217 



for the animals. A pair of rats often make a corn shock their home 

 and soon destroy both grain and fodder. 



Com in cribs is often damaged by rats. Many cribs are built close 

 to the ground, and rats take up their abode under the floor. Thev 

 soon gnaw through the wooden barrier and have free access to the 

 gram. They shell the corn and eat the soft part of the kernels, wast- 

 mg much more than they eat. They carry the grain into under- 

 ground burrows and bring up moist soil from below, which in contact 

 with the gram makes it moldy and unfit for market or for feedmg to 

 stock. A number of farmers have reported the loss by rat depreda- 

 tions of from a fifth to a half of the contents of a large corn crib during 

 a single winter. * 



An Iowa farmer, writing to an agricultural journal, relates the 

 followmg experience: 



We had about 2,000 bushels of corn in three cribs to which rats ran, and they ate and 

 destroyed about one-fourth of the corn. Much of it was too dirty to put through the 

 grinder until it had been cleaned an ear at a time. All the time we were poisoning 

 and trapping the rats. We killed as high as 300 rats in two days and could hardly miss 

 them. They destroyed more than enough com to pay taxes on 400 acres of land.a 



Throughout the United States, but especially in the West and 

 South, com is often stored for months in rail or other open pens, to 

 which rats have free access. Often the loss in a single season 

 would pay for the construction of rat-proof cribs, or at least for wire 

 netting, that would fully protect the crop. 



SMALL GRAINS. 



Much has been written about the rat as a house and barn pest, 

 but its depredations in the fields have usually been overlooked. In 

 some localities the common rat, as well as the house mouse, swarms 

 in the fields, especially in summer, and subsists entirely upon the 

 farmers' crops. 



Stacked grain is peculiarly exposed to rat depredations. In the 

 United States, although the cost of protection is small, rats are 

 seldom fenced away from stacks, and, if threshing is delayed, serious 

 loss results. Often, at the removal of a stack, large numbers of rats 

 are discovered, which have been living at the expense of the farmer. 

 As early as 1832 a farmer in Frederick County, Md., with the help 

 of men and dogs, killed 217 large brown rats from one stack of rye.* 

 In England instances are on record of the killing of over a thousand 

 rats from one stack of wheat. 



The destruction of feed by rats is a serious loss not only on the 

 farm but also in city and village. The feed bin or barrel is often 

 left uncovered and rats swarm to the banquet thus exposed. Small 



" Missouri Valley Farmer, April, 1907. 



6Am. Turf. Register, vol. 3, p. 632, August, 1832. 



