OT- bait for mouse traps?

[Trboatworks]

This will sound odd but we have mice which simply won’t take bait in snap traps.
It’s strange- urban house and sometimes we get a rat who is too wary to take a snap trap but mice??

Usually they are dead easy to catch but for a year or so we have mice I can’t trap.
The rats teach em something- who knows.

In any case- anyone have ideals for bait I can try?

 

[dalmatiangirl61]

Oatmeal cookie dough was what the house mice liked, the shop mice were more partial to salsa. That was for Texas mice, Maryland mice might have a more refined pallet.

 

[michiganbuck]

We use peanut butter in our drownding bucket at fish camp.
I think pizza would be best for city rats.
Snap traps should be handled with gloves on so the rat doesn't smell your handling of the trap.

 

[Scruffy887]

Peanut butter is the best. Trap location is also important.

 

[John Garner]

Another vote for peanut butter, but not plain peanut butter. Work the peanut butter into a small piece of cotton ball, and then work the PB cotton ball into the trap's trigger.

Or, if you don't want to share your peanut butter, a small bit of cotton ball loaded with fatty "pan drippings" from cooking meat can be almost as effective.

 

[Trboatworks]

I tried peanut butter, pizza, nuts of all sorts and everything else I can think of.
I haven’t tried oatmeal cookie dough….

Maybe it’s the smell thing- we pet the dogs and when we handle the traps the mice catch that and stay away?

Leaky roof, front porch trying to fall off, mice- this place lol.

 

[FredC]

You have 2 peanut butter recommendations. That is usually my first choice. An occasional very talented mouse can lick it out of the loop on a snap trap without tripping it. For the smart and talented mice, the drop back and punt bait is a raisin stuffed into the loop. They cannot get the raisin out without tripping.

Edit, I like John Garners idea of a cotton ball mixed with PB. Placement of the trap was mentioned also. Mice run along walls in the dark with their whiskers touching the wall, so they do not get lost. Putting the trap with the trigger end butted up to the wall will catch them many times without them even touching the bait.

 

[DrHook]

Another vote for peanut butter, and trap placement. Butt the end of the trap up against the wall, as that is where they travel. The so-called "easy set" type plastic ones seem pretty easy for them to clean off without triggering, so the old type wood base Victors set hair trigger are the best performers for me.

 

[reggie_obe]

Tether a sexy female mouse to each trap. That should attract the boys.

 

[michiganbuck]

Just thinking that I should apply for a trap patent for a trap that would have a note on the trap face
" This is a less hurting trap "
likely sell for a 30% higher price.

 

[morsetaper2]

Oatmeal cookie dough was what the house mice liked, the shop mice were more partial to salsa. That was for Texas mice, Maryland mice might have a more refined pallet.

Use crab cakes?

 

[FredC]

I forgot what that disease that mice get that causes them to be attracted to the smell of a cat. But that is a real thing. I saw a mouse tail being repeatedly stuck out an air conditioning duct with the cat sitting by the duct. For an infected mouse cat smell is an attractant.

 

[Larry Dickman]

Best thing I found were Rees's Pieces. Chocolate with Uber sweet peanut butter.

 

[DouglasJRizzo]

My dad used a mouse trap that looked like a fiberglass box. You wound it up and it guillotined the mouse when it went in.

 

[Joe Gwinn]

My Baltimore farmer friends always swore by peanut butter. Mice et al in human-dominated places are pretty used to the smell of humans, so using gloves et al didn't matter. (Trapping animals in the wild is a different story.)

But I did have problems with mice that could lick the bait off the trigger without setting the trap off. The first fix was to force the peanut butter into the trigger someplace where it was not easily removed. This helped, but not enough.

Hmm. Maybe the trigger is not sensitive enough? One can adjust the sensitivity by bending the flag under which the bail that holds the swinging part of the trap in the cocked position, making it easier to dislodge and release the bail wire when the trigger is disturbed. I made it so sensitive that one could not cock the trap and then put it down on the floor. Instead one placed the un-cocked trap on the floor and only then cocked it.

Bingo! I would catch ten or twenty mice, and then it would go quiet - ran out of mice. Eventually the house would be recolonized, and the story would;d repeat.

 

[Bender]

Another vote for peanut butter. Make sure you have one of them new style plastic traps where you lift the lid to bait the trap and just push down a lever to set the trap.

 

[drcoelho]

Peanut butter

 

[gbent]

I often use peanut butter as small amounts are easy. But when I really want to catch a mouse, I will get Little Debbie cinnamon roll snacks. I discovered them once in a truck where they left the trap along and ate the Little Debbie, through the wrapper.

Some times a really small mouse will steal the bait without triggering the trap, or is so small they are missed by the bail. Then its time to get the rat sized sticky traps.

 

[SeymourDumore]

This is an interesting thread!!!
First to answer, I use peanut butter in this mousetrap: https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/victor-power-kill-mouse-trap-pack-of-2
The wooden ones doesn't seem to work as well, and this is wicked easy to set.

Now the interesting part.
From my youth, we've always used smoked bacon or sausage. Without fail, if there was a mouse, they found it.
Nowadays though, I can put a whole friggin' slab of bacon out on the table and not one miserable of them critters will even look at it!

Now another interesting thing about peanut butter.
I only get mice in the shop during mid fall and early spring, so I cast out like 10-12 of those traps in various places.
After getting 30 or so in total, it appears that I get them all and the traps stay baited... well with the exception of 1 or 2 of them.
For some reason those 2 seem to loose the entire load of the peanut butter overnight, and yet, the latch stays open!
At first I figured that there is at least one wicked smart or very very lucky mouse left in the shop.
Well, that is NOT the case!
One time I re-baited the trap early in the evening while I've stayed in the shop.
After a couple of hours I casually looked at the trap, only to find the sum'bitch empty!
So, now really curious, I re baited the trap again and kept on looking back at it frequently.
Lo and behold, after about 20 minutes a long ass trail of ants showed up! Line leading out of a crack in the floor, to the trap, to the peanut butter and then back into the crack!
Them little bastards in less than 10 minutes polished up a spoonful of peanuts, all without leaving a single trace!

 

[jim rozen]

1) place blob of peanut butter on the plate.
2) embed one piece of dry cat food in that.
3) tie the cat food onto the plate with dental floos. Non-mint.

That got them every time. I was trapping three per week in the pantry until we got replacement FRCDs. (feline rodent control devices)