Mice are not the only pest that may have eaten your bait. Lots of other insects may have stolen your bait, like ants, cockroaches, and even crickets. They can easily eat your bat without getting caught in non-sticky mouse traps. Small and large wildlife may also find their way into your yard and eat your bait.
Check for Other Pests Stealing Your Bait
One of the most likely reasons your bait is disappearing is that other pests are taking the bait. Depending on the trap you're using, the trap may not be able to capture the pest stealing your bait.
When it comes to baiting a mouse trap, you might find that the bait keeps disappearing, but there was nothing caught in the trap, or it wasn't even triggered. The most likely reason is that a type of pest, including a mouse, keeps eating bait right off the trap.
Mice can easily avoid any dangerous chemicals. If they have multiple den sites they will move between different locations. Poison in one nest means they'll move to another one or it may deter them to an alternate part of the house. Mice can also become immune or tolerant to poison, making them useless over time.
If you're using bait stations, look out for signs that they're working by checking for nibble marks on the actual bait, as well as by sprinkling flour around the station and watching out for footprints. No one likes to think of having mice in their home but, unfortunately, it's incredibly common.
Rodents do not die in the bait station, so don't expect to find any there. Instead, a mouse or rat enters the station, eats a lethal dose of bait, leaves the station, and usually goes back to its nest where it dies 1-2 days later.
Put bait boxes near rodent burrows, against walls or along travel routes used by the pests. Rodents usually will not go out of their way to find baits. House mice seldom venture more than a few feet from their nests or food sources, so place bait stations no more than 10 or 12 feet apart in areas where mice are active.
Mice can easily become immune to the poison you're using.
It is also important to remember that when mice eat poison they do not die immediately. Depending on the product it can take several days and in the meantime, they will have the opportunity to move and spread poison to unintended places in your home.
Rodents (rats, mice squirrels, chipmunks, ground squirrels, etc.) characteristically “cache their food.” Rats and mice do steal our rodenticide blocks and packets out of stations in their attempts to “squirrel the baits away” back in their burrows or to other areas. This is called bait translocation.
Nut butter's is a very effective bait because the strong nutty smell is enough to attract rodents. Other baits like chocolate, seeds and nuts, marshmallows and gumdrops, deli meat, pet food, fruit jam, and soft cheese are also effective in luring mice out of their rat nest.
Seal all entry points into your home: mice can crawl through ducts, pipes, and other unsealed pathways into your property. Using balled-up aluminum foil or steel wool to block the entrances can serve as a good deterrent for the smaller species.
Bucket Trap
All you have to do is set the ramp at an angle over the bucket so that the end of it is over the middle of the bucket. Place the bait just out of reach of the mice, and when one comes to investigate, its curious manner will cause them to fall as they stretch for the food, and into the bucket they go.
Mice are not the only pest that may have eaten your bait. Lots of other insects may have stolen your bait, like ants, cockroaches, and even crickets. They can easily eat your bat without getting caught in non-sticky mouse traps. Small and large wildlife may also find their way into your yard and eat your bait.
Yes they should, because house mice are adaptive creatures that use their keen senses to detect dangers around them. They eventually learn to avoid the mouse trap if it's left in the same place for too long. Some of them might even move into the other rooms in the house to avoid getting caught.
Mice won't disappear by themselves
Unless you change your habits to deprive mice of their food, wipe out the existing population and proof your property to stop them coming back, you'll always be sharing your home with disease-spreading, food-stealing mice.
After eating the poison, the pest will try to find water before they die. Thus, the pest will more likely die outside rather inside a house or building. Is this true? Answer: These chemicals are anticoagulants and cause internal bleeding in mice and rats.
In fact, after the poison has taken effect, the mice can die just about anywhere. Most mice only leave their nests to scavenge for food, so they're most likely to die in the vicinity of their nest. However, mice can also die behind walls, in ventilation ducts, or other places they are difficult to extract from.
When rodents consume rat poison, their blood-clotting ability begins to fail, and they slowly die from internal bleeding, or they become more susceptible to severe consequences and even death from minor injuries like cuts and bruises. It can take as long as 10 days for a rodent to die after consuming rodenticides.
Rodents filled with toxic anticoagulant rodenticide poisons continue to move around in the environment and as they start to feel the effects of the poison they begin to move slower and become easy targets for your cat, dog and our native predators such as bobcats, hawks, owls, coyotes etc.
During this time, when the mouse is alive but is on its way to death, it is still actively running around. But, as the poison continues to take effect, it starts to slow down and act quite dazed and lethargic. Eventually, rodents are limited to just stumbling around before finally succumbing.
FASTRAC with Bromethalin is Bell's newest and fastest acting rodenticide. An acute bait, FASTRAC kills rats and mice in one or two days, often within 24 hours!
When mice get in, it is usually a matter of a gap or a crack, either in your foundation, outer walls, or attic area. To find entry points, start by doing a detailed inspection of the outside of your home. Look closely at your foundation for cracks or gaps where a mouse could squeeze through.
Windows and doors: check that there are no holes around your windows for the mice to get through. Under and around doors is also critical checking point. Garage door seals: the typical garage door is sealed using rubber, which is a material that mice can chew through.
Mice Are More Attracted to Other Things Inside the House. Mouse traps by themselves don't offer anything that mice want. Baits lure rodents into the trap, but they're likely to be ignored if there is another source of food in the house that mice can easily exploit.