Australian farmers have a headache to face the rat disaster

Locals say millions of rats in a New South Wales town are ‘returning to revenge’…

Fiona Adams, an Australian farmer, holds a rat that was killed by her dog. Photo: Sydney Morning Herald. As cats give up chasing mice and dogs risk death from ingesting rat bait, farmers across Australia have no choice but to improvise to deal with the raging rat disaster. For Eris Fleming, an artist and rancher on her family farm near Bakers Swamp in New South Wales, Australia, the creative approach was to create mini water traps – 15 – everywhere around my house. Mr. Fleming, 78, has seen the current large population of rats once before, in 1984. Although he initially tried placing rat baits like his neighbors, his German Shepherd “started eating the bait faster than the mice.” His dog started bleeding and needed urgent and expensive care to stay alive at the local veterinary clinic. “Vets are going to make a lot of money in this short time,” he said. Rats that have eaten bait will eventually decompose on the ceiling, in the walls and under the floorboards. “The stench is unbelievable,” he said. And so, buckets of water, narrow curtain rods coated with PVC and a layer of canola oil, and some peanut butter decoys, all designed to trap and kill rodents relentlessly. . Just like that, every morning, Mr. Fleming started by collecting dead mice, at least 300 a day. They will then be buried away from the house. It took him three hours a day to clear the bucket of dead rats, dig, bury the rats and reset the trap. However, he also saves time from having to clean every surface, such as clearing rat droppings off the table, and getting rodents out of bed or even out of the refrigerator. Several of Fleming’s neighbors followed his method, and they all reported massive exterminations of rats. Fleming currently counts only a handful of dead rats each morning, but the significant and welcome drop is probably more related to the fact that the rat population is turning to forage elsewhere, such as near Sydney than. Other techniques used by people in his county include a woman mixing powder with plaster to trick rats, although that still risks the rat decomposing in hard-to-reach nooks and crannies. Elsewhere, many people prefer to use traps made of expandable latex rings – like those used to castrate pets. Rats were killed by traps made of expandable rubber latex rings. Photo: Sydney Morning Herald. Improvisation will probably still be required as the supply of rat bait and rat traps continues to be strained. Rat-killer retailer Bunnings says demand started picking up in December and accelerated even further after April. “We have seen an increase in customer demand for rat control products across New South Wales,” said Belinda Rakers, Bunnings product manager. “Due to high demand, supplies are currently at a low level. However, we are continuing to work closely with our suppliers to get more stock in stores as soon as possible,” she said. In Neurea, near Wellington, Fiona Adams is using rat bait to at least keep the rats under control, but they still rummage through her barn at night. Her dog killed one even as she was talking to guests from the Herald visiting the farm on May 20. “I certainly don’t like them, but unfortunately, you have to get used to them,” she said. “They have cute little faces, but they are stinky little animals. Driving along the road at night, they are like toy cars.” Although the cold weather has begun to slow their growth, that hasn’t stopped them from eating all of the lupine beans Fiona planted on May 19, leaving only empty husks. For Fiona as well as Fleming, the scale of the epidemic was hard to imagine for many in Sydney and elsewhere. Rats can breed after just six weeks and then lay multiple litters within three weeks, triggering a population explosion. Farmers in the area who sold their livestock turned to hay production to take advantage of the bountiful rains, but only saw entire haystacks eaten by rats within a few months. After all, it will be up to science rather than temporary or other methods to control such a massive rat population explosion. “The only way you can prevent this is by doing research,” Mr. Fleming mused.