I would be ropeable if I found mice going through my seed and it was going to affect my birds health

 

Sounds like you will win in the end Splat as you are so determined.

Thank you Kaz.

What a nightmare!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have been throwing seed away everyday, as if I can afford that. Well I put the wire up so see what happens through the night.

I am out of supplies now mainly screws so I can't really do much more until next week. But still trying to block off all holes.

Still have to work out in the old bird room and aviary, but they have seemed to have moved from there to the outside aviaries but I guess once they can't get in out there they will go back to the bird room.

The old bird room will be much harder to do because I am not allowed to attach anything to Greg's garage and the old bird room is built off that. Blocking the roof area is going to be night mare. BUT I would say that is how they are getting in there. But I am going to push wire up everywhere and see how I go.

Keep you updated

I'm not sure what wire you're using to fill your holes, but steal wool works great. You just cut little bits off and stuff it it. I really hope you get some results soon. I feel for you!

Gosh Splat you've killed some mice as well! You'll definitely survive!!!!!! Those nasty mice should be running for their lives

 

Just keep at it, you'll get on top of them eventually. Good luck with it.

Another idea for stuffing holes....I had some leftover polyester batts ( you can also use polyester stuffing from pillows, soft toys or crafts ) and i dipped it into leftover cement mix or tile grout or tile adhesive.........then pushed it into the holes where is sat and set.

Thanks Maisie, Nubbly and Kaz.

Well I finished the first 2 completely, so if I get a mose in there tomorrow I will totally scream and that naughty word will jump out of my mouth, I am sure.

Maisie I used steel wool in the old bird room last year and I noticed the other day that they have pulled all steel wool out,it's in the middle of the the storage unit now instead of the corner where I stuffed it. And I thought they couldn't get past steel wool but it looks like they all worked together and pulled it out.

 

Kaz I only have a little bit of polyester bats let but it might be enough, but what about shoving in the hollow of the tin in the roof, would it hurt the birds if the picked at it.

I am using the mouse proof wire to stuff and block off. But your idea sounds easier on my poor cut up hands and fingers.

I don't think I have a finger that isn't cut from the wire and today, when cut the wire with scissors, I forgot to pull my other hand out of the way and I cut my pointer finger, bleed for hours and boy did it hurt.

 

I have a huge area to do in the old bird room, so might give it ago there, have some left over bond crete which is glue I could use that.

If I can mouse proof the old room by the week end I might still put the birds down, but the job looks huge, really. Right along the back wall which is at least 27 feet, then the front part which is the same length but I only have to fill up the roof hollows, most of the front part is already done.

HUGE JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AND I am exhausted from doing this every day, plus today I am not well, but I kept going because I had to for the birds sake.

In most cases the birds cant get at the polyester and cement stuff anyway...so I think you should be fine. If worried use wire

Thanks Kaz, will give it ago.

You can safely use plaster as your hardener.

Hmmmm that's an idea. Considering plaster is in calcium blocks. yes safe.

Hey I can add, the ingredients for calcium blocks and if they do nibble at it, It will do them good.

 

Hang on mice eat through plaster!!!

Edited March 8, 201114 yr by splat

Pity the snake didn't hang around long enough to eat the mice!

 

I don't have an aviary, but it sounds like a bit of horror story. Remember than mice plaque out bush a few years back?

 

Had a mouse (or two) in my house once, that I couldn't ever catch. Only thing that got rid of him was when the next door neighbours got a cat.

Stace, I reckon the snake is still around because the mice are there.

I could cry, I went out there before and the rotten mice are still getting in, I have NO idea where. I totally cleaned the aviaries yesterday, through away all the seed again. When I had finished it smelled nice and now it smells like rotten mice again. STINKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

It's enough to make you cry or go mad

Kaz I am totally washed out, worn down!!!!!!!!!I think they have beaten me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I swear if I could get away with swearing I would believe me.lol

I am meant to be getting my birds ready for a show next week and haven't had time for that, I think I might give the show season a miss this year, I really don't want to put the birds in cages over night in case the mice decide to have a nibble at them and scare them into smashing into the wire and hurting themselves. I was only showing at 2 shows this year plus the young bird shield. AND I really was looking forward to putting the birds down and now that is on hold for god knows how long. It is all just a rotten nightmare. I don't know what else to do, I can't see any cracks or holes, they must be coming from the roof onto the wire and squeezing through because the top part of the wire is normal small bird wire. The one I killed this morning was small and it was in the first aviary but there had to be more because it stinks of mice. But at least there was only the one this time because I last 4 mornings there had been 2 and 3 in the seed hopper.

I got 3 in the old bird room one in Greg's shed and one dead on the floor of the shed.

I went shopping again and bought more screws and wire. and BAIT.I really don't think that BIcarb SODA works.

Nearly all bait that I have put down has been eaten. gone......

At least one thing the aviaries are now snake proof now.

Edited March 9, 201114 yr by splat

If you cage up birds for a show, put them inside the house. Its only one night anyway.

 

I have no faith in bicarb soda either

caustic soda works in milk but kills everything so you need to be very very careful where you put the jar lids :}

(did i say that no this is not really a post you imagine it is here but its not

gb would never feed poor little mice caustic soda that's just cruel )

I just heard on the ABC news this morning that there's a mouse plague on in South Australia with conditions around much of the country ripe for uncontrolled breeding. Not much help, but at least it might explain why you've got a problem.

Yes we have a minor plague, god would to hate to see a full on one.

I don't know about the C soda GB, but today I made 2 bucket mouse traps.

I am really worried because I have bait on the roof of the aviary and now it is raining

and I can't reach it.

The mice will be heaps worse tonight because of the rain.

The one I tipped in the bucket of water this morning at 8am was still going at 2pm this arvo, couldn't believe it so I ran inside and got some dish washing detergent and poured it into the water and then it struggled for a few more minutes, I felt so cruled but hey. But I thought it would of been a few minutes and then drowned but this little fella was a fighter.

Mouse Plagues

The following excerpts were from a book ?Boots and All? on an oral history of farming in Victoria and edited by Catherine Watson. ISBN 0 909313 24 5.��

Some of our early Australians recount their experiences of the rat and mouse plagues.

 

Wilbur Howcroft was born at Kerang in 1917 before moving to Culgoa where he experienced his first mouse plague.� He writes, ?I think most of us who grew up in that era and that neighbourhood will agree you can have your droughts, you can have poor wheat prices, you can have mortgages, but the mouse plagues were the worst.� You couldn?t tell anyone what it was like ? they?d think you were exaggerating.� Still to this day, they don?t know the reason.� We?re still getting them but they don?t affect us so much now for various reasons.� For instance, you have tables with aluminium legs that they can?t crawl up.� We?ve got refrigerators; we?ve got wheat silos and barns to keep them out.� But they could literally get into anything.� They?d even eat the handles off the old kitchen knives!� Handles then were made of compressed milk, as were buttons, and they?d eat these.� They?d eat clothes.� I?m not exaggerating what they would eat and do.�

 

Every plague ends the same way.� Something happens and they?ll start eating the ones that get sick, and once you see that, it?s great rejoicing because you know the time?s near when the plague?s almost over.� Pesticides were useless.� They were in countless millions.� It was no good trying to kill them.?

 

Ellen Howcroft (mother to Wilbur).� She was called Nell.� She says ?We?d kill a pig once a year.� We?d keep it in a little yard and give it slops ? and we used to pickle our own bacon.� We?d hang it up on the ceiling get dry and get smoked.� Once we had a mouse plague, and one morning my father thought he?s like some of that bacon, but when he took it down, there was nothing but the skin left.� The mice had got up and crawled along and eaten all the middle out.?

 

�Beth MacDonald (nee Arnold) was born in July of 1903.� She remembers the mouse plagues like this ?If you went up to the chaff house or up near the haystack after dark, you?d hear rustle, rustle, rustle.� The mice were just black all around the haystack, and there was no good poisoning them or setting traps ? that was just too *****.� So they used to set kerosene tins in the ground full of water and let them run along.� They?d put them down fresh at night.� In the morning the mice would be walking over the dead ones, it was so full, and then they all had to be buried.� So the mouse plague was a dreadful time.� It caused a lot of work.� The boys would be sitting at the table having a meal and the mice would run up their legs.?

 

William McIntosh ? he grew up in Ellam.� ?That?s Mallee backwards.� My dad was there when it was named at a meeting.� They reckoned they (the residents of that part of the country) were a backward sort of lot, so they called it Mallee backwards.

In 1916 we had the mouse plague.� We had no barns.� The seed was out in the open and the mice got into it.� We had to make a stand to save the wheat.� The old house got full of mice.� They ate holes in the ceilings, eating the flour they used to stick the papering on with.� We fenced in the house with corrugated iron, and then laid poison.� The next day they gathered up about 1,000 mice and one dog - we forgot to tie him up.� We had quite a few cats about the place.� They all died from eating them and when we were carting hay we counted how many mice the greyhound ate while we were loading the stocks of hay.� It was about 70 and we would cart about 6 loads a day.� The dog died later on.

 

We had lovely fat turkeys.� They used to go around the stacks of a morning picking mice out of the stack.� We couldn?t eat them on that account.� We should have sent them to Melbourne; they?d relish them there.� They were as fat as ? but it killed them.� Everything that ate mice died.� It could be the fur.� We had horses and cows die too from eating chaff and we used to get sores on our hands from handling stuff where the mice had been ? like ringworm.� From the urine and the smell of them.� We used to shove a bit of Condy?s crystals on it.� That cleared it up.� I?ve seen the wheat lumpers just covered in sores from it, right up their arms, like ringworm.� It was a terrific disaster.� That was before they built silos.� In a few weeks they were just a heap of loose bags.� They used to catch mice by the ton and bury them at the Ellam station.� You could smell the wheat stacks two miles away.� You couldn?t poison them because of the wheat.� But they get that thick that they die in the end.?

 

Joe Gibson�� He remembers what it was like when they had a rat plague.� ?We used to grow oats and chaff, but then the rat plague came here and for many years we couldn?t keep nothin?.� Oh, they were a bad thing!� Course; there was no way to poison them out, only with arsenic or that.� We used that, but you see, your cat would eat the dead rat and they were poisoned.� It was about 1918, I think, before the silos came.� You wouldn?t see anything but thousands of bags in the wheat stacks at Tocumwal.� And when the rat plague came there wasn?t a sound bag nor a bit of wheat in a bag.� The plague cleaned out all of them, and never left a grain of wheat in the ground on hundreds and hundreds of acres.�

The mice too were in plague proportions and were just an awful pest.�� It looked as if they?d just come out of the sky. We had a big house at Waverley lined with paper and Hessian and they ate it all.� I seen a fella lift a skin off the floor and there wasn?t room for another mouse to get under it.� Then they just disappeared.� It?s been explained to me that there didn?t seem to be no buck-mice and no she-mice and they were just a plague on their own, you know.� But it had a name; hermaphrodites ? something like that.� It?d eat your harness.� You should see what they?d ate, destroyed our ropes and that.� They got right into the mountains and we couldn?t leave anything� there.� No other plagues:� mice and rats were the two worst.

 

UGH! The Great Australian Bite

 

These excerpts came from a book written by Madame Souris (Mrs. Mouse).

 

Australia has the biggest and most amazing mouse plagues.� More than thirty million mice were trapped in four months at one location in 1917.� One farmer put down poisoned meat and next morning he picked up 28,000 corpses and only stopped ?because I was tired?.� Another farmer said of the 1984 plague:� ?You kill one bloody mouse and 10,000 turn up at his funeral.?

In an Australian plague, aircraft skid when they land on a carpet of moving mice.� Trains slither off tracks covered with layers of mice.� Cars slide powerless when the brakes are applied.

The mice eat putty, steel wool, furniture and electrical wires and clothes.� People brush mice off their clothes.� They eat the Pill, thereby providing plenty of good birth control jokes.� They pull out the hair of sleeping humans to line their nests, if they feel broody.� Hospital beds collapse as mice gnaw through the wooden legs.

 

Daphne Sutherland, a farmer?s wife in the prosperous farmlands around Young, muzzles the family Labrador because it keeps eating mice and gets fat.� She was asked if the dog chewed them.� ?I think they just run straight down,? she replied.

Cats stick out a paw to catch a meal, and there is no limit to snacks.� Most farm cats run away and turn wild; after gorging themselves some weigh sixteen kilos, which is heavier then the average dingo.� Sheep, pigs, cattle and other farm animals have to be fed by hand.� The snakes grow big and shiny.

 

The barmaid at the Railway Hotel in Koorawatha tells how every trap is re-occupied immediately it is emptied.� Near Cactus in South Australia a family on a camping holiday awoke to find the floor and part of the sides of their tent eaten away.� Another family fled by rowboat pursued for thirty minutes by hundreds of swimming mice determined on climbing aboard.

Australia has no Pied Piper so where do the mice go?� Everyone prays for a freezing cold winter to kill of the hordes.� Some turn inventor and create fantastic traps, which drown, suffocate, electrocute or squash their victims.� If all this fails there is one final hope: cannibalism.� When it comes to the crunch few mice can resist a tasty meal of a fellow traveller.

 

More Rodents Rampant

 

Not only Australia has plagues of mice.� Aristotle wrote about them more than 2,351 years ago and the first book of Samuel in the Bible records horrible happenings between the Philistines and mice.

California once had as many as 80,000 mice per acre swarming across the countryside.� In the days of pre-Nazi Norway, a steamship ploughed through shoals of lemmings (mice-like rodents) for fifteen minutes.� France, Germany, Yugoslavia, England, Wales, Chile, Egypt and countries on five continents have reported plagues.

The mice eventually disappear, eaten by predators, killed off by cold weather or overcome by disease.� Canadian zoologists are the only ones I know to keep a balanced view in the gruesome times of plagues.� They simply call them ?an outburst of mousemeat?.

 

Practicalities

 

This was taken from a book by Elizabeth James called Practicalities and was based on the ABC Radio Series.

 

In 1984 large parts of western New South Wales and Victoria were dogged by a long lasting mouse plague, which not only damaged crops severely but also tested to the limit the patience of the people whose farms and houses were being overrun by these unwelcome visitors.� All sorts of methods to get rid of them were tried and tested but it seemed nothing worked.� Even the cats gave up in disgust.� Eventually, the mice did disappear.

During the plague Practicalities ran a competition to see if anybody could come up with a new and imaginative solution to the problem of getting rid of unwanted mice and the response was lively.� A lot of listeners put forward interesting designs for new traps; others preferred to take a preventative approach.� One suggestion was to dig a drain around a building to make a kind of anti-mouse moat.� One listener said we should create large ?shelter belts? around paddocks where natural predators are allowed to multiply, keep the rats and mice under control and consequently redress the natural balance.

More practical were suggestions to plug up all holes in buildings with steel wool and nail rubber tyre tubing to the bottom of doors.

A letter we read out on the program with an ancient Roman recipe for Stuffed Doormice inspired another group of listeners.� Part of the proposed campaign was to turn the mouse into a gourmet food.� Mouse Mousse and Mouse Loaf recipes started turning up in the Practicalities letterbox.� Most people suggested that mice could be processed into a cheaper pet food ? one grizzly solution to the problem.

There was general concern amongst listeners that normal chemical rodenticides were too dangerous, especially to household pets, which seem to like eating them.

Our winner put forward the following idea.� As well as the normal procedure of removing all loose food and covering up all containers, she places dried herbs throughout the house wherever rats and mice have been seen.� Mice hate the blend of rosemary, mint, tansy, wormwood, thyme, southernwood and cloves and disappear while they can smell them.

Dr. Trevor Redhead is a senior research fellow at the CSIRO.� He became interested in mice and their extraordinarily volatile populations in the late ?seventies? after years of studying rats.� The last mouse plague was undoubtedly good for his research but, as he admits, not much fun for anyone else.� He explained how future mouse plagues could be predicted.

?Mouse plagues are so irregular in occurrence that people tend to forget over time just what the last plague was like.� Unless you can prepare for a coming mouse plague and get things in order before it arrives, when it does strike there are so many mice that poison operations are ineffective in reducing the damage and losses that the farmers suffer.� Actually preventing a mouse plague is enormously difficult.� I think a lot of people underestimate just how difficult the task is.� We?ve become so used to a world of high technology that we tend to forget there are a lot of very cleverly designed animals and plants, which are very effective in their own environment.

I?ve worked on two mouse plagues, one in 1980 and the other in 1984.� The cause of the 1980 plague we put down to above-average rains in the autumn of 1978.� We were able to follow mouse populations right through 1978 and 1979, reaching their peak and subsequent crash in 1980.� Our hypothesis then and now is that autumn rain extends the period for which mice can breed.� Normally they breed through late spring and summer and then stop in autumn.� The autumn rains clearly allowed mice to continue to breed through the winter of 1978.� Not only did they continue to breed but individuals grew very quickly.� That meant there were a lot of larger than normal mice that helped increase the following year?s reproduction.� Being large they produced a lot of young and a large proportion of them survived through to the next winter.� Two years later there were so many mice present at the beginning of the breeding season that a massive production of young was inevitable.

Unfortunately, we simply don?t have the weapons to help combat these plagues.� I think the main thing farmers can do is to protect these things such as tractors and wheat, which are valuable.� Physical barriers like galvanised iron fences sunk into the ground can protect these.� If they?re nearly a metre high, mice can?t jump over or burrow underneath them.� That?s the most effective control for highly valued possessions.� Crops present a much more difficult situation.� The 1984 plague in Victoria caused in excess of thirteen million dollars worth of damage to crops still in the field.

Alas, to research mouse plagues, to some extent we must wait for the next plague trigger to occur, make a prediction and then test it to see if our ideas were correct.� We?ve been looking at a potential biological control using a parasite of mice.� From laboratory experiments we know this parasite reduces the fertility of female mice.� Another area we have been investigating is the use of attractants to increase the effectiveness of poisons.� Essentially we?re interested in methods, which can reduce the number of mice before they start to breed.� It?s too late after they?ve bred.

The period between mouse plagues is very variable.� It just depends on the weather conditions.� The old clich� is that the period between mouse plagues is usually longer than a parliamentarian?s stand in Parliament.� So if a politician gets one mouse plague, it?s likely he or she won?t get another.

 

One' Night's catch at Kaneira during the mouse plague 1919

The pile contained 150,000 mice and weighed two and a half tons

 

 

Latest news

 

MOUSE PLAGUE

Monday 7, Mar 2011

 

Concerns over a possible mouse plague have been allayed with the Department of Primary Industries saying the current numbers are 'no more than usual'.

It says the number of mice in the Goulburn Valley is normal for this time of year.

 

Farmers can rest easy after the Department of Primary Industries confirmed the Goulburn Valley is unlikely to see great numbers of mice this year.

The farming community has held concerns, after floods and locusts, a mouse plague would damage the summer cropping season.

"

I wouldn't be expecting any sort of elevated number over and above what we normally see at this time of the year," DPI Natural Disasters and Emergency Manager Banjo Patterson said.Mouse numbers in the paddocks there were, were quite significant numbers, and potentially at a level that could cause a problem later on with farming, but that's only limited to the Mallee, and certainly doesn't include the Goulburn Valley."

"

They can of course talk to their chemical resellers, just to see whether baiting may be worthwhile of not," Mr Patterson said.

Mr Patterson says the DPI regularly monitors mice movement, and says the main areas of concern are in the Mallee and Wimmera regions.

"

The DPI encourages farmers to monitor their own properties for mice numbers, and act if they find localised number that could potentially damage crops.

It says the control of mice is up to the individual, and does not need to be reported to the office as with the locust plague.

Mice plague warning

 

February 28 2011

Country News

 

Northern Victoria farmers have been warned to keep their eyes peeled for a possible outbreak of mice in properties throughout the region.

The warning comes after a surge in mouse activity was identified in the Mallee region in north-west Victoria, with some areas reporting hundreds of mice within each hectare.

 

Hamilton DPIs natural disasters and emergencies manager Banjo Patterson said although the threat to local properties was minimal, crop damage and other problems remained a possibility.

 

Our monitoring is conducted out in the paddock, and thats where the major damage is going to happen, Mr Patterson said.

 

Its a possibility they could become an issue, but its not very serious at this stage.

 

Weve certainly had information about an increase in numbers in the Mallee, but not so much the Wimmera and Goulburn Valley.

 

Mr Patterson said farmers should contact their local chemical resellers if mice posed any threat to their properties.

 

If people do start to see mice around, wed recommend they talk to the chemical resellers about whether it is worthwhile baiting them, he said.

 

Mice have the potential to do significant damage to newly sewn crops and damage farm infrastructure, as well as make life very unpleasant.

Edited March 9, 201114 yr by **KAZ**

http://www.neatorama.com/2007/01/30/worlds-worst-mouse-plague-millions-of-mice-attack-australia/

Hey Splat. To be honest with you the only way I can get on top of a large mouse influx is by baiting. We are really anally retentive about where we put the baits mind you (having 7 very nosey dogs around). But we have them only in the breeding room and make sure that any carcasses are removed (into the bin) so than no birds/dogs/whatever else can eat them. I was told by a pest controller that there is not enough poison in a dead mouse/rat to kill a dog but we are talking about whippets here (no fat means poisons affect them worse) so I'm not going to test out that theory if i can help it! You can also buy those bait holders for extra security which might help with your young dog around.

 

But just so you know, I feel your pain! Had mice in cabinets, hopper, everywhere just at the start of winter when we moved into our new aviary.

 

Mice still have open access into the aviary if they choose but most never leave - WHAHAHAHAHA!

im having mouse issues in the house but not in my flights their mouse proof as

however im going batty all i can smell everywhere i go is mouse **** n poo

the gararge the hallway the back portch

everywhere my kids rooms for god sake i woke to chewing and stupid things ate hole in the cubboard to my clean linnen

 

its not the seed bringing them as they dont want that and my seed in bins

i dont know what to do or what they want

but dad n i are going to war

i called him said that's it enough

 

so good luck mate

im putting my baits in my cabinets all over yard and in shed on tables extra

and im locking them so no animals can get in to it

marlee is inside my dog never out of my sight

and doesnt eat them anyways and good luck if a cat comes here and eats them may stop my cat issues too

barsteds eatting all my breeding ginni pigs right out from under my nose too

lucky i have not got them or they would be flying over the fence off my boot

This was in Kaz's excerpts from a present day mice expert. He suggests a surrounding barrier. Too hard?

"Unfortunately, we simply don't have the weapons to help combat these plagues. I think the main thing farmers can do is to protect these things such as tractors and wheat, which are valuable.

Physical barriers like galvanised iron fences sunk into the ground can protect these. If they're nearly a metre high, mice can't jump over or burrow underneath them. That's the most effective control for highly valued possessions.

"

Thanks Kaz, I think that That Patterson guy is wrong and a lot of people around would be saying the same thing, Maybe normal for this time of the year if we hadn't been in drought but serious, this is not normal as I and almost everyone else around say it is bad.

If not controlled it will get much worse and if it's normal how come all the bait and mouse traps in most of the stores are sold out, never seen that before.

The video clip how horriable, I would die if that happened here.

Any way No not like that thank god, but I have seen a few run across the yard.

 

Thanks Nubbly, yes I am baiting but I can't keep up with it, as soon as I put it out it's gone. I put one under the roof of the aviary, between the iron and the cement sheeting and went and checked it about hour later to see if it was getting wet because it is raining now, WHICH means more mice, ugggrrhhh, any way that block was alomst gone, couldn't believe it.

So far Jake grabs the mice if he sees them dead or a live and plays with them in his mouth and then spits them out. But If I do see a dead one I bin it straight away.

 

I guess tomorrow I will find heaps more in the traps and seed hopper not looking forward to that and I made to water bait traps, one with cans and one with a plate, see how they go.