Mice

oldspert

oldspert

Senior Member
Might be off topic, but I have mice. I baited two Victor traps with peanut butter and this morning all of the peanut butter was gone but no traps were tripped. Anyone have a better bait. I have had good luck with the electronic traps but all of them are in storage. Maybe tonight...
Ed
 
I wrap string around the bait area, then peanut butter. They pull on the string, then the 2nd mouse gets the peanut butter.
 
Peanut butter works for me. Pest control guy I used to work with swore by bacon (the folks in my company used to call him “Bacon Bob“). On the Victor traps there is a little notch on the bait bar. Be sure you smush the peanut butter into that little notch so they have to work at it and… snap!

Be sure to set some traps outside of the car, too. Get the little buggers before they gain entry.
 
I use "TOMCAT" brand bait traps in my shop, garage, horse barn and even my enclosed car haul trailer. They are fully enclosed; you can open to reload. Your dog/cat/kids cannot get into them. They work well for me with a barn full of horse feed, and grand kids dropping cookie crumbs, is a good test.
Buy Wallmart, Amazon, and others

Rich
 
Victor has the wooden traps in two patterns: one has a plastic "simulated" cheese trigger with "holes", and the traditional "bent metal tab" that everyone knows.

I find either when baited with peanut butter gives the results you have found.

I find when baited with actual soft cheese, the simulated trap is picked clean similarly, but the metal tab version MOSTLY results in a score. Very rare for the metal tab to be picked clean.

A harder cheese works even better, but hard won't go into to the holes in the simulated.

Catching mice here is a kind of September-First snow continuous activity. A colonial house which the house sets within 6" of the surface is the cause. Once first snow, I'm clear until the following September.

Joe K
 
The sensitivity on the trap is adjustable by bending the little tab out where the wire slips under. You can make them so sensitive that they will snap on the slightest touch.

We battle this at the start of every winter, as the mice look for a warm place to stay. I had 2 of them get up in my gas furnace in November and die, blocking off proper air flow to the burners. So the safety circuits prevented it from lighting. A quick and easy fix to clear them out of there.
 
I use sticky traps and place them along the walls, under cabinets, etc. The trick is, to keep debris off the pad. Mice run the floor next to the walls and get stuck.
 
I use electric traps.There is a little passage,with baffles,that leads to the bait you put in.Near the bait there are two little metal plates.The mouse can step on one plate OK,but when his other feet hit that second plate that capacitor discharges through him.Open the lid,shake him out,rebait and recharge the capacitor,and set it again.I get them at tractor supply.They use 4 AAA batteries,and say you can get 20 or so mice on one set.My personel best was 52.
 
For those of you that do not like to kill the mice, you and buy traps that catch them live at hardware stores. You have to let them loose at least 2 miles from your house or they find their way back.

There is also the water in the bucket trap with a paddle that flips with the weight of the mice and dumps them into the water where they drown. Helps to put a little soap in the water. The design has been published on the Barn. Search for "mice".
 
I used to use Tom Cat pellets exclusively. I kept going through a lot of it. Then I found most of it "squirreled away" in some of the strangest places like in the bottom of a rear door in a non-restored 160A and in one cylinder of a rebuilt short block stored in a garbage bag. Still, I would find droppings inside a car but fortunately no damage. Now I use Victor regular traps with peanut butter with good results. I have had the peanut butter gone and no mice. I think if the mouse is a baby they can extract the peanut butter without tripping. I have had some success with glue traps but bugs tend to stick in them too so I wait until it's cold. Sometimes the peanut butter gets old. I still use Tom Cat but only a few pellets per station. If I see they're gone, I replace the peanut butter. My other method is a 5 gallon bucket with a pop can that spins on a rod and is smeared with peanut butter. Mice jump from the edge, spin off the pop can and drown in a couple of inches of water. A club member uses Starbar"s Golden Malrin outside of his garage and claims mice die before entering. I have not found a small supply available. Lastly, I stopped covering my cars since mice like dark places. I keep the hoods and trunks open.
 
Don't use pellets! The mice take each pellet to their lair until they empty the tray. Then after all the effort, the mouse eats several and dies - but all the bait is gone. I use the 1"x1"x 3" poison bars. They have to eat the poison when at the bar and can't horde it. I have had good luck with glue traps. I also have had good luck with putting moth balls in an empty pie pan with holes in the plastic cover to keep the mice out of my A's. I put the pie pans under the seats, the trunk and other places in my A's. When you remove the pie pans the mothball smell is gone.
Rusty Nelson
 

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I use peanut butter, but I jam a raisin on the little trap bait prong, then smear peanut butter on the raisin. Peanut butter attracts, then they fight to get the raisin, BAM, all over but the funeral.
 
The neighbor has used a 5 gallon plastic pail which he fills 2/3rds full of water. He has arranged an empty plastic 1 liter water bottle on a "string" (or wire) across the opening of the pail so that it will "turn." On this he somehow attaches a bit of "bait" - I imagine a smear of peanut butter would work fine.

The mouse ascends a ramp to the top rim of the bucket, follows the odor out onto the plastic bottle - can't retain his balance/footing on the bottle, and plunges to his death in the water.

He says it works. I've seen "tippy tops" for the buckets which do the same thing.


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Joe K
 
So you guys think you have a mouse problem! Hmmm. Every now and then, seasonal conditions are just right for the little buggers to breed like rabbits (Huh?). It doesn't take long for their numbers to explode on an incredible scale. Take a look at this news report from an Indian source.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJysxVeVusU
My Father in Law was a farmer and we used to use the water trap method nightly, only we used 200 litre drums. Note, I said DRUMS. Each morning we would empty them (as many as 5 in his barn), load the dead rodents into the back of the Ute and dump them "up the paddock" for fertiliser. The weight of so many mice was great enough to lower the back of the Ute so it looked like a dog with worms as we drove!
 
Many many years ago my then wife and I had pet mice. They were mostly white but had some tan and brown coloring. As Synchro said they bread like rabbits. They got to be too much so we turned them loose in the back yard. Shortly after that the neighbors started complaining of an overpopulation of mice, and that they were not brown but mostly white with some tan and brown coloring. I played dumb.
 
If you get yourself some GumDrop candy, bite one in half, it'll be really sticky on the bite. Stick this to the trap paddle. The green spearmint ones work the best. The mouse will chew on the candy and try to pull it off...SNAP! One dead mouse.
 
I have a six foot black snake in the shop. He takes care of the mice, but now I’m afraid to go in the shop.

W. Michael
 
oldspert said:
Might be off topic, but I have mice. I baited two Victor traps with peanut butter and this morning all of the peanut butter was gone but no traps were tripped. Anyone have a better bait. Ed
Click to expand...

A Mouse Story

One night, some time back... and up at the ranch, I was woke up by some racket which i determined to be going-on's inside the closet, shelf, in BR. very active, back n forth... and disruptive. :mad: mice?, i thought. chasing each other in the dark? i would approach the closet, noise would stop. back to bed, more noise! :mad: well, no shortage of varmints or unwanted critters up there, out in the country... so i went and got me some newspaper... some small cubes of cheddar cheese... and 2 wooden mouse traps. and back to bed i went. set in place!

the frolicking continued. so i just waited there in the dark. about 10 mins later... 'SNAP!' :p then quiet. and about another 10 mins and another 'SNAP!' i figured the cheddar cheese had caught these two frisky friends attention.

After a good night's sleep, and a morning hot cup of joe... i went to check on things. :)

The End
 
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