Rodent Control

A rodent problem is almost never a spraying job. Mice and rats are in a building because they can get into it, and while the route stays open, new ones keep arriving however well the treatment is done. So we start with the building itself.

First, find the way in

A house mouse can pass through a 6 mm gap; for a rat, 13 mm under a door is enough. During the survey we work through service penetrations, door thresholds, air vents, the line of the foundations and void spaces above ceilings, one by one.

There is no point proofing with plastic or timber — rodents gnaw through both. We recommend permanent materials such as steel wool, sheet metal and mortar, and we leave you a written note of what needs closing.

The species changes the layout

A house mouse stays within roughly nine metres of its nest. That means stations and traps have to sit close together and in the right places; a widely spaced layout simply misses them. Rats, by contrast, burrow around the outside of a building and along the foundations, so the external perimeter goes into the layout too.

At the survey we read the signs the animal leaves to work out which species we are dealing with and which runs it uses; what those signs look like is set out in detail on the mice and rats page in the pest guide. What matters here is where they concentrate, because that is what the station and trap layout is built around.

The treatment

Bait stations go down locked and secured, out of reach of children and pets. In kitchens, food preparation areas and stores we use mechanical traps wherever we can. Every product we use is a biocidal product licensed by the Turkish Ministry of Health.

The layout changes with the site. In a flat the work is usually confined to the underside of kitchen units, the service duct and the door thresholds. In a warehouse the stations form a line around the outside of the building and sit either side of the loading doors — set on the run the rodent actually uses along the wall, not out in the racking aisles.

At the follow-up we check each station for take, look for fresh droppings and gnawing, and confirm the proofing has stayed in place. If bait is still going, we move the layout and go looking for the source again.

Rodents breed quickly: a pair of house mice can produce five to ten litters a year of five or six young each, and those young are breeding themselves at five or six weeks old. That is why we always check back after the first visit — we do not close a job before we have seen it finished.

Why it should not wait

Rodents do more than contaminate food. Because they gnaw cables, timber, plastic and pipework, they create a real risk of damage to electrical and plumbing systems. They can also carry disease agents including leptospirosis and salmonella, and mouse urine is a significant source of indoor allergens.

In a business, a single sign of rodent activity is enough to cause a problem at audit. For food production, warehousing and logistics sites we recommend a permanent station layout with a documented monitoring record.