Rats in the Garden - Does It Mean They Are Living in Your House?

Outdoors Is Normal, Indoors Is Not

Rats live outdoors across almost all of this area, along railway embankments, watercourses, in parks and in gardens. Seeing one cross a lawn at dusk is not evidence of anything being wrong with your house.

What matters is whether the population has a reason to be in your garden specifically, and whether it has found a way from there into the building.

What Is Usually Keeping Them There

Bird feeders, and by a wide margin. Spilled seed under a feeder is a reliable daily food source and it is the single most common cause of a garden rat problem we attend.

Then: an open or damaged compost bin with cooked food in it, chicken or rabbit feed, dog mess, fallen fruit, bins that do not close, and pet food left outside. Rats do not settle where there is nothing to eat.

Where They Are Living

Under decking is the classic. Also under a shed with a gap beneath it, in a compost heap, in a woodpile, under a garden building on bearers, in dense ivy or overgrown ground cover, and in a burrow at the base of a wall or fence.

A burrow entrance is a clean hole about the width of a golf ball or larger with a smooth run leading to it and no spoil scattered around. Runs worn through long grass are the other giveaway.

When It Becomes a House Problem

When something gives them a reason or a route. Cold weather is the usual reason — autumn is our busiest period for exactly this. The route is generally an air brick, the gap where the soil pipe enters, a gap under a garage or side door, or eroded mortar at ground level.

So the sensible response to garden rats is not treatment on its own. It is to remove the food source, deal with the harbourage, and check the base of the building before the weather turns.

What to Do Now

Take the bird feeders down for a few weeks, or move to a feeder with a catch tray and sweep underneath. Secure the compost. Cut back ground cover and lift anything stored directly on soil. Close the gap under the shed or the decking if you can.

If there is an established burrow system, that is a treatment — £190 for a flat, £240 for a house — and it is far cheaper to do while it is still outside. Waiting until they are in the kitchen wall does not save you anything.