Ouch - how did you get rid of this number? As I work on a small holdings in the Uk, and we only have a small number kept in check by three cats. But how do you get rid of this many? Assuming poison? but that must be expensive :/
I don't know why they don't just introduce cats, it would be a neat natural and biological solution, and when the cats had killed all the mice, they would simply die out themselves
That photo is the tip of the iceberg. The mice were in pallets on top of a stack of bales of straw. The straw was packed full and these are the ones which did not fit. The mice swam out into rice crops and ate all the grain for about 5m out from the banks. They then dug up the wheat grains when we sowed the wheat crops. Poisons were imposable to get as everyone wanted it and manufactures did not have the capabilities to produce enough. The mice eventually go a disease, I think it was called fat tail disease, and died off. By then manufactures had increased production of poison and all our ordered poison had arrived. I have half a tonne in the shed and I believe manufactures have hundreds of tones they produced and can not sell.
Poisons were a big issue as earlier on the one we could get worked by thinning the blood, and mice which only got a small dose became immune. Many people mixed their own brews illegally using insecticides and poisoned birds like Ibis which ate the dead mice. The good poison we could not get, but have now is zinc sulphate which kills with a chemical reaction and does not cause secondary poisoning.
