can anyone id this killer?

[tom00_uk]

id go for a rat

[James Blake]

Hi and really sorry to hear about your experience.

I had rats in my garden a few years ago and managed to get rid of them fairly quickly. Firstly I put a wire flooring on my compost bin so they couldn't burrow up into it. They were also burrowing under the fence from next door - each time I found a hole I'd block it by sinking a piece of wooden board (maybe 9 inches deep) into the soil. They gave up looking for new places to dig after a couple of rounds of this. Finally, they'd made a hole under the garage - after flushing this out with water, I blocked it up. None of this would have stopped really determined rats, but I guess the garden wasn't attractive enough for them to try too hard.

So on my limited experience, I'd recommend:
blocking up all the space under your shed, if possible, once you've removed the rat;
adding something to the hutch to stop rats burrowing in (wire or board sunk into the earth?);
trying not to make the garden tooattractive to rats, e.g. with composting food that can be easily got at.

If you do catch a rat and want to translocate it, I'd check how far you need to take it - it may be quite a way! But well done for wanting to try non-lethal methods.

good luck!
James

[connerlake]

I dont mind rats in my garden passing thru and such and i do own a pet rat, every British animal has the right to roam but your pets have now been attacked so if i were you id consider a live trap to release or poison depending on how you feel.

[Hedera]

Sorry to hear you've lost your pets in such a traumatic way. Any good suggesting you stand the hutch on metal sheeting, e.g. corrugated iron or such to stop the underneath attack if you have others to protect?

[Pigeon feather]

Hi, I am very sorry to hear about your guinea pigs, my first thought was an escaped ferret although where abouts in the country are you? as there may be wild polecats, stoats, weasels in the area, how long have the guinea pigs been in that hutch/spot with no issues? it may be a rat too going by the description of injuries which is un ferret like though as others have said set a humane trap to see what you catch, I recently lost my entire flock of chickens/quail to my own two ferrets that escaped one night, they killed them cleanly with bites to the necks and left them be all intact though guinea pigs may put up more of a fight and with no visable neck to catch hold of may be more difficult, I hope you catch the culprit.

[flowerfairy]

Thank you all, we are working on making a humane trap at home and hope to have it set up tomorrow if all goes well.

Yes, I will advise anyone else I know with guinea pigs/rabbits to put a solid base under the hutch and check regularly for gnaw holes in the wood. I have let my next-door-but-one neighbours know as they have rabbits in cages on the ground.

We did have a couple of rats in the spring but no-where near the guinea pigs (as far as we knew), they were under the boards in the house and we had to use poison to get rid of them as they were trying to gnaw up into the house. I don't like to kill anything but my neighbours all had them too so it was the only way to deal with it. We hadn't seen trace of them since so assumed they were all gone. I will not keep outdoor animals here again if there is a risk the rats will keep returning, and if I do so elsewhere I will be sure to have a very secure hutch and be on alert for any unwanted visitors. I wouldn't mind if they just passed through, we have plenty of wildlife here, but if they attack people's pets and try to get into houses, not to mention all the diseases they are supposed to have, I think they need dealing with. I spoke to someone local yesterday who says he saw one "almost the size of a cat" in his garage recently, so looks like there are some big ones around at the moment.

Interesting idea about sending a ferret down, might ask around and see who has one. We are in the Cotswolds, rural area, small town with hills, woods and farms around, so we have a bit of everything so anything could live here really.

One of the reasons I am using a humane trap is that I have had a family of hedgehogs in my garden this year, so I would not want to harm any of them accidentally, but I would not be at all surprised if one of them wanders into a trap. Hopefully with the weather being colder now they will be hibernating or at least out less often, so fingers crossed we catch the right animal.

[salukiwhippet]

PM sent FlowerFairy

James

[The Woodman]

Flowerfairy, you will get some good advice from salukiwhippet and he's not too far from you.

Don't worry about catching Hedgehogs in a live catching humane trap. As long as it's checked twice a day, first and last thing, any non target species can be released unharmed. I've caught Hedgehogs in mink traps and they've eaten every bit of the bait even a whole small Brown Trout which was stripped of flesh leaving the skin and skeleton pretty much intact.

I've never seen a rat the size of a cat but there must be big ones out there that are responsible for the big cat stories that appear in the press from time to time.