Sounds like the makings of the next plague if the rats are that populated in the area.

I'd be cleaning up my place so they'd stay with the chicken farmers. If there was nothing there for them they wouldn't keep coming. But that's just me if you wanna live with them, so be it. Oh, and I'd have buckets of poison out too, year around.

I've never seen a rat like that, color or length of tail.

The only place I've seen some rats around here have been on farms. I can count the number of times I've seen a rat in my urban area on one hand in 50+ years of remembering things. I've had one mouse get into my house in the 18 years we've lived here. But I have field voles living in my back yard. Short tailed little suckers.

When I trapped in Oregon you could not set near a building or bridge. All you would get was rats.

Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've never seen a black rat before.

I'd be cleaning up my place so they'd stay with the chicken farmers. If there was nothing there for them they wouldn't keep coming. But that's just me if you wanna live with them, so be it. Oh, and I'd have buckets of poison out too, year around. [/quote]

I've had a lot of poison out and it gets taken away but I rarely see any dead or sick rats. Not sure how effective it is. They may have resistance to it?

With all the fruit Beaverpeeler grows, there's always going to be something showing up to eat it. You can't organically protect many acres of productive fruiting plants 100% from vermin. All you can do is keep killing them as they move in.

Keith

Keith has it right

Yesterday I saw a rat chasing a mouse in the fur shed. I've noticed that when there's lots of rats there don't seem to be many mice. I suspect that rats are good at finding mouse nests and getting the young too.

I set a trap along a shelve that I saw the rat running along with an oil sac perched over it; and this is the result this morning: