Rat Poison

Poison is not the answer to permanent rat control

Rat poison is designed to kill rats, but killing individual rats doesn’t solve the real problem of how they are getting into your building or property in the first place. Modern rat poisons are slow-acting and often require multiple feeds, yet rats are cautious, selective, and increasingly resistant to the active ingredients used. As a result, rat poison frequently fails, is ignored, or provides only a temporary reduction while the underlying infestation continues. Even when poison appears to work, it treats the symptom rather than the cause, allowing rats to return as soon as conditions remain unchanged.

Effective rat control comes from prevention, not poison. Rats infest buildings because defects in the building fabric provide access, shelter, and warmth — and while those conditions exist, new rats will simply replace any that are poisoned. Rat poison also creates additional problems, including rats dying within the structure, leading to decomposition smells and secondary infestations. By identifying how rats are entering a property and permanently blocking those routes, the infestation is stopped at its source. This is the approach Pestology takes: no rat poison, no traps, and no temporary fixes — just expert investigation, targeted rat-proofing, and long-term solutions that keep properties rat-free for good.

Poisoning rats was man’s solution once he grew tired of chasing them with a shovel – the bait does the work for him and he can focus on tackling the other challenges in life.

Man came up with this solution a very long time ago and over the centuries the poisons have changed and so too have the rats response and behaviour to them.

These days rat poisons have evolved to be chronic acting and requiring multiple feeds as well as containing Bitrex, mould inhibitors, fluorescent dyes and more to up the ante in the man versus rat arms race.

Bottom line is it won’t solve the problem – it will just treat the symptoms.

Rats infest buildings when certain conditions apply – the rat has a need (shelter & warmth) and the building infrastructure facilitates it (drain defect, hole above ground, etc.)

Whilst those conditions remain, the rats will always be there – any you kill off through using rat poison are simply replaced with others.

If you want a permanent fix, rat poison isn’t the way, you have to deny the rats needs by tackling the building infrastructure deficits – this is the only way to resolve your rat problem.

Rat poison kills rats by causing them to haemorrhage internally in order to slowly slip them into a coma and ultimately death. Poisoned rats tend to die ‘in their beds’ when this process begins and for these scenarios this means in your building fabric.

So aside from a short-sighted approach, rat poisons also cause powerful decomposition smells and huge blow fly infestations as a by-product.

That’s assuming the rats eat the rat poison you introduce – generally the rats won’t eat the poison, plus certain populations have developed high resistance levels to some of the actives used in rat poison so you may just end up feeding them.

Pestology doesn’t use rat poison in any of our rat control works as we understand they have no role in fixing these problems. We believe in permanent solutions and leave rat poison to the unprofessionals.