THE RAT HOUSE

THE RAT HOUSE

Trap the destructive, disease-carrying and parasite-ridden imported feral rats that are not native to Australia. This sturdy trap is also great for catch and release of native rats. Rats meet their match with this strong, large, Australian-designed and Australian-made very durable rat trap.

The Rat House trap is long enough to hold the body and the long tail of the largest feral rat inside the wire cage before the spring-loaded trap door comes down hard and fast. Feral rats are here to stay across Australia, from the day they ran down the mooring ropes of the first European sailing ships and then spread themselves across the country.

This trap is a Twofer. It will also trap feral birds including Indian Mynas, Blackbirds, Sparrows and Pigeons. Change the bait to draw birds in. Sparrows and pigeons like eating grains. This includes bread. Leave a trail of breadcrumbs leading into the trap and put larger pieces of bread inside the circular bait holder.

Blackbirds and Indian Mynahs are meat eaters so use pet food or pieces of meat, including a trail of small pieces of meat around a meter long leading right up to the circular bait holder to encourage them inside to peck at this bait holder which activates the trap mechanism. If you accidentally trap a native bird like the meat-eating Magpie, simply open the trap door and let it fly out. 

If you have accidentally caught the protected native rat, the Antichinus, in this trap, because is it live capture, it can be relocated and released alive elsewhere in its bush habitat. They look similar to feral rats who have hairless tails that are longer than the body.  Antichinus have a tail shorter than their body and it is a furry tail.

The Antechinus is a carnivorous marsupial in the same family as the Tasmanian Devil, quolls and the rat-sized brush-tailed Phascogale. These animals are are native to Australia but they are also a prey animal devoured by predator cats and foxes, another feral import gone badly wrong in the environment.

Unlike snap traps, rodents are not mangled in this live capture wire cage trap.

• Size is 440 x 200 x 170 mm
• Weight is 2 kg
• Galvanized wire thickness is 1.6 mm
  

FEATURES
This long trap has a large strong spring for lightning-fast closure of the trap door so that the cunning nimble rat has no time to spin around and get back out before the trap door slams down shut. Little animals react faster than big animals.

This galvanized metal trap can be used indoors or out in the weather. No batteries are required. No poisons are required. We do not sell poisons. Poisoned rodent carcasses cause secondary kills of meat-eating native birds and animals plus chooks, as you have no control over where poisoned rodents go to die. When they die inside your roof cavity or walls, the rotting death smell lingers for at least two weeks. You never forget that smell. 

Set this trap beside a compost bin, in the garage, in the house, in the shearing shed, in the orchard, around grain silos, in the ceiling cavity, in a yard where there are no pets or kids. Keep using the sturdy Rat House for decades. As it is strong and built to last, bequeath it in your will.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE

• Rinse the new trap with hot water when you first take it home and wear gloves if possible when handling the trap to minimise human scent.
• Give the new trap a light spray of eucalyptus oil to mask the scent of humans.
• Smear only the inside floor of the trap leading up to the bait holder with meat, animal fat or peanut butter to give the rat a food scent trail to follow into the far end of the trap. Avoid placing the food scent trail anywhere else on the trap, especially on the outside.
• Hold the trap door open and firmly push enough food bait inside the circular wire bait holder using meat scraps or a piece of bread with peanut butter on it. Kentucky Fried Chicken bits have a strong scent that wafts around to draw rats in. So does cooked liver. 
  
• Place the set trap on flat ground or bench tops for stability. Where there are fresh rat droppings is also a good location to place the trap.
  
• If you do not know the rats nesting location, thinly sprinkle a few square meters of white flour around an area where they may be and place some dried dog or cat food in the middle of the flour patch. Come back later to look for rat footprints in the flour and check if the food is gone. If so, set your trap there. Or place the trap up through a man hole in the ceiling, as long as there is enough head room for the trap mechanism to fire off.
  
• Rodents instinctively run around the edges of a room or shed instead of in open space where they can easily be spotted and picked off by birds of prey. They urinate at the same time so that the other rats can follow this scent trail in the night. Placing the set trap parallel with a wall edge can be a good spot. Or close to a vehicle that is being chewed. A black light UV torch in the dark will show up the urine trail location, or you can smell it inside an infested room, cellar or hay stack.
• Rats are meat eaters but not exclusively. Meat has a stronger food scent attractant than other things they eat, such as fruit, vegetables and grains.
  
• Push the spring-loaded long vertical handle back down on to the top surface of the trap. Ont the top surface of the trap, thread the tip of the long rod end through the top loop of the wire bait mechanism so that the rod only just holds the trap door open, on a hair trigger. The end of this rod can be greased with paraffin or candle wax to reduce friction of metal against metal.
• Avoid having other food sources laying around where to the trap is set.
• The scavenging rat comes into the trap for a free feed, has a go at the bait in the bait basket and whiz zing, you have a trapped rat. Once a trap is broken in and has the scent of the first rat, this makes it attractive for more rats to follow their scent trail into the trap.
• Rinse the used trap in water from time to time and scrub it with a scrubbing brush to clean it. Never use man-made chemicals on the trap as wary rats are unlikely to go near it.
  

CAUTION
Never set this trap with your face over the top of the trap. Keep your head and eyes back out of the way of the mechanism.  Push back on the top of the bait holder to activate and test the trap mechanism. If the spring releases accidentally, you will not have time to move out of the way of the path of the fast-moving trap mechanism rod on the top of the cage if you are in range.

Test and observe the trap when first using it to see just how fast this trap slams shuts.
This trap is not a toy for kids and is only to be used by responsible adults. 

• Decide what you are going to do with a live animal before starting any trapping. If you cannot quickly and humanely dispose of the animal, have someone organized who can. 
• For all live capture traps of small animals, check set traps at least twice daily. You never leave a live animal in a trap for an inhumane a long slow death.
  
• Don't leave uneaten pet food, bones, food scraps or open rubbish bins laying around the property as the scents will draw rodents in for the food source and then breed up.
• Eggs in chook yard nests can attract rats who can cart the eggs off. We have seen plastic fake chook eggs carted off and found with rat teeth marks in them, around five meters away from the nests. They must have been very disappointed rats. Collect real eggs from the nest often.
  

RAT FACTS

• Rats are prolific breeders, at it 20 times a day. Reproduction is their purpose in life, along with finding food day and night. If you see one rat, there are likely to be around 150 to 250 hiding nearby and breeding up in the social group. They do not live alone. There is never just one rat.
  
• If you hear rats running in your walls and ceilings, they are likely to be nesting and breeding, especially in the colder months. They have to come out to find food and bring it back to the nest.
  
• Rat droppings are larger and rounder than mouse droppings. Where you see droppings or rat damage and activity, this is a good place to set the trap until you get no more catches from that area. Then move Rat House to a new location.
  
• The rats two big front teeth grow continuously, like fingernails. To keep them short, rats chew on stuff, especially the plastic coating on electrical wiring inside walls and in vehicles, where they are out of sight. This chewing exposes the bare copper on live wiring. It sparks and up she goes. Seven percent of insurance house fire claims are caused by rodents chewing on electrical wiring, usually described in news reports of the fire being caused by an electrical fault. 
• Rats will chew almost anything, including wiring under the parked car bonnet especially with the warmth of the motor, big expensive farm equipment that sits idle for much of the year, aircraft, inside pianos, through compost bins plastic, computer gear, biting babies in cots and bed-ridden pensioners while they sleep - we have heard many tales of woe. One rat-damaged car was a Maserati and the chewing rats caused a $25,000 repair bill. Trapping is cheaper and non-toxic.
• This strong wire trap mesh size will hold rats but not hold mice who disjoint themselves and can squeeze through a hole around the diameter of a pencil.
• Never let a feral animal go alive. Let native animals go alive. Bury un-poisoned rodents in the compost bin or garden for fertilizer, or place their carcasses on the same part of a garden path or on top of the same fence post for native birds to collect.
  
• Each rat you trap and dispose of is one less rat to rapidly breed up thousands more rats. 

BULK PRICING AND GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS
Please phone 0411 555 644.

SHIPPING IS ADDITIONAL
Four Rat House traps ordered in a single shipment will fit in the Australia Post system.
For more than four traps, the larger-sized delivery is by courier to your door. Traps are shipped from Victoria.
Shipping price is dependent on the size of your order, the weight of the parcel and your delivery postcode.
Shipping is Australia-wide.