Apr 26, 2011 – Mice In The Warehouse
QUESTION:
How do you find pallet mice in a warehouse, with proper traps and and bait stations in place that seem to be ignored by the mice?
ANSWER:
By "pallet" mice I am assuming you mean House Mice that are living in amongst palleted product. One factor that puts things in your favor is having the ability to get to all sides of those pallets, so if this warehouse has the pallets stacked right against the walls, prohibiting you from getting to the wall itself for inspection, this must change. You need to get the cooperation of the warehouse personnel to enable you to help them. There probably should be a painted line in yellow, two feet out from each wall, and no product should be stacked inside this perimeter. Since mice and rats instinctively stay against vertical surfaces, their most likely route of travel much of the time will be immediately against that wall, and this is where most of your stations and traps should be set.
It also is a fact that peridomestic rodents just hate changes. They become very comfortable in a setting if things stay in place, and when they first enter a new environment they spend a great deal of time investigating and marking things to get a good picture in their mind of where food and shelter are found and where safe pathways exist. Just in case there is any clutter sitting for long periods in this warehouse it should be removed or at least moved and placed onto pallets. It would be of value to use a UV flashlight during your inspections, and some very convenient portalbe UV lights are available now from Univar. In a darkened warehouse the UV will cause fresh rodent urine to fluoresce, with the most recent urine a light blue and older urine a yellowish color. This could be helpful in determining where their little pathways and other activity are, and you may find that your stations are simply not where the rodents are spending their time.
All of this rambling is to suggest that you may have traps and stations in place but they and the mice are just not encountering each other. As Dr. Corrigan tells us in his rodent control seminars, we need to avoid a cookie-cutter approach to rodent control. They may travel 100 feet to find food or only 3 feet if that is all it takes. They travel vertically just as well as horizontally. If these mice are hiding in the pallets and finding food there they may not have any reason to leave, and thus will not encounter your stations. Inspect the environment there carefully to decide where the mice are harboring and where they are finding food, and place your traps between these two points in locations where the mice will likely travel. And, use LOTS of traps to increase the chances of catching them.
Of course, simply managing a mouse problem by trying to kill each of them after they enter is a never ending solution - maybe good job security, or maybe not. Ultimately you should find as many ways as possible to keep the mice outside where they can be dealt with in a less-sensivite situation. This includes habitat management both inside and outside, exclusion, and the use of perimeter stations around the outside of the buildings as well as the perimeter of the property.
But, on the inside it may be that you need to verify where these rodents are actually living and traveling, increase the numbers of traps and other stations, and enhance the attraction to them with attractants such as Provoke or Trapper jacks or other really tempting goodies that mice will detect and investigate. Make sure the customer is cooperating and doing what they can to disrupt the environment inside so that the mice are not comfortable and are forced to move as much as possible. Place snap traps inside covered stations, as this may even encourage the mice to enter to investigate this little burrow.
How do you find pallet mice in a warehouse, with proper traps and and bait stations in place that seem to be ignored by the mice?
ANSWER:
By "pallet" mice I am assuming you mean House Mice that are living in amongst palleted product. One factor that puts things in your favor is having the ability to get to all sides of those pallets, so if this warehouse has the pallets stacked right against the walls, prohibiting you from getting to the wall itself for inspection, this must change. You need to get the cooperation of the warehouse personnel to enable you to help them. There probably should be a painted line in yellow, two feet out from each wall, and no product should be stacked inside this perimeter. Since mice and rats instinctively stay against vertical surfaces, their most likely route of travel much of the time will be immediately against that wall, and this is where most of your stations and traps should be set.
It also is a fact that peridomestic rodents just hate changes. They become very comfortable in a setting if things stay in place, and when they first enter a new environment they spend a great deal of time investigating and marking things to get a good picture in their mind of where food and shelter are found and where safe pathways exist. Just in case there is any clutter sitting for long periods in this warehouse it should be removed or at least moved and placed onto pallets. It would be of value to use a UV flashlight during your inspections, and some very convenient portalbe UV lights are available now from Univar. In a darkened warehouse the UV will cause fresh rodent urine to fluoresce, with the most recent urine a light blue and older urine a yellowish color. This could be helpful in determining where their little pathways and other activity are, and you may find that your stations are simply not where the rodents are spending their time.
All of this rambling is to suggest that you may have traps and stations in place but they and the mice are just not encountering each other. As Dr. Corrigan tells us in his rodent control seminars, we need to avoid a cookie-cutter approach to rodent control. They may travel 100 feet to find food or only 3 feet if that is all it takes. They travel vertically just as well as horizontally. If these mice are hiding in the pallets and finding food there they may not have any reason to leave, and thus will not encounter your stations. Inspect the environment there carefully to decide where the mice are harboring and where they are finding food, and place your traps between these two points in locations where the mice will likely travel. And, use LOTS of traps to increase the chances of catching them.
Of course, simply managing a mouse problem by trying to kill each of them after they enter is a never ending solution - maybe good job security, or maybe not. Ultimately you should find as many ways as possible to keep the mice outside where they can be dealt with in a less-sensivite situation. This includes habitat management both inside and outside, exclusion, and the use of perimeter stations around the outside of the buildings as well as the perimeter of the property.
But, on the inside it may be that you need to verify where these rodents are actually living and traveling, increase the numbers of traps and other stations, and enhance the attraction to them with attractants such as Provoke or Trapper jacks or other really tempting goodies that mice will detect and investigate. Make sure the customer is cooperating and doing what they can to disrupt the environment inside so that the mice are not comfortable and are forced to move as much as possible. Place snap traps inside covered stations, as this may even encourage the mice to enter to investigate this little burrow.
