[Annual Rodent Control Issue] Rodent Feeding Stations

Editor’s Note: This article was adapted from Techletter, a biweekly publication from Pinto & Associates, Mechanicsville, Md. To subscribe, visit www.techletter.com or call 301/884-3020.
 

When conducting an indoor rodent inspection, it’s important to identify the rodents’ food sources. The fact of the matter is you can’t effectively bait a rodent population when plenty of other food is available. Often, customers don’t realize that they, themselves, are feeding rats or mice within their own walls.

Rodent feeding stations are places where rodents find food, or where rodents bring food from other locations because they feel they can eat it safely there. Rodent feeding stations can be identified by a greater than normal amount of rodent feces, urine deposits and hair, or by finding a variety of food leftovers such as candy wrappers, nut shells and cockroach carcasses.

These rodent feeding stations are usually hidden and often found in unexpected places. Look first for feeding stations in the usual locations: kitchens, snack rooms, bathrooms, etc. Feeding stations are typically located near runways and in the corners of rooms, behind large objects or furniture, under or behind the bottom drawers in kitchen cabinets and in under-sink cabinets, and under stoves or refrigerators.

Inspect soft drink and vending machines, coffee stations, recycling containers and areas where garbage is stored overnight. Look for the less obvious feeding stations in office desk drawers, around bars of soap in restrooms, near dead insects on sticky traps and near broken packages of food in storage cabinets.

The food found in rodent feeding stations may provide useful clues leading you to other areas that need to be inspected as well. For example, if you find a pile of popcorn kernels, look more closely around the microwave where popcorn bags are discarded.

Finding and removing rodent food sources and cleaning up rodent feeding stations will provide a clean slate when you start your rodent management program. Begin your control efforts in the areas that you identified as rodent feeding stations.