Rats can cause many problems for our homes and commercial places. They can transmit dangerous diseases to humans and destroy our valuable agricultural goods. As a result, the massive population of rats has become the greatest fear in America, especially in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Using the best rat poison is an effective solution to help you eradicate this disgusting animal around your property. I have put together the 7 top-rated toxins for rats to help you get an idea of the options available.
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Top 7 Best Rat Poison on the Market 2022
Product Image | Product Name | Features | Price |
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Tomcat Bait Chunx Pail | Most Effective Rat Poison | See latest Price | |
Tomcat Rat & Mouse Killer Refillable Bait Station | Best Child & Pet-safe Rat Poison | See latest Price | |
d-CON Refillable Corner Fit Mouse Poison Bait Station | Best Rat Poison For Attic | See latest Price | |
J T Eaton704-AP Apple Bait Block for Mice and Rats | Effective Rat Poison With Pleasant Smell | See latest Price | |
Farnam Just One Bite II 1.5-Ounce Pellet Packs | Strongest Rat Poison | See latest Price | |
Neogen Ramik Fish Rodenticide Bars | Best Rat Poison For Outside | See latest Price | |
Neogen Havoc XT Rat Bait Block | Best for Agricultural Building | See latest Price |
In-depth 7 Most Effective Rat Poison Reviews
#1 Tomcat Bait Chunx Pail – Most Effective Rat Poison
Tomcat Bait Chunx Pail is the best rat killer poison. Each chunk of this rat poison contains 4 pounds of bait that can eliminate a high population of rats, including Norway rats, roof rats, and house mice.
This rat poison contains 99.99% Bromethalin – a potent acute toxicant. This poison kills rats instantly after 2 days, which is a non-anticoagulant with a luring effect preventing rats from feeding.
Hence, this bait is more efficient and faster than anticoagulant baits and can be used for a significant population of rats. You can use less poison to eliminate more rats. Each bait block can kill approximately 12 mice, depending on the rat’s type and size.
Since this bait contains a little wax texture, it is resistant to water, moisture, and mold and can maintain its effect for a long time. You can use it in all seasons and all weather conditions, provided that you cover all affected areas with the bait.
The bait is available in blocks with edges that smell like a candy bar, a preferred form that rats love to gnaw.
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#2 Tomcat Rat & Mouse Killer Refillable Bait Station – Best Child & Pet-safe Rat Poison
The Tomcat Bait Station is a safe and efficient mouse and rat poison to get rid of rats in your home or apartment. Each bait block can kill up to 3 rats. You can purchase one or multiple blocks based on the number of rats on your property.
This bait station is safe for kids and pets since it is designed with a whole body to ensure only rats can access the trap or bait. After the trap has killed the rats, your pets and kids can’t open its body to remove the rats.
Thanks to the see-through window, you can quickly know when you need to refill the station with new bait.
The station is made from plastic and weighs only 0.13 pounds. Hence, you can place it in any small places indoors or outdoors, like at the garage or entry doors, below windows, in your kitchen, in your garden, or anywhere that rats love to come and hide.
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#3 d-CON Refillable Corner Fit Mouse Poison Bait Station – Best Rat Poison For Attic
Rats running in the attic while you are sleeping is annoying. Their sharp teeth can mask the wood and dry walls or severe house damages. They can even control electrical cable and cable insulation, resulting in electrical fire hazards.
d-CON Station is a valuable solution to eliminate this destructive animal. This product package includes 01 trap station and 18 poison for rats that can be used around your house.
Since this rat bait is available in a station, you can set it on the roof and forget it. Then, after mice have entered and eaten the d-CON bait, they will get back to their nest and start to die on day 3.
This rat poison is safe for humans and pets because it contains Cholecalciferol as the active ingredient, and there are no neurotoxins or anticoagulants. In addition, the rat is available in a closed station, so pets and kids can’t reach or eat it.
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#4 J T Eaton704-AP Apple Bait Block for Mice and Rats – Effective Rat Poison With Pleasant Smell
JT Eaton 704-AP comes in blocks that are bigger than your pellet size. You will get 64 blocks per 1-ounce container, sufficient to kill a large mouse and mice population in commercial buildings. These bait blocks have center holes, so you can also put them in bait stations.
This rat poison has an anticoagulant formulation and a pleasant apple flavor. This formulation causes internal bleeding and death in rats within 48 hours after ingestion. However, you need to throw the corpses and clean the area soon before they cause cross-contamination with other creatures in the area.
This rat bait is not recommended to use around your house, especially if you have children or pets. The overuse of this poison can cause death to wild animals like rabbits or squirrels.
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#5 Farnam Just One Bite II 1.5-Ounce Pellet Packs – Strongest Rat Poison
Farnam Just One Bite II is the strongest rat poison to use in agriculture to keep your barn free of rodents. Each container has 86 bait counts that can kill roof rats, house mice, meadow voles, and Norway rats.
This rat poison has been a reliable choice for farmers for more than 30 years for its effectiveness. This poison kills rats in one feeding. After gnawing this bait, rats will die after 4-5 days, so there will be no bait shyness.
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#6 Neogen Ramik Fish Rodenticide Bars – Best Rat Poison For Outside
Neogen Ramik Fish is the best rat poison to buy to use all year long in all weather conditions. This anticoagulant bait comes in bar formula with a fish flavor with grains that seems appealing but fatal for Norway rats, house mice, and roof rats. Rats will leave and start to die after 4-5 days of consuming this bait bar.
Many people love this all-weather rat poison because you can use it indoors or outdoors. You can even put it in wet areas because it’s moisture- and mold-resistant.
However, this rat bait is harmful to babies and pets, so you can only put it in areas they can’t reach. Lay them in the attic, outside your farms, or anywhere that rats often come.
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#7 Neogen Havoc XT Rat Bait Block – Best for Agricultural Building
Neogen Havoc XT is a top-rated poison in and around agricultural buildings to kill Warafin resistant Norway rats and house mice.
This poison contains Brodifacoum – the strongest anticoagulant rodenticide available on the market. This formula can kill the rodents after a few minutes, much faster than other counterparts.
Thanks to its immediate effect, this Havoc rat poison is often used to eliminate many rats. But the most significant part of this bait is that it leaves no stinking smell on the corpses as it dehydrates the rat’s body.
This bait is available in block type so that you can put it anywhere rats love to infest. Each block has a center hole, allowing you to secure the bait using metal wires.
However, according to the Federal Environmental regulation, this poison is prohibited from using in residential areas, since it can cause death for eagles, owls, and other non-target wildlife. It is also quite costly compared to other home-used rat poisons.
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Buying Guide: How To Choose The Best Rat Poison?
Types of poison
There are 3 types of poison (or rodenticides):
- Calcium releasers: These rodenticides level up the amount of calcium in the bloodstream, then kill the internal organs of rats.
- Acute toxins: These rat poisons are gradually released into the rat’s bloodstream
- Anticoagulants: These poisons slow down the blood clotting of the rat, causing internal bleeding until it is wholly dead. These poisons are hazardous for the rats and people who have to dispose of their carcasses.
Calcium releasers and acute toxins are less messy than anticoagulants.
Toxic or Non-toxic
Rat poison is classified as toxic or non-toxic based on its effects on humans and other animals. Therefore, you should carefully read the product’s warning labels and use the poison appropriately.
Although non-toxic rat poisons are not fatal, frequently contacting a high dose of these chemicals can lead to harmful health effects like dropping in blood pressure or flushing. Thus, you should keep non-toxic rat poisons in a safe environment like toxic ones.
Slow-acting or Fast-acting
Fast-acting poisons are widely used to eliminate a large number of rats at the same time. When a rat takes a proper dose of fast-acting poison, it can quickly get ill and die in under 2 days.
However, these poisons are prohibited in California since the high level of toxic chemicals in the rat carcasses can be poisonous to nearby wild animals if they accidentally eat them. Another drawback of fast-acting poisons is that other rats can avoid eating the toxins if they notice their members being sick and dying after eating the poisons.
Slow-acting poisons can’t kill rats immediately like fast-acting ones. However, they don’t affect other rodents in the same group, meaning that others can easily spot if the poison is fatal for them or not.
Required dosage
The required dosage of a rat poison indicates the amount of poison it has to eat before dying. And it depends on whether this poison is fast-acting or snow-acting.
Fast-acting poisons require a small dose to take effect. Some aggressive rats can eat more than this dose and quickly die after a day or less. On the contrary, slow-acting poison requires repetitive feeding for a few days.
You should read the product packaging to know the directions and the exact dosage you should use on rats.
Ease of use
All rat rodenticides are designed to be attractive to rats. However, you need to leave them outside for a while to let rats approach and eat them.
Thus, you should choose a rat poison that is easy to replace and use. You can also purchase refillable feeding stations to keep these toxins safe and effective until rats eat them.
How To Safely Use Rat Poison?
Below are some helpful cautions to use rat poison safely and effectively,
- Each bait should be placed from 15 to 50 feet apart to attract the surrounding rodents. If you have a large rat infestation, you may even need to place baits every 10 feet to allow all rats in the group to consume the poison simultaneously.
- Always wear gloves when placing rodenticides so that your smell doesn’t discourage the rats from eating the poison.
- Don’t move the poison once you have placed it. Rats will return one more time to consume poison once they have discovered it.
- Remove other types of food around the bait. When rats have only a single food choice (poison), they will consume it instead of picking up other food sources.
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
1. Is Rat Poison Harmful To Cats?
Mouse and rat poison is poisonous for cats and dogs. Its toxic level depends on the active ingredients, the amount of poison your pets digest versus their weight, your pet’s medical history record, and whether your pet has eaten poison before.
2. Is Rat Poison Safe For Squirrels?
Wild-life animals like squirrels will die from rat poison. So if you have problems with squirrels, you should use a more humane, safer, and more effective method to get rid of squirrels.
3. Can Rat Poison Kill Humans?
Pesticides to kill mice, and rodents might be poisonous or harmful to humans. For safety, you should avoid contact with the bait and keep it out of reach of children, domestic animals, and pets as much as possible.
4. Can Rat Poison Expire?
Rat poison doesn’t expire or degrade. It can last for a few years or a few days as long as it’s dry, and the smell of the bait still can attract mice and rodents to it.
5. Are Rat Poison Fumes Toxic?
The smell of rat poison might be harmful and even cause health effects for humans and animals. Therefore, you should avoid breathing in or touch the bait.
6. How does Just One Bite rat poison work?
Bromadiolone, the active toxic substance in Just One Bite, will affect the rat’s liver, leading to a fast but delayed death.
7. What are rats afraid of?
Apart from killing rats with rat poison, you can use natural deterrents to prevent rats from entering your property. Some safe homemade odors that are annoying to rats are ammonia, peppermint oil, pepper flakes, mothballs, caulk, and steel wool.
Adopting a rat predator as a pet is another creative way to prevent rats in your house. You can choose a predator like dogs, cats, snakes, weasels, or ferrets.
8. What substances are in rat poisons?
Most rat poisons nowadays contain some substances like warfarin, naphthylthiourea, brodifacoum, diphenadione. These ingredients are non-toxic to humans and widely used to kill these rodents.
In the past, there were also some substances like arsenic, lead and thallium compounds, zinc phosphide, strychnine, phosphorus (yellow or white). These substances were then discontinued due to their toxicity in humans.
9. What to do if my pet eats rat poison?
If you are seeing your pets eat rat poison or suspect that your pets have consumed this toxicity, you should contact the nearest veterinary office immediately for medical treatment.
Also, remember to collect some information (if possible): the remaining poison, the rodenticide packaging, the amount of poison your pets have consumed, and the exact time they have ingested this poison.
Final Words
Now, you can select the best rat poison to eradicate rats and house mice in your home, agricultural buildings, and commercial areas. I often choose Tomcat Bait Chunx Pail as my top favorite bait. This rat poison is affordable, weather-resistant, and can kill many rats in one feed.
If you want to find rat poison that kills without odor, you can take a look at RatX All-Natural Rat and Mouse Rodenticide. This rat poison can reduce 90% of the rat decomposition smell. The pitfall of this toxin is that you might find it harder to detect and remove dead rats.