We have mice. We haven’t even moved in yet. Which got me thinking – if there’s one or more in the house with no food, there must be a bunch in the barn, where there’s still hay. So I did some research on keeping mice out of our horsepower stalls in the barn. Here’s a summary.
Here’s a great page about using Z-flashing to keep mice from using the corrugated sides of a pole barn as private roads.
The most universal recommendation was to have barn cats (yes, plural – cats like to have a buddy). Females seem preferred – less likely to “mark” their territory all over your barn contents – and one should be careful not to overfeed, turning your fluffy predator into a chunky yard-potato. I’m kind of psyched to finally have a cat again; Hubs and I are both super-allergic and couldn’t have house cats. There’s a local organization that traps and spays/neuters ferals, then finds them new homes. Yay.
Another idea was to use a 5-gallon bucket to drown the mice. Google “5 gallon bucket mouse trap” (or click the word “google” at the beginning of the sentence) for videos, illustrations, and numerous other web pages describing how to build and deploy a mouse pool of death. trapperman9 ‘s youtube video is a good one (at least, without the audio) using a bucket, a soda can, and a dry cleaner’s wire hanger.
Recommended repellants include fabric softener sheets, cloves, moth balls, peppermint. People disagreed about the effectiveness of electronic repellants, some folks loved ’em, some gave up on ’em, and some claimed to get headaches being around ’em.
Poisons may be effective, but perhaps too effective – there’s some disagreement about whether there’s enough poison in a poisoned mouse to kill the family dog/cat/kid. Since we’ve got birds of prey visiting, I’m not keen on poison. However, one non-toxic poison suggested was mashed potato flakes – supposedly, they expand in mousie’s belly and kill it – driving it outside in search of water – and leave a dead, cat- and bird-safe snack. I saw reports of folks discovering old mouse/rat poison from former owners, so we’ll be keeping an eye out when we finally move in.
Inside a house, the best bet is prevention – seal any hole bigger than 1/4″. Steel wool is supposedly like mousey barbed wire. Seal barns, if you can. The first link gives some ideas of the many, many places a pole barn can welcome crawly critters. Our barn, unfortunately, cannot realistically be sealed tight enough to block all mice. For one thing, it has sliding doors instead of weather-stripped, tight-closing swing doors or overhead roll-ups. I’m exploring the possibility of modifying it inexpensively.
Live and let live isn’t going to work for us. Mice can nest in cars and tractors, toting in piles of fluff that gum up the works, and they like to chew things like wiring. Not cool. Not cheap. One suggestion we’ll be deploying early on – as we figure out what works – is keeping hoods open so mice don’t have a secret, dark place to do their nesting.
germantownpdx 