Rodents can carry numerous diseases and cause significant damage to your home. You might notice droppings in the kitchen, food packaging with chew marks, or hear them scampering around at night.
Attracting rodents should not be left to chance. Store food in airtight containers with secure lids, and keep surfaces like counters, sinks, and cabinets tidy to reduce their chances of entering your home. But it doesn’t stop there, so read on about what to do if you’ve got a pest problem.
Check for Entry Points
Find entry points by inspecting your foundation and walls, particularly where pipes, vents, or doors enter your home. Search for openings larger than a quarter inch. Fill these gaps with steel wool, caulk, or foam sealant to prevent mice from coming inside.
At home, it is also important to monitor where utilities enter and leave your home, from basements, attics, and garage entrances to any pipes, wires, or ventilation that enters or leaves your property to ensure there are no broken connections or gaps allowing mice access into your space. Mice may chew through plastic pipes creating holes that allow mice entry.
If your home contains a basement, attic, or garage it would be wise to clear any clutter present. Newspaper piles, cardboard boxes, and any other debris could provide shelter for mice or rats to nest, so any accumulation should be cleared away immediately or relocated out of the building.
Mice are adept at entering structures through sewer lines that run outside and may be covered with soil or vegetation, which means repairing any leaky pipes or drains is key to protecting against rodent infestation. Repairing such leaky spots should therefore form part of any effective rodent-prevention strategy.
Rodents seek shelter wherever possible and bushes and dense vegetation provide ideal hiding spaces. To prevent these areas from being used as harborage by rodents, contact companies like Hadlow Pest Solutions or remove overgrown brush and vegetation within 10 feet of structures and see if that helps. You can also try to store firewood at least 12 inches off of the ground when stored outdoors; dispose of any stacks of lumber or construction materials as soon as possible.
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Seal Up Any Holes
Rodents can wreak havoc in and around your home or business by chewing through pipes and wires, dropping fire hazards onto floors or damaging property with their teeth, damaging property with their teeth gnaw marks, causing health and safety risks, or creating other nuisance issues. The key to eliminating rodent infestation is identifying entry points and sealing them off promptly.
Mice are known to fit through holes only slightly larger than the width of a pencil lead and rats may enter through smaller openings – so any holes or cracks used by rodents to gain entry are particularly crucial to be addressed with ease using common materials found at any hardware store.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends filling cracks and holes large enough for mice with steel wool or caulk (source: https://staysafe.org/pest-control/how-to-use-steel-wool-to-control-mice/). Small holes may also be filled using expanding foam; however, its use should be limited in areas that will be exposed to sunlight as sunlight can degrade it quickly.
As part of your efforts to detect rodent activity in your home or business, make an effort to regularly inspect for signs of rodent infestation. Check eaves and rooflines, sheds and outbuildings, as well as spaces between foundation and soil for signs.
Last Tips
Eliminating food sources that attract rodents is an integral component of mitigating infestations. Make sure both garbage and pet food are stored in rodent-proof containers and regularly collect any fallen fruits from your garden or fallen leaves from around trees that might attract rodents. Keep mulch piles far from the foundations of homes, as well as trimming shrubbery to eliminate hiding places for rodents.
Keep kitchens, restaurants and offices clean regularly by wiping up crumbs and spills and disposing of trash promptly – don’t leave it lying around overnight as raccoons tend to stay near places where finding food is easy for them! This site suggests that rodents feed off of convenience feeding opportunities so stay clear from keeping areas that provide easy meals!
If you detect signs of rodent activity in your home or business, it is essential to take quick action. A pest control professional can assist in identifying entry points used by rats and mice for entry, and provide solutions that prevent future attacks.
At multi-unit residential and commercial buildings, treating the entire structure may be necessary to eliminate rodent issues. This may involve speaking with condo associations and convincing tenants to allow a pest control company access to all their units; only then will you ensure all areas of the building are treated and that a rodent problem doesn’t simply remain contained to one unit before spreading to other units. An experienced professional should understand rodent behavior in order to detect potential problems early before they escalate into major infestations that require more aggressive measures to eliminate.
