How to prevent mice.

[lestersails]

Originally Posted by Heathenly Twins

I'm sure I'll catch a lot of flack for this but: cats are highly likely to have or get and then spread toxoplasma to you, this is worse than having mice aboard IMO as you can't get rid of it.

About 50% of humans have toxoplasmosis, lower rate in more developed countries. In nearly all adults, toxoplasmosis infection causes no symptoms, it clears, and then you are immune. There is no recognized human to human transmission. The real issue with toxoplasmosis is if a woman is not immune from prior infection, then gets her infection when she is pregnant, it can cause serious problems with the fetus (and I mean serious). Many believe that for women, being infected with toxoplasmosis long before you are contemplating pregnancy is the actually a good thing as you then cannot get it when you are pregnant.
So if you are male, or a post-reproductive female, you really don't need to worry about this at all.
Which is not to say that I like cats - I don't much. But fears of toxoplasmosis are no reason to shun them.

[GordMay]

Toxoplasmosis: General FAQs
Ensure the cat litter box is changed daily. The Toxoplasma parasite does not become infectious until 1 to 5 days after it is shed in a cat’s feces.
➥ https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxopl...info/faqs.html

[Popeye2]

Originally Posted by HopCar

Rat Guard or trade the dog for a cat.

The more expensive rat-guards spin around when the mouse crimbs on it. Do cheaper ones or home- made ones that do not spin still work?

[RaymondR]

When I got the rat in the marina I discovered that they are exceptionally crafty beggars. I was in the tropics and did not want to kill it with baits and then have it crawl into some inaccessible place to die so tried to trap it.

The first thing I discovered is that they are very light fingered little rascals and could remove the bait without setting off the trap. So then I started modifying the trap to get it sensitive enough to trigger at the least touch (Be warned, making a rat trap sensitive to touch is a very risky business) Unfortunately the rat must have been poorly positioned and all I caught was a single drop of blood and the rat would not go near it again.

Now it being a steel boat I knew the little rodent couldn't actually eat up the hull but the way it was going it was going to have a go at it eventually after it had chewed up all the contents and fit out so I bit the bullet and set out some rat baits.

Now, as I said somewhere else, I was in the tropics on the hard doing a hull refit and did not particularly want to come upon a large decomposed rat whilst crawling around in the bilge. Consequently I put aside everything else and became an extremely diligent observer of flies.

Now you may be mystified as to why someone who had been exceptionally interested in the habits of rodents should suddenly shift interest to flying insects. Well I'll tell you.

Being a country boy I knew that the first thing which would turn up after the rat went feet up would be one of those big blue carrion flies and about two days after setting out the baits one wandered in the companionway and circled over a spot in the bilge, voila, floor board up and one very large dead rat beginning to swell up in the bilge.

Being of a squeamish persuasion I had prepared and immediately poured a bucket of sawdust over the carcass and begloved and garbage bagged later was rat free at last.

Like hurricanes and cyclones rat hunting in a boat is not the sort of thing you want to go through twice in a life time and I've been extremely averse to marinas ever since.

[LakeSuperior]

I personally know of 2 expensive Hypalon dinghies that had sizable holes bored through them by mice. Kind of an expensive lesson in dinghy storage 101.

[ilanortho]

Ferret, much more effective than cat, smaller and potty trains. Plus a blast to watch and play with
Will also get into holes a cat can only dream about. In WWII aircraft industry were used to shuttle wires thru conduits so I've read

[dwgans]

I heard that mice procreate every 28 days so you really have to stay ahead of them. Perhaps a birdfeeder baffles threaded onto the lines would work.?.? Ironically enough, the one I would consider is called a "torpedo baffle". Just a suggestion. Good luck!

[Izon]

Originally Posted by r2sail

I had mice living on my boat at the marina while I was not aboard. So I put some of my cats urine litter clumps in a plastic super market bag and left it on the cockpit floor, viola no more mice. When aboard I couldn’t even tell it was there.

There are a lot of helpful ideas and solutions in this thread and some of them I knew and some I didn't. But this idea is very interesting!

When I was younger we were living on a farm with corn fields around and we had a lot of problems with the mice and especially the rats. We had cats at home and they could manage the mice to a certain level but they could not fight the big rats...I remember that we had to use raticides to control their population.

[HopCar]

How to prevent mice? Tiny birth control pills.

[EllesBelles]

We've never had mice on our boat but we have them at our land home and I can tell you what works the best for us, and what does not work too.

DON'T use the sticky pads. They are cruel and ineffective. The rodent is likely to chew the pad to get loose, and could even get free leaving body parts behind.

Poisons also are a NO. The poisoned rodent gets into the food chain and harms anything that eats it (even if you through the mouse overboard). It's also a painful, horrible death for the mouse.

What is 100% effective and a super-quick kill are these electronic traps. https://amzn.to/3lj5LqC
Even if you have a mouse go with the rat-sized trap. The mouse sized ones are too small to be effective.

Use peanut butter on top of a piece of chocolate for the bait and be sure to drop it against the vertical back of the trap, not on the floor of the trap, or the trap will not work. The way the trap works is the rodent enters to go after the PB/Chocolate and gets a lethal jolt of electricity.

Good luck!

Originally Posted by Popeye2

How do I prevent mice coming on board when in a Marina? I have a dog so if mice came on board I would not be able to use poison.
How do they come in?

[Popeye2]

Originally Posted by EllesBelles

We've never had mice on our boat but we have them at our land home and I can tell you what works the best for us, and what does not work too.

DON'T use the sticky pads. They are cruel and ineffective. The rodent is likely to chew the pad to get loose, and could even get free leaving body parts behind.

Poisons also are a NO. The poisoned rodent gets into the food chain and harms anything that eats it (even if you through the mouse overboard). It's also a painful, horrible death for the mouse.

What is 100% effective and a super-quick kill are these electronic traps. https://amzn.to/3lj5LqC
Even if you have a mouse go with the rat-sized trap. The mouse sized ones are too small to be effective.

Use peanut butter on top of a piece of chocolate for the bait and be sure to drop it against the vertical back of the trap, not on the floor of the trap, or the trap will not work. The way the trap works is the rodent enters to go after the PB/Chocolate and gets a lethal jolt of electricity.

Good luck!

Thanks

[Izon]

Originally Posted by EllesBelles

We've never had mice on our boat but we have them at our land home and I can tell you what works the best for us, and what does not work too.

DON'T use the sticky pads. They are cruel and ineffective. The rodent is likely to chew the pad to get loose, and could even get free leaving body parts behind.

Poisons also are a NO. The poisoned rodent gets into the food chain and harms anything that eats it (even if you through the mouse overboard). It's also a painful, horrible death for the mouse.

What is 100% effective and a super-quick kill are these electronic traps. https://amzn.to/3lj5LqC
Even if you have a mouse go with the rat-sized trap. The mouse sized ones are too small to be effective.

Use peanut butter on top of a piece of chocolate for the bait and be sure to drop it against the vertical back of the trap, not on the floor of the trap, or the trap will not work. The way the trap works is the rodent enters to go after the PB/Chocolate and gets a lethal jolt of electricity.

Good luck!

The sticky pads are surely not recommended, i totally agree with you. It's a real torture for the mice (or rat) if they die like that and it's a mess. I didn't know about this electronic traps...but I am not so sure that it is so effective as they sell it...maybe the small animals suffer also a lot if its not a quick death.

[Simi 60]

Originally Posted by HopCar

Rat Guard or trade the dog for a cat.

The only mouse we have had on board was when we were out on the hard and brought in and presented to us by the cat and then let go inside the boat.

Only the one, turned up dead a few days later cause of death unknown but I suspect cats plaything.