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The RAT TAX

Here’s a tax you don’t have to pay.

Rats and Mice can cost a farm a lot of money each year.

This cost is the hidden RAT TAX.

Amount of food lost is underestimated

The real problem is the losses are unrecognised because they

take place daily in miniscule amounts. Disregarding all the other

damage rats do to buildings etc, feed losses due to rodent

consumption, spillage and contamination is the most obvious cost.

Most farmers grossly under estimate the amount of feed lost. Scientists have computed feed losses at 60- 90 gm per rat per day including 30 -60 gm eaten and the rest spilled or made unfit for feeding. A loss of say 40 gm per rat per day may not sound much but if you are paying $300 per tonne of feed the cost of housing 1 rat for 1 year is $4.38. If we assume there are only 300 rats in a shed that’s a tax of $1314.00 you need not have paid. And these are conservative estimates.

To take the analogy further. Suppose a layer or broiler shed has

a population of 400 rats. Just to be conservative assume that

each rat only spoils or eats 50 gm of feed per day. That’s 20 Kg of

feed per day per shed or 7.3 tonnes of feed lost to rodents each year.

That’s enough (assuming a 2:1 feed conversion) for a further 1825 x 2 Kg

broilers or 3600 dozen eggs.

It might seem impossible that a farmer could “miss” that much feed

but it is so easy to do because the feed disappears in tiny amounts

daily.

This loss is the RAT TAX

How many rats on the farm?

To estimate the rodent population a good rule of thumb to follow is that if an occasional rat is seen during daylight hours there will be another 300 -1000 present in the facilty.

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