Fox Urine for Mouse Prevention/Avoidance???

ADC Guys,

I'm wondering if any of you have ever tried using fox urine to discourage the building of mouse nests in close quarters?

I have had mice trying to build a nest in my four wheeler transmission air outtake and they have obviously gotten their scent on it because it doesn't take a night and they are back building in the same spot. I've tried ripping out the nest, cleaning the area, etc.

I put a swab of good ripe fox urine in the area they were building and I haven't seen them back yet.

I've used it for vole control where it will discourage them from burrowing in the lawn and such so I thought I would try it on the 4 wheeler. It seems to work and I was just wondering if it's a fluke or if you guys use this "trick" regularly.

Thanks.

The only "trick" I use regularly is a bait box with the proper poison in it. And they seem to be coming out with more tastier poison

all the time.

Paul,

Agreed, that is a trick I employ regularly. However, even if I killed the couple nesting, more would take their place.

Since the 4 wheeler is outside I am concerned about downstream poisoning. Are you aware of any effective poisons that absolutely don't have downstream effects and would work in that type of situation?

I keep bait stations placed in such areas as Paul mentioned in out buildings and such.

We also have mouse snap traps (4) in each vehicle. Two under the hood (one is placed on the battery and one on the air cleaner housing) and one in each of our side cap utility box access doors. We catch mice regularly each week in one or the other areas of the vehicle.

Mind you now our vehicles are on the road for service every day. We put a dab of Hercules putty on the back of each trap base and press the trap onto the surface area of choice and they stay set even when traveling every day on the highway.

The only down time for them is overnight until morning. They jump and run up the tires and rims to get to the frame and follow their way around to the place the meets their needs and get to nest building. Some I don't find right away. They get into our compartment that has our various types of gloves stored where that area doesn't get disturbed a lot. But when you get to the right spot out she will run with 3-4 young still clamped on to a teat as she beats feet to get away from the invasion into her nest site.

Or we have found whole kernel corn from some whole corn cob chunks we have in a container to use on occasion for eye appeal in a cage trap for rodents. They food cache them in our nitrile glove box at times. Go to get a pair of gloves and you can hear the rattle when you move the box. So you investigate to see what it is inside.

Now we just know what it is. But we break up that party quite frequently. Many times we just place a snap trap on the end of our pull out tray of our truck bed and catch them in the open along the side rail of the tray.

Our mechanics that do service on our vehicles get a bit shocked at times when they lean over under the hood to do some work or inspection and get a snap trap fired on their hand or arm someplace. Some aren't too happy when it happens as we get some comments when we pick up our vehicles. I think its all just in a days work.

Mice have no rules, they just are opportunists that take advantage of what we give them to work with.

Sounds like a tough road to hoe Bob. The 4 wheeler just doesn't have the kind of free "space" to even set a snap trap in the manner you are doing with your trucks. The main nest site on the one four wheeler was quite obvious which is why I put some hardware cloth up to keep them out of the intake and also tried the fox urine. Call me crazy but it seems to be working. Although it sounds like you'd have to dip your trucks in it to be effective. Ha.

I find all of these posts extremely interesting. Although we have an even dozen vehicles that are used in our business, as far as I

know, we have never had a rodent problem in any of them. I am wondering if this has to do with the fact that we also do a lot of pest

control and that all of those trucks have bait boxes as well as poison in them regularly?

Paul, here in Idaho frankly I've been lucky in terms of rodents and vehicles. I have had issues in my decoy trailer but that is something that sits for extended periods so hardly counts.

In Missouri, that was another story. We frequently had issues similar to Bob's where our landscaping trucks were under fire constantly.

I have noticed here that the mice don't want to cover exposed gravel to get to the vehicle and if we park it back away from the field next door, its a definite deterrent. That is owing to the fact that we have an abundance of birds of prey.

My fur shed got invaded this year for the first time. I but a bait tray out and the first night ALL the bait was gone. That was 5 days ago. I went in there today and WHEW I'm gonna have to find the mortuary.

What is funny about urine is it is an attractor to all 4 legged species we deal with

On a lot of older equipment , the insulation on the wires is made of corn meal. On my spare truck , I have had mice chew wires and it almost caught fire. I put bait stations near the truck and attached some bait blocks under the hood. Haven't checked the bait or stations in a while.

I almost set a game camera up on the 4 wheeler after I swabbed the urine on it. Ha

Run,

Does the Terad3 have any downstream poisoning effects that you know of?

I guess I don't understand the term "downstream poisoning". Our bait ( and we use several different types ) is kept in a sealed

container with two entrances large enough for a rat. There is a concrete slab inside so raccoons don't carry it away. The new design

is also more raccoon proof as far as reaching in for the bait and pulling it out. You can probably see the same thing at any Burger

King, McDonalds, etc. I don't know where the downstream poisoning comes in, with this type of set-up, but then I never came close to

being valedictorian either.

"downstream poisoning" = secondary poisoning

Our normal bait is Contrac Blox and it seems like if I don't cage trap the raccoons they will just keep fishing it out of the older

boxes and just keep eating it. I have found a number of dead mice inside of bait stations but never anything else anywhere near them.

And that's the way it's supposed to be but you never know with poison. I will say this; poisons have come an awfully long way since I

was a kid. People say they worked a lot better then, and they did. On every living thing!

Dave S: Thanks for the clarification, I did not know the proper terminology.

Run,
The only downstream posioning I'm worried about in this case is birds, specifically birds of prey. Could care less about posisoning any dogs, cats, skunks or coon. I get it about the bait boxes and that makes perfect sense, I guess I can just set the bait box near/under the ATV to see how it would work.

In other news however, the fox urine trick appears to still be working as I haven't seen any activity since I did that. Not saying that is the only reason I'm not getting them building in the ATV but something is working.