i have had some issues with rats in the shed i keep my chook & calf feed in. I threw in some paper wrapped paste baits on wednesday which all disappeared that night, today I discovered a dead rat which i thought was pretty large next to the shed early today when i was mowing. i had a look under the shed & saw another one peering at me so I got a gun & shot it.

it was 21cm from nose to the base of its tail, i won't post pics as its head is a little re-arranged but i'm pretty sure that is the biggest rat i have come across so far. can anyone confirm they have had larger?

Dad said that when he was younger and lived on a farm the dogs used to bring in rats this big. Held his hands out about 30cm I guess. Found a large dead one on our lawn (before the land behind us got developed) that was probably about as big as the one you described. Horrid things.

Bandicoot?

this one actually looked quite nice, it had a nice coat & was well fed on molases coated corn & maize & didn't have huge teeth so looked "tinda toot" as my 3 year old said.

Bandicoot?

nah, it didn't have the elongated snout or long rear legs.

my mate has a male rat alomst that size. I've seen water rats anout 30+cm

A friend was woken in the night by a consistent bang bang bang sound. When she investigated she found the cat, with a large rat in its mouth, trying to get through the catflap. The rat was too wide and the noise was the sound of the rat hitting the door as the cat tried repeatedly to come inside with its dinner. :sick:

I heard a noise behind the tv the other day, thought it was the filter of the QT (next to the TV), when I went to check, I saw a rat dash out and run behind our heater. Took hours but I managed to catch it in the end. Wasn't as big as yours, only about 17cm from nose to base of tail, but I consider that pretty huge for one found in my area. My cat must have brought it in, she likes to bring live things into the house and play with them indoors where there is less chance of it getting away :facepalm: . Can't say I'm too pleased with that. She brought in another rat a few days ago too, but at least it was dead, a smaller one, and had the decency to leave it on a old newspaper instead :roll:.

I used to keep pet rats actually, and my 3 were 23cm long (nose to base of tail), They would've been considered fairly large for a fancy rat, but I remember meeting other rat keepers who had half-wilds that grew to almost 30cm from nose to base of the tail . Since half-wilds get that large, I'd imagine a fully wild rat, if fed on a good diet, could probably reach a even bigger-size than that... I can't really picture it. Personally I rather like rats, but not the wild ones. Pet rats are amazing, and half-wilds, if raised from a young age are lovely too, but I can't stand wild rats, they actually smell terrible, are incredibly agile, and nothing at all like their tame counterparts .

I've been putting traps and poison in our roof trying to get all the rats that live up there. Not really sure how they're getting in. One of them was huge, tip to nose about the length from my elbow to my finger tips.

I don't know how but they seem to manage to eat the bait off the traps without setting them off, or sometimes setting them off but not getting caught. I have 1 big steel trap, another big plastic one and a little tiny old fashioned wood and wire type one. One of the rats looked like he managed to eat the bait off the two big traps then get caught by the little trap that I hadn't bothered baiting, just set it and put it down.

We had a rat once that chewed a hole through the floor to get inside at night and eat whatever it could find. You could hear it chewing the hole bigger every night...

On night 4 I set a rat trap. Sure enough, within 5 minutes of the lights going out we heard it chewing. A few minutes later the trap went bang so I jump out of bed and ran down to the trap. Sitting beside the trap (not caught) was a very stunned looking rat which was too fuddled to notice I was right in front of it. It only took a split second to instinctively pick up the rat trap and bang the rat over the head with it - no more rat... It would seem rats are pretty tough and even though rat traps are pretty mean, really aren't up to immediately killing the rat. However, they're not tough enough to handle a good hand-controlled rat trap tap to the head.

i had a look under the shed & saw another one peering at me so I got a gun & shot it.

badass.

It would seem rats are pretty tough and even though rat traps are pretty mean, really aren't up to immediately killing the rat.

I had a rat trap outside the back door at my old place. Heard it go bang then heard the trap flapping around. Went out and the rat had made it about 5m out to the garden where it had a hole that went under the house. Thing is it couldnt fit back in its hole with the trap attached :sml1:.

Not a very humane way to get rid of them.

Not a very humane way to get rid of them.

72 expended extremely humane ratkillers...

I don't think wifey would approve of me camping out in the attic waiting to take a shot...

she would if you were doing the ironing or something 'useful' while you waited......

she would if you were doing the ironing or something 'useful' while you waited......

But she would disapprove again when I put a hole through the rat, through the ceiling, through bedroom wall, the far bedroom wall, the living room wall and out through the ranch slider and probably through the brick wall on the far side of the courtyard.

Get some no more gaps...

horses for courses. 1000fps air rifle for rats, 308 for larger pests like dear. every job usually has it's tool

I would never take a 308 to my dear :lol:

and you wouldn't dare call her a pest either (at least not in her hearing)

I would never take a 308 to my dear :lol:

i am pleased you picked that up

My grandparents own a farm in Hamilton. There's wild cats rats rabbits ect. I was going into the shed and saw a grey cat like object... Thought it was a cat but no it was a huge rat! My uncle ended up shooting it. Was just over 40cm. Pretty scary stuff

that is a big rat

Yup. Crapped myself when I realized it was a rat :rotf:

horses for courses. 1000fps air rifle for rats, 308 for larger pests like dear. every job usually has it's tool

7.62 for everything.

7.62 for everything.

but that doesn't give you a good excuse to buy more shooters