Tips for Maximizing the Effectiveness of Your Electronic Rat Trap

There are a lot of people who have had bad experiences with electronic rat traps.  They don’t think they’re very effective because the rat or rats aren’t going into them to be exterminated.  But this isn’t always the fault of the equipment, but many times can be the fault of the circumstances.  If you have an electronic rat trap set up and the rat isn’t going inside and being killed, then chances are that you’re either using the wrong bait, or else the rat is getting plenty of food from other sources.  Just for your information, rats absolutely love the smell of peanut butter and/or raw bacon.  If you aren’t using either of those as bait, then you aren’t really giving your electronic rat trap the opportunity to really shine.

But what about the other possibility.  What if the rat already has a luxurious supply of food elsewhere?  Most people don’t realize how clever rats are and how easy it is for them to break into cabinets, pantries, and other seemingly closed doors.  Not only that, but if you have house pets, then more than likely the rodent is feasting on your pet’s supply of food.  So in order to really make your electronic rat traps a success, you really need to eliminate your rodent’s luxurious living.  Lock up your pet’s food at night, check your cabinets thoroughly to see if there are any indications that the rat has been chewing on stored food supplies, and see if there are any easy access points to trash and other food sources.  Once you do those steps, you’ll find that your rodent has much less of an opportunity to feast.

At this point, your electronic rat trap will finally have the chance to do its job.  Rats just aren’t as curious as mice and other pests.  They’ll happily avoid the confined space of your electronic rat trap if they have a plentiful food source elsewhere.  If you know you have a rat problem and your electronic rat traps aren’t working, then it really must mean that the rats are finding ways to get full and happy elsewhere.  You really need to spend some time going over what those possible food sources might be and to eliminate them so that the rat can’t just have his midnight meal every night.  Hope these tips help!

Electronic Rat Trap Questions

Many people have a lot of questions surrounding electronic rat traps.  They want to know things like are they waterproof, will they short out if they get wet, can they cause fires, what is their voltage level?  While electronic rat traps differ by brand, they all have to overcome the same obstacles.  Most electronic rat traps in the industry are both waterproof and UV resistant.  Since most electronic rat traps will be sitting outdoors, even simply the dew would be able to short them out if they weren’t designed to be waterproof.  That being said however, it’s still very important for you to go with a reputable brand.

Not all electronic rat traps are created equal.  Some of them have weaker voltage levels and safety features than others.  This can make them not only ineffective, but also dangerous.  That’s one of the reasons why we created this site, not only to promote this form of pest control, but also to do reviews on some of the different brands out there to help you make a wise decision on which one to buy.  There can be some big differences between models, and most of the better brands aren’t very much more expensive.  They’re definitely worth the extra $10 you’ll pay in being able to have both efficiency and peace of mind.

So what happens if the electronic rat trap isn’t powerful enough to kill the rats I’m dealing with?  Rodents can be quite different in size.  Some rats can get pretty huge.  But that’s why most of the good brands have a built in feature that will only allow an animal of a certain size to enter the compartment.  Most electronic rat traps look like mailboxes, and they have a door through which a rodent can enter.  Generally speaking, they’re designed in such a way that if an animal can fit inside the compartment, it will be killed easily by the level of voltage.

But what happens if the rats I’m dealing with are too big to fit in the compartment but still want the food inside and begin damaging the rat trap?  In this case, you may have a problem.  If you’re truly dealing with some big rats, then the electronic rat trap might not be the best technology for you.  Though the compartment is large enough to fit most any size rodent, for exceptionally large rats, they may try and claw up the rat trap to get to the food inside, which can create a dangerous situation.  So be advised that this has happened on rare occasion.

Why are Electronic Rat Traps Superior?

Electronic rat traps are just the best form of pest control, as far as we’re concerned.  Not only are they highly effective, they’re generally pretty cheap and clean.  Not only that, but they’re definitely the most humane pest control method for rats, mice and rodents on the market.  Traditional rat traps often do a poor job of killing a rat.  They’re designed to break the neck of a rat upon contact, but they rarely work as designed.  Often, they’ll hit a rat on the shoulder blades, or else on another part of the animal’s body, trapping and seriously injuring them, but not killing them immediately.  This causes undue suffering to the animal.

In other cases, when sticky traps are used, the animal lies helpless for many hours or even days, if not discovered immediately, and will often seriously maim or injure themselves in an attempt to escape.  Poison is an effective killer, doing the job more quickly than traps, but poisons have definite drawbacks as well.  If house pets are living on the property and find a rat killed by poisons and eat it, it can cause them to get sick and in some cases to die as well.  Though most poisons are designed not to be powerful enough to kill a full-sized house pet, they still have a definite chance of making them sick.  But this brings up another issue.  Because of the fact that rat poison makers can’t make their poison strong enough that a house pet will be harmed by it, this means that depending on how much a rat has eaten of the poison, it can take them quite a long time to die an unpleasant death.  This is another area where poison can be quite inhumane.

That’s why we really love electronic rat traps.  Not only are they quick and effective, they don’t cause the rodent any undue suffering.  They provide a lethal dose of electricity, in many cases up to 8500 volts, which quickly terminates their life.  Electronic rat traps are also nice in that they’re so easy to use.  A person simply needs to charge them properly, put a bit of food in the back of the device and turn it on.  Usually if there is a dead rodent in the device, it will light up a special light.  The person never has to touch the rodent, but can simply slide it out and dispose of it however they choose.  All in all, electronic rat traps are a great way to go.