Rats in the compost pile
How do you keep rats out of your compost?
We have a homemade compost bin made of scrap wood and plastic hardware cloth sitting in the back yard. It has two compartments each about a cubic yard in size, and has no bottom, but it sits on hard clay soil. The hardware cloth is stapled all around on the inside back and sides to hold in the stuff, and there are solid wood doors on the front which can be swung open to get at the compost. All my compostable kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, smashed eggshells, garden trash and fallen fruit goes in the bin. (No meat, cooked foods, or grease.) I also add 'browns' like dry leaves, paper towels, and pulp egg cartons. We have no lawn, only organic vegetable and herb beds, citrus trees and some California native plants.
I water it from time to time (I'm in Northern California and it doesn't rain all summer) and keep it covered with a tarp. Usually things break down pretty well in a few months, and I turn over the whole pile several times a year to get at the good dirt for my vegetable garden and let the half-rotted stuff keep going.
I've been using this bin for about two and a half years now, and until today, I had never noticed any sign of large vermin nesting in it. My garden work had been a little neglected over the past six months because I had a nagging injury, so turning over the pile was somewhat overdue. It had gotten pretty dry at the top.
I turned over the top layers into the other side of the bin and started pitchforking through the partly rotted material, and a big Norway rat suddenly jumped out, ran up the back of the bin and escaped over the fence. Eww! There are only two things that can make me shriek on sight -- cockroaches and rats! Well, unfortunately it was a mother rat, and I uncovered her paper-lined nest of six blind ratlings in the moist compost not long afterwards. I had to dispose of them, which wasn't a pleasant task. It looks like the adult rat chewed a hole right through the plastic mesh low down at the back of the bin to dig into the bottom of the compost pile.
Obviously I don't want to give up composting, but neither do I want to provide a lot of habitat for a non-native, destructive, disease-bearing species. I always thought it was the abundant gray squirrels digging in my newly planted beds and wrecking my seedlings, but perhaps they have help. I guess I'm heading out to get some STEEL mesh to repair the back of the bin, at the very least.
What else can I do to defend my pile and my garden from rats without spending a mint on the Fort Knox of compost bins? I've been Googling on their habits, which mostly confirms that yes, they like burrowing into moist dirt, and one female rat can raise six litters in a year!
Does anyone have an idea from experience what's going to be necessary and what's overkill? I wouldn't use poison, since this neighborhood has roaming cats and plenty of native wildlife. Snap traps I can handle, if they're liable to do any good. I have no dog and one indoor-only lazy lap cat.
We have a homemade compost bin made of scrap wood and plastic hardware cloth sitting in the back yard. It has two compartments each about a cubic yard in size, and has no bottom, but it sits on hard clay soil. The hardware cloth is stapled all around on the inside back and sides to hold in the stuff, and there are solid wood doors on the front which can be swung open to get at the compost. All my compostable kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, smashed eggshells, garden trash and fallen fruit goes in the bin. (No meat, cooked foods, or grease.) I also add 'browns' like dry leaves, paper towels, and pulp egg cartons. We have no lawn, only organic vegetable and herb beds, citrus trees and some California native plants.
I water it from time to time (I'm in Northern California and it doesn't rain all summer) and keep it covered with a tarp. Usually things break down pretty well in a few months, and I turn over the whole pile several times a year to get at the good dirt for my vegetable garden and let the half-rotted stuff keep going.
I've been using this bin for about two and a half years now, and until today, I had never noticed any sign of large vermin nesting in it. My garden work had been a little neglected over the past six months because I had a nagging injury, so turning over the pile was somewhat overdue. It had gotten pretty dry at the top.
I turned over the top layers into the other side of the bin and started pitchforking through the partly rotted material, and a big Norway rat suddenly jumped out, ran up the back of the bin and escaped over the fence. Eww! There are only two things that can make me shriek on sight -- cockroaches and rats! Well, unfortunately it was a mother rat, and I uncovered her paper-lined nest of six blind ratlings in the moist compost not long afterwards. I had to dispose of them, which wasn't a pleasant task. It looks like the adult rat chewed a hole right through the plastic mesh low down at the back of the bin to dig into the bottom of the compost pile.
Obviously I don't want to give up composting, but neither do I want to provide a lot of habitat for a non-native, destructive, disease-bearing species. I always thought it was the abundant gray squirrels digging in my newly planted beds and wrecking my seedlings, but perhaps they have help. I guess I'm heading out to get some STEEL mesh to repair the back of the bin, at the very least.
What else can I do to defend my pile and my garden from rats without spending a mint on the Fort Knox of compost bins? I've been Googling on their habits, which mostly confirms that yes, they like burrowing into moist dirt, and one female rat can raise six litters in a year!
Does anyone have an idea from experience what's going to be necessary and what's overkill? I wouldn't use poison, since this neighborhood has roaming cats and plenty of native wildlife. Snap traps I can handle, if they're liable to do any good. I have no dog and one indoor-only lazy lap cat.