can create a highly effective pest management strategy that complies with all health and safety legislation whilst reducing environmental impact.
Understanding warning signs
An important piece to a proactive pest management strategy is understanding the warning signs of rodent activity on the premises. You might not think a single sighting of a mouse or rat is cause for alarm, but as rodents are nocturnal, seeing one during daylight hours could mean there’s a bigger problem.
Signs will include:
1. Smell and sound: Rats and mice have a very strong ammonia smell. On top of this they are often noisy, making audible scrabbling noises when moving around premises.
2. Droppings: Rats excrete about 40 dark, pellet-shaped droppings per day, which are up to 14mm long. Mice can produce 80 oval-shaped droppings, which are typically 5mm long.
3. Smears: Rodents use established routes along skirting boards and walls due to their poor eyesight. You may notice grease marks where rodents brush up against your walls and surfaces.
4. Footprints: Rats can leave foot and tail marks in dusty, less-used areas of your premises. Shining a strong torch at a low angle should reveal tracks clearly. To establish if an infestation is active, sprinkle fine flour or talc along a small stretch of floor near the footprints and check for fresh tracks the next day.
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5. Damage: Rodents gnaw on anything to keep their teeth at a manageable size. This includes electric cables, which is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of an infestation, as it can cause a fire hazard, while also being very difficult to spot.
Further steps
Once rodents gain access to a premises they are very hard to control. For example, a mouse can survive on as little as three grams of food per day and can eat from up to 70 different sources of food within 24 hours.
Simple measures can be taken to make sure rodents are less likely to choose your premises to stay in. By ensuring that there is no food left on the floors overnight, you drastically limit food sources for pests. Additionally, sealing any obvious exterior holes with wire wool, caulk, metal kick plates or cement will help exclude rodents from entering. It is critically important that owners and staff know how to spot the signs of rodent activity, and the steps that can be taken to prevent one from forming.
Rodent prevention is always better than a cure, so a proactive pest management strategy is vital, and it will mean that costly infestations are much less likely to disrupt business or lead to breaches of legislation. If you haven’t considered the role of technology within your pest control strategy yet, then what better year to do so than during the Year of the Rat?
www.rentokil.co.uk PEST CONTROL | 45
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