Better Rodent Control with Tastier Bait
Why Our Custom “Squirrel Butter” Recipe Works So Well at Trapping Mice & Rats
If you've ever set a mouse trap with a dab of peanut butter and come back to find the bait licked clean (with no mouse…), you’d probably agree that typical rodent bait can leave something to be desired.
It works well until it doesn't. Over the last 10 years, we’ve found that conventional bait for mouse and rat traps (i.e. simple peanut butter or a piece of cheese) gets the job done most of the time. But *most* of the time creates a lot of complaints and callbacks when you're running traps across hundreds of homes.
Customers get tired of that runaround pretty quickly, and so did we. And that’s what sent us down a multi-year rabbithole of experimenting with many delicious ingredients to develop a more irresistible bait.
How We Got Here…
We kept notes on what worked and what didn't across hundreds of jobs in our Michigan service area.
For example…
Bacon fat got lots of attention but spoiled too fast in the field. Nutella was inconsistent (and a bit overpriced…). Bird seed, freeze-dried crickets, cranberries – all test ingredients at one point or another. Cheese, despite its reputation, was one of the more disappointing base ingredients we tested. The problem with most of these is that rodents are naturally suspicious of anything that smells off to them. Too processed, or too foreign and they won't touch it.
They're also drawn to specific combinations of fat, protein, and natural aroma in ways that most off-the-shelf options don't account for. Every batch that didn't perform the way we wanted taught us something, and over time we got a much clearer picture of what actually works.
What We Use Now
We landed on a custom “Squirrel Butter” recipe to trap mice, rats, squirrels, and other rodents that are inside your home or business.
We mix it by hand once a month so it's always fresh. The core ingredients we can share:
Freeze-Dried Blueberries*
Peanut Butter
Raw Honey (the good stuff!)
Black Walnuts
Sunflower Seed Oil
A couple other ingredients that we're keeping to ourselves :)
Blueberries* surprised us when we first started using them. But their scent carries a long way and draws rodents in better than almost anything else we tested. Combined with the fat and protein content in the rest of the blend (which is staggeringly high, by the way), it brings our trap closure rate close to 100%.
One thing that really bears repeating: great bait alone won't resolve a rodent infestation
Because if they can still get into your home or business, you'll just continue catching more of them.
While that’s better than nothing, you’ll still need to hire a pest control company to do proper exterior exclusion work to ensure they don’t continue finding their way in. That means sealing up entry points should happen concurrently with trapping and removing the critters that are already living in your attic or walls. We’ve written about how to locate entry points if you're not sure where to start!
If you’re interested in purchasing some of this squirrel butter for DIY use, reach out to us and we’ll let you know if we start selling it! A few of the leading contenders for the product name are:
Uncle Joe’s Rodent Deceiver
Big Ben’s Boot Butter
Jeremy’s Sneaky Snack
And if you want us to come take a look at your situation, give us a shout by clicking on the contact button below! Inspections are almost always free.
