats and mice is all part of good farm and property management and protecting your assets.

]Supplied by UPL NZ

Destructive, dirty, and disease-carrying, rats and mice are among the most serious mammalian pests known to man. A single rat can produce 50 droppings and 50 mL of urine daily. Their powerful jaws also give them the ability to damage buildings and other assets - gnawing holes in grain sacks, and wood, and building nests in roofs and machinery.

And they’ll eat almost anything. From cereals, seeds, stock feed, and fruit, to eggs and chicks.

UPL NZ Ltd Northern South Island Regional Manager, Pete de Jong, says controlling them demands a combination of hard science and advanced rat psychology. He reckons Generation Soft Bait rodenticide has it nailed.

“Generation Block Bait, still has its place and its long-time users and advocates, but Generation Soft Bait has quantifiable advantages,” he says.

“When I’m explaining it to people, I tell them that, from a rat’s perspective, the difference between the wax-encased block and soft bait, is like the difference between chewing on a candle and eating peanut butter. Soft bait is totally irresistible to them.”

He says that attraction is to the point where the bait beats other food sources, hands-down. It also out-performed competitor baits in trials.

“Rats are naturally cautious and creatures of habit. But even where you’ve got fairly established, bait-shy populations, Generation Soft Bait works really well.”

He says the specially developed vegetable oil and crushed grain-based formulation gets rats’ attention faster, with the soft bait’s paper ensuring the tempting aroma disperses more widely. Pete says it’s also very easy to deploy by skewering the plasticine-like bait on the metal rod, or wire within the Generation bait station. “It’s quick, clean, and convenient.”

The smallest non-dispersible bait on the market, Generation Soft Bait kills rapidly and in a single feed. 2-3gs kills a rat and 0.3-0.4g a mouse. To put that into perspective, a rat’s average daily dietary intake is 20 g/day; 3 g/day for a mouse.

Generation Soft Bait also won’t leak or melt and has very good moisture and heat tolerance. The bait’s active, difethialone 25 ppm, which rodents can’t detect, is the most advanced anti-coagulant on the market. There is no known genetic resistance among rodent populations.

This country has four species of introduced rodents – the Norway rat, the ship rat, the Polynesian rat (kiore), and the house mouse.

Rats reach sexual maturity at 8 to 12 weeks and mate year-round, multiplying to almost plague-like proportions in a very short time. Population explosions are often linked to “mast years” for native trees and flowers seed production - around every 2-5 years.

Pete says domestic pet owners, naturally, have concerns over rodenticide use. But he’d like to put their minds at ease. Generation Soft Bait contains Bitrex, a bittering agent that reduces the risk of consumption by non-target animals. Moreover, secondary poisoning – where a pet eats a dead rodentis unlikely with Generation Soft Bait. Firstly, dogs or cats would need to ingest improbably large numbers of carcases to suffer real ill effects. Secondly, rats often return to their nests to die, either in trees or roof cavities or underground, so are not accessible. However, he adds, poisons should always be handled in accordance with the label and stored out of reach or children, cats, and dogs, ideally in a locked cabinet. Bait stations must be used.

Generation blocks, soft bait, and bait stations are available exclusively from pGG Wrightson.