Good morning,
My tenants have complained about rats in the garden. Neighbour has a pond and we often have rats issue, calling in pest control is a recurring expense for me as the rats come back after few months. How do I save myself from this recurring cost and also protect my tenants?
Thank you
Any water and food source from anywhere in the area will sustain rats, not necessarily the neighbors pond.
Follow the instructions very carefully on any rat poison and extreme caution must be used as any poison is very dangerous.If in any doubt consult a professional.
I’d also caution your tenants not to leave any food source available for the rats e.g. pet food, stuff out in the kitchen. If your tenants have either children or pets, you need to be very careful about the use of bait boxes/poison.
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do not use the sticky pads as these can catch other creatures. If you can find the rat hole throw a few of the purple/blue blocks into it, works a treat
There may be legal issues with putting poison in a tenanted premises, particularly if they or their guests have children or pets. It may be safer to give the tenant the information youve learned and offer to pay the cost of the materials if they wish to go ahead.
Good point. Dangerous topic this.
You need to use this as a way of getting rid of your neighbours pond. You can maybe get the tenant to report it to the environmental health at the council then get the council to go and do an enforcement visit otherwise there’s no way you will ever get rid of the rats. Just because you put bait and traps on your side of the fence doesn’t mean you’re gonna wipe out the burrow on the other side of the fence
Very hard to get environmental health to agree that something as ecologically valuable as a pond in an urban habitat needs to be got rid of. The pond will sustain far more life than simply rats. Going to be even harder to get someone to rid their garden of a pond, particularly if they don’t perceive there’s a problem with rats. Hard to collect evidence that the pond is the cause of the rat problem. While they need water, they don’t live off water lilies after all.
What’s your relationship with the neighbour like? Have you discussed the rats with them?
Thank you everyone for your responses. My relationship with the neighbour is quiet good and she brings in pest control every 3 months to sort the rats issue. When I lived there, we used to share the costs but then as it went on as a continuous overhead, I used to control with baits/traps etc on my side of the garden.
Now that we have tenants, again we are constantly facing this rats issue, hence looking for advice as this is an expense for an issue that is not in my control.
So it’s an environmental health problem. You need to go in hard on the neighbour now.
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