Published on 28/04/2023
“The soft bait is irresistible. Even more attractive than other food sources.”
The UPL NZ northern South Island regional manager says Generation Soft Bait has reimagined rodenticides using a combination of hard science and rat psychology.
The disease carrying, and feed, building, and machinery damaging rodents are notoriously cunning. And among the most serious mammalian pests ever known. But de Jong says Generation Soft Bait works well even when targeting bait shy rat infestations. He says the specially developed vegetable oil and crushed grain-based formulation gets rats’ attention faster, with the soft bait’s paper ensuring the tempting aroma disperses more widely.
It’s also easy to deploy by skewering the plasticine-like bait on the metal rod, or wire within the bait station. The smallest non-dispersible bait on the market, Generation Soft Bait kills rapidly and in a single feed. Two to three grams kills a rat and 0.3-0.4 gram mouse.
To put that into perspective, a rat's average daily dietary intake is 20 grams per day and three grams per day for mice.
Generation Soft Bait also won’t leak or melt and has very good moisture tolerance.
The bait’s active, difethialone 25 ppm, which rodents can’t detect, is the most advanced anti-coagulant on the market, UPL NZ says. There is no known genetic resistance among rodent populations.
New Zealand has four species of introduced rodents – the Norway rat, the ship rat, the Polynesian rat (kiore), and the house mouse.
The ‘native’ kiore is large but usually only found in the bush. The others, de Jong says, will be all too familiar to most. Rats reach sexual maturity at eight to 12 weeks and mate year-round, multiplying to almost plague-like proportions in a very short time.
Population explosions are often linked to mast years for native tree and flower seed production, around every two to five years. “Rats and mice gorge on the seeds and numbers soar.”
de Jong says domestic pet owners, naturally, have concerns over rodenticide use. But he’d like to put their minds at ease.
Poisons should always be handled in accordance with the label and stored out of reach or children, cats, and dogs, ideally in a locked cabinet. Bait stations must always be used.
But he says secondary poisoning – where a pet eats a dead rodent – is unlikely with Generation Soft Bait.
First, dogs or cats would need to ingest improbably large numbers of carcases to suffer real ill effects. Second, rats often return to their nests to die, either in trees or roof cavities or underground, so are not accessible. Generation Bait Stations must always be used with both Soft and Block Baits.
Generation Smart Baits and Bait Stations are available exclusively from PGG Wrightson and Fruitfed Supplies.