Best bait for rat trap

[SteveD]

We've got a smart rat! I have been baiting a trap (a large version of the classic mouse-trap) with parmesan cheese rind but the little devil keeps taking the cheese without setting off the trap. The cheese rind is quite hard and seems to hold very firmly onto the spike but obviously not firmly enough.

Anybody got any ideas for a better bait?

[Ms.Hijinx]

I have a tame rat who loves boiled egg and ham maybe your wild counterpart might activate trap if it was meat which is a bit more stringy than the cheese good luck

[scatty mare]

Fruit and nut chocolate is supposed to be effective! A pest controller recommended this to my uncle and it worked.

[lupineloon]

Now that he is trained to go for the bait, you might try putting a sticky trap in front of the regular trap. This is not for the faint of heart because you may find him live stuck to it. Once that happens, I did not want it to suffer so took further measures which are too graphic to discuss. Icky but effective.

[Hamish]

I found kitkat good for mice. are you shure its a rat and not a mouse? a mouse might be able to remove the cheese without setting the trap off

[SteveD]

Thanks for the answers.

It's a rat for sure because I've seen it. I'm going to give the current trap one more go but i think that there is a design fault because if the rat lifts up on the bait on the spike, it moves the metal hoop further up the release bar. I've just bought another trap with a slightly different design where this should not happen so I'll try that next.

I've also put poison down in the form of seeds etc in a sealed plastic pouch (the instructions say not to open the pouch). However the rat doesn't seem to have touched it.

[2complicated]

Peanut butter, they cant lift it off, and they spend time licking it, thereby avoiding any problems of delayed trap action.
Works a treat, I must have done a dozen on the past few months.

[rogerr]

Try a bit of mars bar. I used it on a mouse trap because the same happened. It will go nice and sticky this weather so won't be easily taken off.

[drestie]

Can you not try a "HaveAHeart" trap (sp?) which would trap him when he enters to eat the bait. Then you could drive him somewhere and release him humanely?

[WendyS]

we've had an influx of outdoor rats and I used an empty 5 litre mineral water bottle as a bait holder, just cutting off the neck and shoulders. Then I tucked it behind our compost heap on its side for a couple of days with some oats and grain tucked away in it at the far end until the rats got used to using it as a food source. Then I put in some commercially bought rat poison pellets bought from a garden centre and mixed them up with the grain and dry oats.
However, if you rat is indoors I don't think this solution would necessarily work satisfactorily.

[thingumybob]

use the red lifeboy soap that they use in workplace toilets it worked wonders we had a rat every night

hope this helps