Rats!

[MikeBjerum]

I've heard of a lot of people having electrical wires chewed on by mice too. So far I've been lucky.

Back in the late 80's we went to get the combine ready for harvest and found we had electrical issues.  I drilled out the pop rivets on a corner piece in the cab to check the wires.  A bundle of over 100 wires that went from the side counsel to the overhead counsel with all the gauges and more switches.  The mice had chewed through all the wire loom, almost all of the insulation, and about half of the actual wires.  Four days of spending all of my free time cutting, soldering, heat shrinking, cutting, soldering, heat shrinking, cutting ...

To make the job as easy as possible, I made a template eight inches long, cut that length out of a wire, stripped the insulation back on each end, had a pre-cut fill in ready, soldered the connections, and protected with heat shrink tubing.  Something I was smart enough to start with was staggering the splices up and down.  This is how I came up with the eight inch length.  I based it on the length of damage and getting staggered joints.  I figured that If I just lopped it all off at the same place I would never have room for the thickness of the splices.

Best feeling, besides buttoning it up after many many hours of work, was going through harvest with all gauges, monitors, lights, and switches working properly.

[Big Frank]

Back in the late 80's we went to get the combine ready for harvest and found we had electrical issues.  I drilled out the pop rivets on a corner piece in the cab to check the wires.  A bundle of over 100 wires that went from the side counsel to the overhead counsel with all the gauges and more switches.  The mice had chewed through all the wire loom, almost all of the insulation, and about half of the actual wires.  Four days of spending all of my free time cutting, soldering, heat shrinking, cutting, soldering, heat shrinking, cutting ...

To make the job as easy as possible, I made a template eight inches long, cut that length out of a wire, stripped the insulation back on each end, had a pre-cut fill in ready, soldered the connections, and protected with heat shrink tubing.  Something I was smart enough to start with was staggering the splices up and down.  This is how I came up with the eight inch length.  I based it on the length of damage and getting staggered joints.  I figured that If I just lopped it all off at the same place I would never have room for the thickness of the splices.

Best feeling, besides buttoning it up after many many hours of work, was going through harvest with all gauges, monitors, lights, and switches working properly.

You would have been so screwed if the wires were all the same color. That was good thinking, staggering the splices. I did that on the tail lights of my trailer that only had 2 wires on each side, but the loom was kind of narrow and still barely fit through washers welded on the bottom of the trailer to support it.

[MikeBjerum]

Tracing marks!

There are not enough colors to handle this loom, so it was mostly white with different tracing marks.

[Solus]

Ok...we need a rodent targeted poison spray for our wires..

Anyone know of one?

I keep  hearing about ultrasonic devices to drive them away...but I hear they are only effective for a short time as the pests get use to them and come back. 

Some of them actually connect to a vehicles electric system for power and some claim they alternate frequencies to keep the buggers from getting used to the noise...but who knows what is true.

[Big Frank]

When my mom and dad had mice in their garage they put out d-CON for them to eat. They can't chew on anything when they're dead.    Tomcat should work too but has a different type of active ingredient.

D-CON causes internal bleeding, leading to shock, loss of consciousness, and eventually death. Tomcat causes a buildup of cerebral spinal fluid that results in increased intracranial pressure, causing paralysis, convulsions, and death. My dad took Warfarin as a blood thinner which acts just like D-CON, but in a much smaller dose.

http://www.d-conproducts.com/products/

https://www.tomcatbrand.com/en-us/products

[Sponsor]

[MikeBjerum]

With the barns we rotated between TomCat and Jaguar.  Both come in little paper packets you can put wherever you wish.

We used the packets alone in several places, and bait stations along runs.

[Solus]

When my mom and dad had mice in their garage they put out d-CON for them to eat. They can't chew on anything when they're dead.    Tomcat should work too but has a different type of active ingredient.

D-CON causes internal bleeding, leading to shock, loss of consciousness, and eventually death. Tomcat causes a buildup of cerebral spinal fluid that results in increased intracranial pressure, causing paralysis, convulsions, and death. My dad took Warfarin as a blood thinner which acts just like D-CON, but in a much smaller dose.

http://www.d-conproducts.com/products/

https://www.tomcatbrand.com/en-us/products

Which is the most horrible way for them to die?

I read a long time ago that rats could not handle yeast...and if you laced bait with it, it would grow in their stomachs and intestines causing them to rupture....  I liked thinking about that...but don't know if it is true
 

[Big Frank]

Which is the most horrible way for them to die?

I read a long time ago that rats could not handle yeast...and if you laced bait with it, it would grow in their stomachs and intestines causing them to rupture....  I liked thinking about that...but don't know if it is true

That sounds like another myth along the lines of, don't throw rice at weddings because birds will explode after eating it, and seagulls will explode if they eat Alka-Seltzer, neither of which is true. But a guy in the army told me something that sounded possible. If you put popcorn on a fishhook and cast your line into a flock of seagulls you can catch one and "fly it by remote control". 

[Solus]

That sounds like another myth along the lines of, don't throw rice at weddings because birds will explode after eating it, and seagulls will explode if they eat Alka-Seltzer, neither of which is true. But a guy in the army told me something that sounded possible. If you put popcorn on a fishhook and cast your line into a flock of seagulls you can catch one and "fly it by remote control". 

HAHAHA  No one likes a Smart Alec, Jumbo =)))
 

[Big Frank]

I wasn't trying to be a Smart Alec. But speaking of a flock of seagulls . . . 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIpfWORQWhU