Hi jilDD
In my experience it’s usually the bird food that initially attracts the rats, so that might be something you could minimise – cleaning up at dusk is good, but rats tend to start coming out during the day as well. The following is a link which contains several other links, some repetitive but I just put all the links I could find about rats at that time! But there are various ideas in there.
https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/forums/topic/rat-probelm/
I think it’s unlikely that a hog would dig a deep hole like a rat would – they’re more likely to dig holes under fences or slight dips under hog homes on the ground, that sort of thing. Rat holes – even if only bolt holes look a bit like burrows. But also quite narrow (in relation to the size of a hedgehog).
What I have done with ones here (which were only ever single holes) is pour water down them before I filled them in. On the assumption that the rat would come out if it’s bolt hole got a bit wet – I wouldn’t want to bury the rat and anyway it would probably try to dig it’s way out if it was in there. No rats have ever come out – luckily! But I’m fairly sure they were only bolt holes, rather than where the rat was living. But they like to have bolt holes as a place to ‘safely’ escape to near where they’re feeding, so if they are all filled it, it just deters them.
The problem I imagine, though, is that there may be other holes under your decking which you can’t reach. So depriving the rats of any food in the area might be the best way to go.
But yes, you could have supervised feeding of the hogs. I used to do that anyway, and watch all their interactions. I used to find that quite a few seemed to turn up during the couple of hours the food was there, as if they learned that it wouldn’t be there later. That worked quite well and had the advantage that I actually saw the hogs, rather than seeing them on video in the middle of the night – useful if there were any problems. But you also see so much more of their behaviour watching in real time.
If the rats don’t find any food, they are more likely to give up. So if you stop bird food falling and have supervised hog feeding, the rat/s might just give up and try somewhere else.
Alternatively give your cat a good talking to! Although I find that the many cats who visit here, have never managed to be here at the same time as any rats!
Good luck. Hope you find something that works.
