Rodents and their control

Rodents
Rodents are the serious pest of both field and storage
condition. They belong to phylum vertebrates. The common
rodents found to be damaging are:

a. House rat (Rattus rattus)

b. House mouse (Mus musculus)

c. Brown rat (Rattus norvegicus)

d. Lesser Bandicott rat/ Field rat (Bandicota bengalensis)

e. Large Bandicot rat (Bandicota indica)

f. Field mouse (Mus booduga)

They damage growing crops and post-harvest products.

 Rodents
Biological characteristics of rat and mice

● Poor eyesight.

● Nocturnal in habit.

● Teeth grow at the rate of 0.4 mm per day.

● Damage caused is almost 5 times of their daily food requirement.

● Move on the same path.

● One mature pair can give birth to 2000 offspring in a year.

● Very good jumper and climber.

● Like quite dark and dirty places.

● Life span is 2-3 years.

 Rodents
Biological characteristics of rat and mice

● Reproduce rapidly.

● Reproductively mature at 10-11 weeks of age.

● Chew and gnaw almost anything.

● Come in estrous immediately after birth of delivering of their litter.

● Causes great losses of field storage.

● Good swimmer and don’t afraid with water.

● Gestation period is only 3 weeks.

● Give birth 4-13 young at once.

 Rodents
Biological characteristics of rat and mice

● House rat and house mice go to the field during crop harvest time.

● Field rats and field mice live inside the burrow system in the field.
 Methods of management of Rodents

Rodents are not of one-man. One family problem, they

are community problem.

Management of household rodents

● They don’t like clean house so we should clean our
house, storage and field.
● Use of rat proof door.
● Tree that grow near the house should be cut back so
rat can’t jump from the branches to the house.

In the household condition, rat can be controlled by

chemical and mechanical means:
 Methods of management of Rodents

Chemical method
Fast acting poison
● Acute poison (Zinc phosphide)
● Pre-baiting with non-poisonous bait by mixing 45%
ground rice, 45% ground wheat, 5% roasted groundnut
and 5% mustard oil.
● Keep 20 gram of mixture where frequent movement of
rats and mice takes place in the house at evening.
● It is done for 2 days.
● Prepare the poison bait by mixing 98% non –
poisonous food and 2% acute poison (Zinc phosphide)
● Next morning collect the rat and mice and burry them
deep underground.
 Methods of management of Rodents
Chemical method
Slow acting poison
● Example: Bromadiolone (0.005% Roban)
● Requires feeding by rats several days before they die.
● They continue feeding, it until they die.
 Methods of management of Rodents
Mechanical method
Wire trap
● Potato or sweet potato slices are hang as feeding bait
inside the traps.
● These baits are fixed in the evening where frequently
movement of rats occurs in the house.
● Snap trap and glue traps can also be fixed as of wire
traps.
 Methods of management of Rodents

Management of field rodents

Chemical control
● Prepare and use non-poisonous and poisonous bait.
● Find live burrows of rat and mice.
● Non-poisonous baiting on live burrows for 2-3 days.
● Poisonous baiting on live burrows for 2-3 days.
● Chronic poison, bromodiolane (0.005% Roban). The
Roban poison baits should be kept on the running
path of rats and mice.
● Fumigation of live rodent burrows by aluminium
phosphide.
● Place poisonous bait during night and then take out
those during the day for safety purpose.
Thank You..