Over the course of the summer beginning in March, the mice population exploded. I lost count, having caught over 45 mice through April. I can't explain how it has ended but the mice population is gone. Be it due to our resident Ferrel cat, or the number of mouse contraptions I placed in the coop, but the numbers are down near zero.
A couple of things happened over the course of the summer. First, as I previously mentioned we now have a Ferrel cat hanging around the coop that appears to only be going after the mice. With that said, I did lose some one-week-old chicks suddenly, and to this day I do not know what happened to them. This happened back in June. No corpses, no grouping of feathers, but one that did survive did have a wound, so something got to it. They were in a cage, that I did find an opening under a board that could have allowed them to get out into the larger coop, or something small to get into where they were. I digress.
Second, in a shipping container located next to the coop, I did notice that the mice had got into a bag of fertilizer/chemical I use to accelerate composting. They ate the entire bag. this could have had an affect on them.
Third, through the use of the traps, most recently I began using two small rectangular galvanized metal box traps. On the first day of their use, without having placed any food inside the trap I caught 10 mice in the two traps. One other night I also caught a large number of mice in them. Since then I rarely see mice and I have caught maybe one or two over the past two weeks. The product is from Southern Homeware .
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