A Martin Clunes Piece on Ratting with Jack Russells

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Host Martin Clunes does a short segment on ratting with Jack Russell Terriers. This is from August of 2008, and for some reason the piece is replayed in slow-motion on the second half of the clip.

Though it is mostly instinctive, a terrier needs little bit of experience to get really good at ratting. The best dogs tend to snap rat spines hard, drop them dead, and move on, as crunching on a rat for too long is a time-waster if more rats are boiling out from under a feed bunker, a load of hay, a trash tip, or a compost pile.

The location featured in this video seems to be raising pheasants for the shoots. Obviously, you cannot use rat poison in a place like that, nor do you have complete control over feed. Chicken and turkey farms are also famous for rats, as are dairy cow feed bunkers or any place where shelter (such as a hay mow) is in close proximity to feed.

Rat control today is far more advanced than it was 30 years ago. Today multiple types of bait are rotated so rats do not develop tolerance, professional plastic or metal bait-stations keep non-target animals out and so they can be placed rather thickly along alleys and rat runs, while computerized schedules remind owners to fill those bait stations on time and with the proper mix. The result: Far fewer places to rat today than there once were.

For some very basic information on ratting with terriers, see this section of Terrierman.com
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