Our new baby

We have been thinking about getting a dog for some time now, this week we did it.
Our new baby is a two and a half year old Catahoula Leopard x named Ash, she came to us from the SPCA.
We know very little about her background, but she is very well behaved, obeys instructions and doesn't bark. She responds very well to June and our grandson Jordan but is quite timid with me suggesting she may have had some bad experiences at the hands of males in the past. After just two days she is beginning to warm to me.

We had never heard of the Catahoula Leopard before; they are from the Catahoula Parish of Louisiana, and are dogs descended from Native American-created breeds. They are one of the longest surviving North American breeds.

We are very happy to give Ash a new home, after only 2 days she is very much at home with us.

Attacking the rodents

We have begun poisioning the rodents around the house, We have not had any problems but we want to reduce the rat population to improve the chances of birds nesting over the next few months.

We have manufactured 11 bait stations using 100mm drain flow left over from the house build. I cut 500mm sections then used a hole saw to cut a 80mm hole near the centre. A further 11 100mm lengths were cut and about 1/4 cut from the side to make lids that clip easily over the centre hole.

We have placed 6 bait stations on the other side of the stream spaced out between the container thru to the quarry, the remaining 5 are spaced evenly along the south boundary.

Bait station with the lid removed before adding more bait.
 
  

















Bait station nestled in the bush.









We went through $65 of rat bait in the first week, since then we have started using possum bait which has the same active ingredient but is 1/3 the cost. The rats didn't seem to mind the difference.

Three weeks on, the consumption of bait is starting to reduce so we must be having an impact on the rat population. We will need to keep up poisening the rats because all we are creating is a small vacuum in the rat population which will continue to be replenished by the surrounding rat populations.