Salt can kill rats. According to the American Heart Association Journal research, rats require about 0.03%-0.05% of salt daily to achieve average growth and development. If a rat eats more salt, its health and well-being can be negatively affected.
If rats take lots of salt, they will die due to severe cell dehydration and kidney failure. Too much salt in a rat’s body also causes severe damage to its intestines and stomach walls, which can cause death.
High consumption of salt over 70g activates the swelling and failure of organs like kidneys and the body’s shutdown in rats. That is due to the loss of body fluids and the rat not finding and drinking water for refilling.
A salt-poisoned rat may also die due to a lack of ability to move freely and sneak around to get food and the organs’ failure to flush out harmful substances.
How to kill rats with salt
Kill rats with salt, within two to three days, by mixing it with their favorite food. But first, before trying to salt poison rats, here are a few things to remember.
- If rats drink water after taking excessive salt, they will not die. Water can neutralize and reduce he corrosive effects of salt in them.
- Avoid using salt to poison rats in small, closed spaces because it becomes difficult to kill enough rats, and the odor will be great. Place salt poison for rats in large, open environments, such as inside your store, where you keep the farm produce.
- Combine salty food with something more poisonous and practical to eliminate a rat infestation. Expect excellent results if your plan involves salty meals, traps, and commercial poison.
- Limit food access, forcing rats to try eating the salted bait.
Subsequently, below is how to kill rats with salt.
1. Detergent and salt
Add sugar and flour to a bowl or small container and stir them well. Add water and continue mixing to form a thick paste mixture.
Then, combine laundry detergent and salt into a uniform solution. A laundry detergent is an excellent addition containing toxic chemicals like bleach and phosphate. Pour the resulting mixture into several tins or containers and station them in different rat hiding spots throughout the house.
Monitor whether the detergent and salt mixture works before trying other rat-killing methods. If you find dead rats, it means the salt works.
2. Cheese and salt
For unknown reasons, most cartoon shows present rats as lovers of cheese. The meal is not the rat’s favorite. But rats can steal and eat cheese because they eat whatever is available to survive. Cheese is an excellent bait with its sharp smell felt widely by rats.
Like other animals, a rodent relies on its strong sense of smell to track and locate its next meal.
Apart from cheese, other strong-scented meals, for example, oily fish and bacon, can also come in handy as baits. Just ensure that the salt quantity on the feed for baiting rats is over 70g, and the rat eats all of it.
3. Rat chow and salt
Rat chow is a diet designed to support rats’ breeding, growth, and development in a laboratory or testing environment. Combine about 950g of rat chow with 80g of salt and put it in a container or bowl. The killer diet needs proper blending so rats can eat it all without getting overwhelmed with the burning sensation.
Killing rats with salt and detergent
Killing rats with salt and detergent is possible by following this simple procedure.
- Assemble gloves, an empty container, and sufficient quantities of sweet food, salt, water, flour, and detergent.
- Put on your gloves, pour flour and sugar into the empty container, and mix them well. Add a tiny amount of water to create a sticky paste.
- Add two or three spoons of your detergent to the thick paste and stir accordingly to make rat poison.
- Place the bait mixture in small tins or plates and position them in places you suspect are infested with rats. A rat eating the mixture will die within 2 or 3 days, provided it does not have water to drink. Acute poisoning means rats do not die instantly. Too much salt in a rat’s system may cause it to be unable to hear and see, making it challenging to hunt.
Alternatively, mix water with salt and your favorite detergent. The smell of salt or a liquid detergent must not become too much to scare away the rats you want to kill. Pour the solution into a spraying bottle, and spray it around areas frequented by rats.
The disadvantage of applying a salt solution spray is that rats will not eat the mixture causing their deaths. The spray only makes rats afraid of attacking some areas within the home.
What can you mix with salt for rats?
You can mix cheese, rat chow, milk, chocolate, or other sweet-scented food with salt (table or Epsom salts). A snack or a treat is for luring rats to come and eat the mixture with too much salt to poison it without knowing.
One main benefit of killing rats with salt is that the substance is readily available in most if not all, homes. Also, salt as a rodent poison is less dangerous to human or pet health than other rat poisons. Although accidental salt ingestion may affect your pet, it is less damaging, unlike rodenticides that often kill instantly.
It is also important to note that salt is not among natural rat deterrents. Salt can only kill rats if they invest it in large amounts but it will not repel them from an area.
Facts
Within the normal range, salt is not poisonous to rats. If the consumption of any salt quantity were toxic to rats, an infestation would usually result in many dead rats. That is because rats eat plenty of salty foods in your kitchen when you are away or sleeping at night. A rat can eat almost anything in the kitchen, including salted potato crisps, soup, and peanuts, without getting poisoned.
Rats prefer food with low salt. A rat encountering a pile of salt would not be interested in eating it. Ingesting excess table salt or Epsom salt will make the body lose water vital for various organ processes. Without replacing lost fluids, the body suffers from having less water, making organs function below expected levels or stop working.
A mixture of large amounts of sodium with food used as bait can kill rodents infesting your home. If you have a much larger infestation, a salt poison may not be enough to assist with a population that breeds and multiplies faster. Salt ingestion also does not kill rats in a flash.
In conclusion, as a consequence, combine salt poisoning with other equally reliable rodent prevention and control methods. One such method is a solution of baking soda and vinegar.
Baking soda can also be mixed with cornmeal and your preferred sweetener. When consumed by rats, the homemade poison reacts with the acid in the stomach to produce carbon dioxide, a highly toxic gas. The accumulation of the gas inside a rat causes blockages internally and suffocation.
References:
- University of Nebraska: Rodent Control Using Salt
- New South Wales Department of Agriculture: Barium carbonate poisoning of rats
Calina Mabel has over 15 years of experience in the field of journalism and communications. Currently, Calina Mabel is the Content Writer for categories such as Cockroach, Ants, Bed Bugs, Mosquito, Rodent, Termite, and Flies on Pestweek.com. She aims to build content for these categories with a focus on providing valuable and accessible information to readers, in order to create the world’s largest knowledge community about Pests.
All content written by Calina Mabel has been reviewed by Emily Carter.