Today I reached the bottom of the stack - and realised what has been attracting his attention! And it's not very nice.
Doesn't matter where you live, you are never very far from a rat: in the country, especially if you have animals, rats are constantly in evidence. Mostly you only see where they have been - droppings, footprints in the snow, broken feed sacks, holes everywhere........ If you see a live rat scampering about, then you know the population is getting out of control.
Everytime I see a rat, I put down poison.
We always have holes in the feedsacks if we leave them unopened in the feedroom for more than a couple of days. I'd particularly noted that sow rolls were top on the list for attack....
A month or two back when I went out to check the horses at bedtime I caught sight of a rat darting from one corner of the hay barn to another. So I put down some poison.
Today under the pallets which we use to keep the straw off the floor and away from the walls I found something I've never seen before - a fully formed rat nest - see first photo - complete with rat. She'd wound the straw round tightly between the pallets and had interspersed the straw with sow rolls - no need for mum or any little ones to travel too far to eat whilst suckling. And the whole corner (photo 2) was full of yet more sow rolls - probably at least 2 or 3 lbs. There were droppings everywhere but, also, as the third photo shows, a large amount were concentrated in what appears to be a latrine, of which I found two others. A really tidy arrangement. I've never had to consider what a rat's nest would look like but I suppose I thought it would be just a muddy hole underground. This one was quite the 'penthouse'!
And I am really pleased that the rat ate the bait before the babies were born otherwise I might have had a very nasty surprise indeed when I moved the last bale of straw away!
But the dog's nose was right......
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