Hi Zed, I feel very qualified to help you with your problem since I have so far caught and relocated 19 young rats over the past year and a half. The mother rat is unfortunately still here as she is too wise for the traps.
You may need more than one trap and you should be careful what one you buy as with some of them the door on the trap does not close fast enough. Also food is only part of the problem. The main reason for them staying is access to a safe, dry and warm nesting spot. To get rid of your rats permanently you will have to find where they are living and block it off obviously once all the rats are out.
The poison is an awful thing to use and the rats could die inbetween the walls of your house (if they're in the house - ours were in the attic) they would then rot, cause a bad smell and I was told that the decaying smell will attract in other rats and of course the death is long, slow and very very painful as they will bleed internally.
Rats will also excrete in their urine a chemical that will tell other rats to be wary. For example when the rat trap closes, the rat will panic and urinate. This urine will stay on the trap bars and warn other rats to stay away, therefore you must wash the trap thouroughly every time you release one.
To be honest, now I know the problems that they've caused, I wish I had gotten someone in to shoot it when I first saw it. A local cat caught two young rats.
You're right about their antics. I've never seen such agility and great problem solving skills like I have with the rats. Although the pigeons are good at getting around all the obstacles we put up to prevent them from eating the food that is for the little birds, so we have to put food on the ground for them to stop them attacking and breaking all the other feeders.
Having tried many different baits, I found that chocolate was the best. Double deckers were the best as the fudgy bit on them will stick onto the hook and not fall off and accidentally set the trap off by landing on the trigger plate beneath the hook. The trap will shut once the rat steps on the trigger plate in front of and beneath the dangling food on the hook, (if you buy the one that we did) - We actually bought three so that one could be out whilst the other one was being washed and another was laying in the garden for a few days unset just so the rats got used to the traps being there but not always set.
I did put in a piece of donut once but it attracted a young blackbird which got caught in the trap. It's okay I released it and it was fine although it still has the scar mark at the base of it's beak where the hook of the trap caught it's face. It wasn't in there very long as I was monitoring the trap really frequently. It's okay the blackbird is still fine and is still visiting the garden obviously recognisable to me by his scar and of course I call him "scarface". This also leads me to the next point. DO NOT LEAVE THE TRAP OPEN OVERNIGHT. Twice, I found our hedgehog in the trap. The first time was bad enough, but the second time, I set the trap early in the morning (about 6ish) and by about 9ish when I checked it, there was the hedgehog in it again. It was the last thing I expected to see since I had used chocolate to bait the trap and it had already got stuck in there before and you'd think it would have remembered!!
The hedgehog is still in hibernation under the shed where the rat is too. We have sealed up the part of the house where they were getting in as we knew there were no more in the walls (it was a long process).
All the rats were released at the same spot as I read that if a rat is on its own and there are already rats in the same area that it is in, there may be a fight and the rat might die, which would mean all your work was for nothing, so I released them all pretty much within a few days of each other. I also put out food for them where I released them and made sure there was a stream nearby or if it had been too dry and the stream had gone down a bit then I would cut an apple in half and put that there for some moisture for them! It was just to help them on their way until they found their own food.
Once you establish the bait to be used and where best to base the trap (remember that the smell of the urine will also be on the ground underneath the trap so you should put something under the trap that you can remove and wash so that you can put the trap back in the same place. We started using bits of turf to line the bottom of the trap so any urine would soak into that and there would be no scary smell of other rats' urine or the smell of whatever you've washed the trap in previously, e.g washing up liquid. (I would pour a kettle of boiling water over the trap once I'd cleaned and rinsed it just to make sure that there was no residue smell of washing up liquid.) Also as rats have very keen hearing, try not to put the trap in a windy area - and this sounds weird - but the wind passing over the bars of the trap does actually make a slight ringing sound which we can't hear but the rats can so they may avoid the trap for that reason especially after a few of their family members have left the nest and mysteriously disappeared!!!
Rat Trap, The Trap-Man Rat trap, multi catch humane rat cage trap catches single rats or lots of rats alive and without harming the rat
It has to be said though that this trap is very very effective, I have never caught more than one rat at a time in it. I caught and released them all within 2 months but that big fat mother will not go and she never eats any junk food. I've watched her and it's only the best food for her. Even the magpie doesn't put her off. They just chase each other or eat facing each other on the ground. One of the young rats chased a squirrel away. The squirrel was coming down the trunk of the tree and the young rat was going up and I was sure the squirrel would just keep coming as he was bigger but no, he turned tail and ran away up the tree!
We had plenty of baby birds last year despite the influx of rats although I was running out into the garden at the slightest bird alarm call but it was usually a sparrowhawk that was being shouted at. This year, obviously it will be because of the magpies who are nesting in the garden in the tree next to the blue tits nest box and just along from the three trees next door that house the woodpigeons, dunnocks and blackbirds. Then around the side of the house the great tits have set up camp and sparrows have ignored the sparrow terrace around the back (which now has another blue tit couple in it) and instead decided to build a nest in the hedge down the side of the house. We actually have a very, very small garden but there are so few trees in our neighbourhood that I guess everyone wants to live with us as we have trees and food and water of course!!! The magpies have indeed hit the jackpot by setting up a nest in our garden and I'll be on 24 hour watch with alarm calls probably going off most of the day as a result!!! Any other questions you have please feel free to email me.
Oh and by the way, rats scream when you approach them. Just so you know as I got a fright when it happened so try and cover the cage with some dark towel or something to stop the rat getting too stressed. Good luck and remember that the food and water are only part of the reason the rats are there, you must stop them getting access to good nesting sites!
Good luck
Re: Will brown rats devour birds' eggs/nestlings? 
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