Man do I love rats, I don't advertise for them but get a bunch of business for them. I also get most of my full clean outs from rats. Some for coons, but mostly rats.
They can be a challenge if the customer is a slob.

What kind of rats are you dealing with?

The first ADC job I ever had was cleaning up a Norway rat infestation after a horse ranch went out of business. There were hundreds of them. It was six months before the real estate company was satisfied.

I've done only a few rat jobs since. It's always Norway's and none have come close in number to that first one.

Roof rats here mostly. They are pretty smart and can be a pain in the butt. I use the gophinators a lot on them. I also use my secret bait(bacon grease), they can't resist it. Skunks too.
One restaurant/bar took about six months, no one cleaned and never got the go ahead to exclude. He hired a handyman to do it. Worst exclusion ever. Finally got the okay to seal after the health inspector threatened to shut them down. After lots of $ no more rats.
Doing a clean out today that was terrible, low pitch and nests everywhere. Fun fun fun.

I've only had a few rat jobs over the years, all norway. In a few towns down here rats are a big problem and the municipalities have started rat eradication programs. They set out poison everywhere and I've had customers tell me they look outside in the morning and find dead rats in the road and in their yards

We did some disease studies on a series of farms in one state I lived in a few years back. Looked at norway rats and birds as vectors of industry leading causes of health issues. Spent several weeks doing night trapping and pellet rifle sampling from sundown to sunup and every time we came back to start the loop over at farm #1 from being at farm #5 we had full traps and were able to harvest another 50-60 with pellet rifles before moving to the next one.

Growing up we always had norway rats around the farm and d-con seemed to be the tool of choice, remember how well they burrowed from building to building.

Never saw the numbers though that I saw on that farm project, and when we returned positive results for the diseases folks took a new look at how they were or rather weren't managing the species tested.

The take home message to them was, if you have great bio security for your workers (boot washes on the way in, tyvek, gloves, etc..) and for your herd, but you had wildlife that were crossing boundaries back and forth from someone who isn't, you do not have a bio secure facility.

I do not however, miss performing necropsy on several hundred rats after a full night of sampling.

Out here I get wood rat (pack rat) calls more than any other. Hard to miss they are on site, have had pump rooms and other utility areas that are literally full of nesting material from their hoarding activity!

Justin

Justin?
What gloves have you found to work best for this clean up?

found anything cool in the nest?

Vinke,

Never found anything great in them, but one last year in middle of nowhere had all kinds of yarn, all types of parts you might find in a garage etc... Filled two contractor bags with nest material.

Glove wise most of the time I use purple nitrile gloves, old habit. I use two pair so one can rip or get fouled you can get rid of it and add another without the sweat on your hands makinfg them stick.

I do have some thicker mil. blue gloves that are disposable but come 1/2 way up the forearm and can be taped to tyvek easier.

Those last longer but a bit more expensive.

The rangeland nests are full of all kinds of things as you probably know.

Archaeologists consider pack rat middens some great sources of all kinds of treasure and history!

Az area the nest are all mostly protected by cacti,,,,, pain in the as

What is this thing called "glove" that you speak of.

What's the longest rat all of guys have harvested? I recently removed a 17" Norway tip of nose to tip of tail

17" that is a big boy.

That's more like a big boy and a whopper together. I wonder how long the average muskrat is?