Rat Control

Rats: the Short Version

Rats are the pest people most want gone the same day, and the one where getting rid of them properly takes more than a same-day visit. Both of those things are true at once, and the rest of this page is really about the gap between them.

We treat rats in houses, flats, lofts, gardens, drains, commercial kitchens and business premises across Milton Keynes and the surrounding towns. Same-day appointments are available, including evenings and weekends, at no extra cost, and there is no call-out fee.

What matters more is the second half of the job. A rat problem is a building problem as much as a pest problem: something has a hole in it, or a drain has failed, and until that is found and closed the rats keep coming back to the same address with a different set of individuals.

Ring 01908 465226.

Signs

How You Know It Is Rats and Not Mice

The two get mixed up constantly, and it matters because the treatment is different.

Rat droppings are 12–18mm long — about the size of a raisin or a small olive stone — dark and tapered, and you tend to find them in runs — a line of them along a joist, a beam or the back of a cupboard. Mouse droppings are 3–6mm, much more scattered, and about the size of a grain of uncooked rice.

Rats are also heavier. What people describe as heavy movement overhead, thumping rather than scurrying, or a sound like something rolling across the ceiling, is usually a rat. So is gnawing you can hear from another room.

Outside, rats leave smears along regular routes where the oil in their coat rubs onto brick and pipework, burrow entrances about the width of a tennis ball near cover, and runs pressed flat through long grass.

Getting in

How Rats Get Into a Building

A rat needs a surprisingly small opening. If it can get its head through, the rest follows — a gap about the width of your thumb is enough for a young one.

The usual ways in, in roughly the order we find them:

• Defective or disused drains, which is the single most common cause we find in older housing
• Gaps where service pipes and cables pass through external walls
• Airbricks with broken or missing grilles
• Open soil and vent pipe ends
• Gaps at the roofline, under the eaves and at the gutter
• Damaged or rotten timber at ground level, and gnawed door bottoms
• Cavity walls with an open route from the ground into the roof space
• Garage and shed doors that no longer meet the floor

The drain one is worth dwelling on, because it explains the cases that make no sense otherwise: a modern, well-kept house with no visible gaps and rats in the kitchen. If a drain run has cracked or an old connection was capped badly, the rats are already inside the building envelope before they ever reach a wall.

The treatment

What We Actually Do

The first visit is an inspection as much as a treatment. We look for the droppings and the runs, follow them back, check the likely entry points, and look at the drainage where there is reason to.

Where baiting is appropriate it goes into lockable stations, secured in place, positioned on the runs rather than scattered where it might be found by something else. Where it is not appropriate — and in some settings it is not — there are trapping and proofing routes instead.

Then we come back. Rat work is not a one-visit job, and anybody telling you otherwise is selling you a visit rather than a result.

Why it takes time

Why One Visit Rarely Finishes It

There is a specific reason, and it is worth knowing because it explains the timescale.

Rats are neophobic — wary of anything new in an environment they know. Put a bait station on a run and the rats will often avoid it for several days simply because it was not there yesterday. They will edge around it, then investigate it, then eventually use it. Mice barely do this. Rats do it strongly.

So the pattern of a rat job is a visit to inspect and set up, a gap, and then return visits to check take-up and replenish. Activity often looks unchanged for the first week. That is normal and it is not the treatment failing.

It is also why the proofing work matters so much. If the way in stays open, you are not solving a rat problem, you are running a feeding station.

Proofing

Closing the Way In

This is the half of the job that decides whether you see us again next year.

Proofing means physically closing the routes: meshing airbricks, capping open pipe ends, sealing service entries, closing gaps at the roofline, fitting bristle strip or plates to door bottoms, and where drains are implicated, identifying that and getting it put right.

Some of it we do as part of the job. Some of it — a collapsed drain, a roof that needs a builder — is somebody else's trade, and we will tell you plainly which is which rather than patch something that needs replacing.

Lofts

Rats in the Loft

Loft rats are the most common call we get from houses, usually in autumn as the weather turns.

They get up there by climbing — brickwork, downpipes, trees and trellis, or internally through a cavity — and once in they run along the joists and the pipe runs, nest in the insulation and gnaw whatever is in the way. Cables are the reason this matters more than the noise does: the sheathing is exactly the sort of thing a rat will work on.

The job in a loft is the same shape as anywhere else: establish the runs, treat, then find where they are coming up and close it. Contaminated insulation sometimes needs lifting and replacing afterwards, which is a separate piece of work we can talk you through.

Businesses

Commercial Rat Control

For a business the problem is rarely only the rats. It is the inspection, the paperwork and whoever is going to see it.

We work with kitchens, food premises, retail, warehousing and offices, and we provide written reports of what was found, what was done and what still needs doing — which is what an EHO or an auditor will ask for.

Where a site needs ongoing cover rather than a one-off visit, that can be arranged on a schedule that suits the premises.

Safety

Bait, Pets and Wildlife

A fair question, and one we would rather answer before you ask it.

Rodenticides are used under a stewardship regime in the UK, and the professional rules around them exist because of secondary poisoning — the risk to the fox, the owl, the neighbour's cat or your own dog that finds a poisoned rat rather than the bait itself.

In practice that means bait goes in lockable stations, secured so they cannot be moved or opened, placed where rats travel and pets and children do not. It means we look for and remove carcasses. And it means there are situations — open sites, sensitive premises, properties with particular pets — where we will recommend trapping and proofing instead.

If you have a dog that gets everywhere, tell us at the point of booking. It changes what we do.

Gardens

Rats Outside

Not every rat problem is indoors, and dealing with the outside is often what stops it becoming an inside problem.

What draws them is food and cover: bird feeders and the spillage under them, compost heaps with cooked waste in, open bin stores, decking with a void underneath, sheds standing on a frame, and dense ground-level planting against a wall.

None of that means you have done anything wrong. It means there is a reason they are there, and the reason is usually fixable.

Why us

Why Milton Keynes Pest Controllers

• Local, covering fifteen towns
• Same-day appointments available
• Evenings and weekends at no extra cost
• No call-out fee
• Homes, businesses and managed property
• Proofing as well as treatment
• Written reports for business premises
• Work guaranteed

Ring 01908 465226 and tell us what you have seen.

Reading

Rats: the Questions We Get Asked

Ten pieces on the things people ring us about, written to answer the question rather than to sell the visit.