Catching mice

[shivvy]

I set 6 mouse traps around my kitchen last night because I had noticed signs of mouse activity over the last couple of weeks. All the traps were visited (either activated or the bait taken) and 4 mice were caught.

I live in the country so expect to see the odd mouse however I was shocked at the number caught on the first night. I had read somewhere that mice live in families - is this true and if so, what size can the families be and should I expect to be free from mice (at least temporarily) when the whole family has been caught?
Thanks.

[the arab]

in my place we train the mice to catch themselves

[Jenga]

I don't know about size of familes but they breed faster than rabbits. It was on the news last week that due to the bad weather i.e loads of rain, that more rats and mice are taking refuge indoors. Good luck and just keep putting the bait down. I had a rat in my garage last Xmas 2006 and put some bait down and it did the trick straight away. I have not seen them since. I don't keep any more food in the garage any more now either. I was just glad it never visited this Xmas 2007.

[sue11]

A couple of years ago, we had a few mice decide to come and stay in our garden shed, due to my stupidity in deciding that the shed would be a great place to store sacks of bird food! Of course a mouse discovered my stash and decided to move in and raise it's family there. The shed is attached to the back of our house/garage and the mouse and family members had a great time climbing and exploring in the garage roof, we heard them scrambling around which is how we discovered their existence. As I am a real softy and animal lover, I would not let my partner kill the mice. We discovered that the mice had made a nest in the shed, it contained a few youngsters (they looked really cute, fat and furry!) that we managed to catch quite quickly. We then set traps and did our best to get hold of the rest of them. Once we got hold of them all, we counted over 14 at that stage and we took them out into the local forest and set them free. We returned home and removed all the bird seed from the shed, but a few days later, heard more scrambling and scratching and found that some remaining escapees had simply built another nest in the same place! We caught another seven mice this time and released these in the same place as the last lot. Thankfully we either had actually got the lot of them or the last remaining few disappeared once we had removed their food source. We too were surprised at how quickly they had grown from (presumably) the one mice into over 20 in a few short weeks.
Hope this gives you some idea, best of luck in getting it sorted out, personally I would prefer to see people using a humane way of catching them as per my experience, but appreciate that this may not be possible if they prove to become a real problem in your house. best of luck! Sue

[marfysarfy]

Sorry shivvy to be the bringer of bad news but we have a mouse problem (since extensive building work was done down the road from us) and we were told this: Hold on to your chair......

A litter can contain up to 15 young and after 50 days the babies are able to breed. Each female mouse can have up to 10 litters a year. Breeding cycle lasts 3 weeks.

GET A CAT!!!!!

[shivvy]

I think it would be easier to move house marfysarfy!

Thanks for the info everyone (apart from the arab). The traps have worked well for the last 2 days and all signs of mouse activity seems to be slowing/stopping.

I read somewhere that they tend to come indoors when there has been a lot of rain or flooding so that will be what has happened. When I was in the shop buying the traps 2 other people were doing the same thing!