Where To Buy Rat Traps Near Me
Ace Hardware carries top brands for trapping small animals, such as Havahart, Tomcat and Victor. Read below to learn more about the different animal traps available and which solution will be most effective for your infestation.
where to buy rat traps near me
Although many animal traps are not safe for pets, Ace carries a number of pet-safe, humane animal traps that will leave your pets unharmed. Keep reading to learn more about the most humane types of traps for each type of pest.
A body grip trap, or conibear trap, neutralizes the trapped animal by clamping down around their torso. Body grip traps aim to neutralize and kill the animal as quickly and humanely as possible compared to other trap solutions.
Typically, the most humane way to trap and remove mice and rats is through a no-kill cage trap if the mice are removed from the stress-inducing trap as quickly as possible. These traps are designed with safety features like protective handles and secure door locks to help ensure both you and the animal are unharmed during the trapping and removing process.
While not typically thought of as an outdoor nuisance, squirrels can be quite aggressive, destroy gardens and frighten away welcome outdoor visitors such as birds and butterflies. Ace carries live catch cage traps for squirrels that are specifically designed to trap them in your garden or yard without killing them.
At Ace, we carry many of the best brands for effectively stopping unwanted animals and other pests from disrupting your garden or home. Browse our live mouse trap and animal trap solutions online or shop more insect and animal control products in person at your neighborhood Ace store where you can also receive pest advice from our helpful staff.
Follow manufacturer directions for location. Keep in mind how visible you want the trap to be. For indoor placement, along floorboards, inside cabinets, or in pantries are ideal locations. Outdoor traps are best suited to stables, barns, or alongside fences or structures.
The use of non-toxic alternatives such as rat traps requires a shift in intentions for people to accept that these alternatives are as effective and feasible as pesticides. Several factors have been identified that are useful for understanding trap adoption and acceptability in poor communities, such as whether the traps are seen to be effective, whether they are easy to use, whether there is an additional benefit to using them and the extent of the rodent infestation[32-36].
In order for rat traps to be a viable public health intervention to prevent rodent-borne diseases and pesticide poisonings, acceptability factors need to be taken into account. The factors identified as promoting acceptability were: whether the trap caught rodents, the gender of the user and willingness to purchase a trap from the same informal vendor locations where street pesticides are purchased.
The questions asked relating to cost and buying traps were hypothetical as respondents were given the traps for free. The willingness to buy traps at an informal market/local taxi rank (where street pesticides are sold) was strongly associated with rat trap acceptability. Many people indicated that they were willing to buy traps at informal markets. However, when asked what they were willing to pay for traps, many quoted prices that were much lower than the actual cost of the traps but higher than the current prices for street pesticides. Illegal pesticides are cheap (US$0.13- US$0.26)[9]. Traps represent an investment because they are more expensive. However, rat traps can last for several months and can be reused, whereas people need to continually purchase pesticides. The cost-benefit of investing in a trap may thus need to be marketed as a way to promote trap use. Traps could compete with pesticides if the price of traps were subsidized by government, or by the industry whose agricultural pesticides are being used illegally for domestic rodent control. The affordability of traps is an important factor as this may affect the sustainability of its use.
Most important, the study suggests that rat traps are an acceptable alternative as the majority of respondents used the traps to catch rodents while decreasing their reliance on pesticides. These findings could be applicable to other poor communities with rodent infestations and access to cheap street pesticides. There is potential for rat traps to be widely accepted if high quality rat traps could be made available and at the same time the barrier of the high cost of such traps could be overcome.
Of the 175 respondents that were followed up, 88% used the traps and only 35% continued using pesticides after the intervention. The analysis identified perceived effectiveness of the traps (prevalence odds ratio 18.00, 95% confidence interval 4.62 to 70.14), being male (prevalence odds ratio 8.86, 95% confidence interval 1.73 to 45.19), and the willingness to buy traps from an informal market (prevalence odds ratio 17.75, 95% confidence interval 4.22 to 74.57) as significantly associated with the acceptance of trap use.
Rat traps, when introduced to poor urban communities, are acceptable as an alternative to toxic pesticides for rodent control. Sustainability of trap use, however, needs to be researched, especially cost and cost-benefit.
The study design for this research was a cross-sectional survey. At the end of a baseline study, respondents were given an intervention (rat traps). A follow up survey was conducted six months later to assess the use of the rat traps and whether people intended to use traps and/or pesticides in the future (see Additional File1). This article presents only the findings from the follow-up survey and compares respondents who said they would use rat traps in the future to those who said they would not.
A sample of two hundred households was selected, without a formal sample size calculation, as a practical sample size that would yield useful information. Systematic random sampling identified a house from every tenth house starting from the local community centre in each area. The household head or adult at home was interviewed after obtaining written consent. After participating in the baseline survey, each family received two free rat traps and instructions on how to set the traps, along with a demonstration from a fieldworker. The rat traps distributed had a higher spring action than conventional traps used in these communities which increased their effectiveness in rat catching (Figure1). These traps are not usually available in outlets selling conventional rat traps.
Reported intention to use rat traps in the future was analysed as the main dependent variable and was used as an indicator of acceptability of the rat traps. Reported intention to use pesticides in future was considered as the alternate outcome of interest. The factors related to the reported intended trap use considered were: 1) demographic data (age and sex), 2) whether the respondents reported using the traps, 3) the experienced effectiveness of the traps (whether the traps caught rodents and whether respondents reported any problems using the traps), 4) reported past and present pesticide use, 5) reported perceptions of the price of rat traps (if respondents believed rat traps to be more expensive than pesticides and whether they were willing to buy them) and 6) whether respondents reported still having a rodent problem. Open-ended questions were also asked about why the respondent did not use the rat traps (if such was the case) and what features the respondents liked about the rat traps.
Whether the traps had caught rodents was strongly associated with the reported intention to use traps in the future [prevalence odds ratio (POR) 18.0, 95% confidence interval (CI) 4.6 to 70.1] (Table2). The reported willingness to buy a rat trap from an informal market where street pesticides are commonly sold (e.g. taxi ranks) was strongly associated with the reported intention to use traps (POR 17.8, 95% CI 4.2 to 74.6). Males were 8.9 times more likely than females (95% CI 1.7 to 45.2) to report the intention to use traps in the future. Pesticide use at the time of follow up was strongly associated with the intention to continue using pesticides in the future (POR 58.2, 95% CI 19.7 to 172.0) (not shown in Table2).
The majority of respondents (78.3%) reported using pesticides at baseline. Although there was a significantly strong association between pesticide use at baseline and follow up, more than half of the people using pesticides at baseline stopped using pesticides at follow up. This demonstrates that many pesticide users were willing to give up their pesticide use and that it was quite rare for non-pesticide users to start using pesticides. Overall, just over a third (34.5%) of participants reported using pesticides at follow up and even fewer (29.2%) reported that they intended to use pesticides in the future. Of those that still intended to use pesticides, the majority intended to also use rat traps. This indicates that even when an individual is convinced of the effectiveness of pesticides, they may still be willing to simultaneously try alternatives.
Whether the trap caught rodents or not was strongly associated with trap acceptability. Only 4% of respondents who used traps did not catch rodents with their trap. This highlights the high levels of rodent infestations, which explains why so many people use toxic pesticides. The perceived trap effectiveness was influenced by the type of trap used. The commonly used and widely accessible traps in most South African supermarkets and hardware stores are wooden traps (Figure1) that were described by respondents to be ineffective in killing rodents and tended instead to maim them, particularly the large rats found in South Africa. The study traps were designed to be effective in that they are made of a heavy duty plastic, had a fast and sensitive spring action, and a serrated edge (Figure1). Thus in order for the intervention to be accepted, the product needs to be of a better quality than that which is currently used or available in the most accessible shops, especially in poor urban areas. In addition, qualitative data suggest that being able to easily locate the rodent carcass was viewed as an advantage. The odour of decaying rodent carcasses in inaccessible places is a noted drawback of pesticide use and could be used as a reason to encourage rat trap use instead of pesticides. Thus the traps have multiple benefits. 041b061a72