VIDEO: Curbing Rat Fertility to Reduce Pests in Feed, Grain Facilities

资料来源：Elise Schafer

Pest controlis a main objective for grain and feed facility managers, as insect and rodent infestations cause product shrinkage, pose biosecurity risks and can threatenworker safety。仅需几个啮齿动物就催生一支不需要的租户，但是卫生，排斥和现在的生育控制等实践可以为针对大鼠的综合害虫管理计划做出贡献。

In this Feed & Grain Chat, Dr. Steve Krause,SenesTech, discusses the rodent behaviors and characteristics that make infestations so challenging to address and a solution for preventing their ability to have offspring.

转录的饲料和谷物聊天Dr. Steve Krause, senior brand evangelist,SenesTech。

饲料和谷物编辑Elise Schafer：欢迎来到喂养& Grain Chat。I'm your host Elise Schafer, editor of喂养& Grain杂志。

这个版本的喂养& Grain Chatis brought to you by WATT Global media and Feedandgrain.com. Feedandgrain.com is your source for the latest news, product and equipment information for the grain handling and feed manufacturing industries.

Today I'm joined on Zoom by Dr. Steve Krause, senior brand evangelists for SenesTech. Steve's here to discuss how to keep rodents and their offspring from becoming a big problem at feed and grain facilities. Hi, Steve, how are you today?

Dr. Steve Krause, senior brand evangelists for SenesTech:Fine, Elise. Thank you. How are you?

Schafer:Doing well. Thanks for being here with me today. Tell me about your background in the ag industry and what drew you to pest control.

克劳斯：I've spent about 20 years in the ag industry, primarily as a pest control specialist. I'm trained formally as a field biologist and ecologist and as an entomologist, I became interested in the role insects play in our food resources, our diseases that we all face, and impacts those pests have on just humans and society in general.

为了帮助我的大学付费，我是一家公司的害虫防治技术员，这就是我在其他害虫和昆虫中获得很多接触的地方。这些是啮齿动物，尤其是小鼠和老鼠是我们处理的两个主要害虫，因此，从该背景中，我只是对各种有害生物在我们想在这里做的事情而不是的角色感兴趣只是在美国，但超越。

And from there, I took it into a professional career, where I was involved from the research side as a research scientist, all the way through operations management, and then in the field to help guide deployment or use of pest control tools and practices to control insects and rodents and have been doing this for over 20 years.

Schafer:So now that you're using your expertise to focus on rodents, what is different, or similar perhaps, about controlling rat populations versus insect pests?

克劳斯：让我们从一些相似之处开始。因此，我们大多数人都考虑害虫控制的方式，我们考虑如何摆脱问题。And as a resident or homeowner or somebody at your facility, they think ‘how can I quickly do this?’ And in some cases, if you have a lone insect or a lone mouse or a lone pest issue, you might take care of the problem yourself, or you may call a local service provider to handle it more professionally, Those tools often are lethal tools or ways to sort of get rid of or shield the target pest as quickly as you can.

But in other cases, more than just one intervention is needed. So the main similarity between controlling both insects and rodents is something we call integrated pest management or IPM. And this is a practice that's been around, probably informally forever, but more formally -- from the USDA -- since about the 1950s. And the whole idea behind an integrated approach to controlling insects or rodents is to consider all the different tools, processes to actually control the targeted pest.

So these could include pesticide type products, sanitation practices, to keep your facilities clean, exclusion practices to make sure there aren't any holes or openings between you and the local corn crib or another problem with your pest, etc. And then the actual use of those tools, the deployment of the tools is really site specific, so if you have a very large granary, or very large apartment complex or home vs. something much smaller or isolated, your selection of those tools within the IPM portfolio will vary quite a bit. So there similar in that respect.

One of the main differences, though, between controlling insects and rodents is that rodents in this case -- we're talking about two species of rats -- and the common mouse, Field Mouse, is that the rodents are extremely bright, believe it or not. They have small brains, but they're really smart in what they're able to do to adapt to our conditions. So those rodent pests are called, they're called commensal, which all that means is that they're used to sharing the resources that we have. In other words, their success is based on human success, so where we've established cities or established large grain mills, or areas where you have a lot of food, concentrated water habitat, you're going to find these rodent pests.

And secondly, they're very suspicious, especially rats, of their environment. So if you go out and try and do something new to the environment, they're not just going to sit around and say, ‘Oh, this is fine with me.’ They actually think about what is happening in their surrounding world, which makes controlling rodents all the more of a challenge.

Schafer:That's very interesting. Now, we know rodents exists across the United States, but are there any regions or times of year that they tend to flourish?

克劳斯：你是对的,他们确实存在在美国统计es -- they're found in every state. In every type of habitat you can imagine, except water -- they're not really aquatic, the commensal organisms we're talking about. But in general, you'll have them 12 months out of the year, so let me just start with for those millers or grain elevators, or ag managers, or people in general. If you've never had a rodent pest, and suddenly you do, it was likely introduced on some sort of imported product or somehow transported there.

最好的目标是尽快摆脱它。但是，这些较大的设施，磨坊和粮仓中的许多人都在一年中12个月内持续存在啮齿动物问题。那是因为这些人群长期以来在设施中建立 - 它们在那里，他们使用不同的技术进行了管理。

不过，最重要的是，您有一点温带或天气影响这些啮齿动物的分布或存在。因此，例如，如果您的设施靠近收获的农作物的地方，那么在收获时间左右，我们倾向于看到涌入或在设施或粮仓磨坊的啮齿动物压力增加。这主要是因为他们从田间收获农作物。啮齿动物是在那里为避风港而乱逛的，它们经常进入您的粮食设施，它们进入您的农场，您的谷仓设施等，所以我们确实在Harvest的秋天看到了一些尖峰时间。

Also, in areas where you just have cooler temperatures setting in even post-harvest, it'll drive more and more of those pests inside because rodents, these are mammals. In fact, of all the mammals out there, rodents occupied 50% of those. There are about 2,000 species of rodents. We're only talking about three that are major pests to grain and elevator operators and feed mills, etc. But they are warm blooded, so if it's getting cold outside, they're coming inside or looking for some warmth. So, they're everywhere, but there are a few areas where they do peak based on a seasonality, in particular in harvest practices.

Schafer:史蒂夫（Steve），您期望在带有啮齿动物问题的饲料或谷物设施中看到的损害或损失的例子。

克劳斯：So the way to think about damage is just to think about the animal in particular. And if you think about just what a rodent is, or what it does, it quickly points to the damage that can cause. So rodents are basically designed to gnaw. They have to continually bite or gnaw down.

So the rodents you might be familiar with outside of the pest world, such as beavers and gerbils, chinchillas -- a lot of those animals, they all have to keep on chewing and that wears down their teeth. And if you think of a beaver chewing on a tree, they're doing that because they have to and if they didn't, their incisors would keep growing and would grow into their jaw and it would become a pretty gruesome event.

But because of that, rats and mice are just gnawers by definition, so in doing so they damage your building structure, chew through holes, chew through equipment that can disrupt the equipment's functioning. One area of real concern from a chewing perspective is when they get into electrical boxes or get around wires. Many of the fires you might read about in urban or big cities, for example, are often linked to rat chewing on the wires in these older buildings. You don't hear about that, but they do cause a lot of fire risk to larger facilities.

So they chew all the time. In chewing they're also consuming food. About 20% globally of the stored grains are lost to rats and mice consuming the food directly for ingestion. While they do that, they also pose another threat to the to the mill operator or grain elevator operator through disease transmission. In the ag value chain, in particular, biosecurity to keep our food supply safe is a major initiative for all operators that have to have biosecurity plans in place, have pest control as part of their operation to prevent some of these pathogens, transmitted by rodents, from reaching the food chain and then ultimately the consumer. Things like Salmonella is a major concern for people in the ag industry.

因此，它们直接破坏建筑物的基础设施，所有建筑物。他们对直接消费食物的单个建筑物构成了强大的射击和损害风险。他们还可以传播或传递病原体，从健康的角度创建许多问题。

And they also as well are a bit of a concern for a lot of workers. So a lot of workers who are used to seeing one or two to mice or rats here or there aren't pleased to see that and we've got a real problem. It can become quite a distraction and I've been in facilities where you have a lot of rodents running around -- and they are a distraction. And when you're distracted by a pest, in this case of rodent, you're not focused on your job.

So human safety, worker safety becomes touched by rodent infestation. So they can cause a direct impact, economic impact to the miller or the grain elevator operator. It also has an impact on the workers and food biosecurity, so they touch many different parts of the chain affected by the grain and feed industry.

Schafer:So how important is the sanitation of a facility in preventing rat infestation?

克劳斯：It's critical. It's just critical. If you think about the best way to control any problem, disease transmission, in your home, for example -- you sanitize, you wipe down surfaces, you try and keep it clean. So sanitation in a facility is extremely important.

You know, clearly there's a lot of food present for the rodents to consume, but if you have any food or waste or products freely available to them, then it's just basically a free meal for them to come and consume. So No. 1, sanitation is extremely important.

同样，排除 - 或保护建筑物免受建筑物外部的侵扰，这确实很重要。因此，排除和卫生都被认为是预防方法。因此，尽力而为，尽力而为。尽管做出了最大的努力，但这些小动物确实擅长解决并在那里造成一些问题。

就像我之前提到的那样，它们非常明亮，它们可以通过很小的孔，很小的裂缝和缝隙挤压，并且实际上是在内部设施中1。但是，这一切都始于您如何通过建设性过程保持设施清洁和最新状态。

Schafer:Now, what are some other ways that you can control a population or prevent it from becoming a problem in the first place?

克劳斯：Prevention, as we just discussed, is really based on excluding them from penetrating your facility, and then also from providing extra foodstuffs through sanitation. In addition though, you'll have the times when you do have the rodent that becomes established and if it becomes established as a population, that's when you have to really take a look at other tools to remove or suppress the ability of that rodent to become a real problem.

So traditionally, the use of different types of traps, snap traps, live traps to basically take individual animals out, or the deployment of rodenticides, which is a EPA registered and regulated pesticide, these are essentially poisons that are placed out in plastic boxes around the perimeter and inside of buildings. Those approaches have been around for well over 60 years. Many of the rodenticides on the market have been around for quite some time. They can be very effective at controlling individuals present in your facility and in some cases might be all that you need.

但是在许多其他情况下，我们看到的是应用一些致命工具后的快速反弹，因为啮齿动物的生殖率很高。因此，不要过多地了解他们的生物学，但是如果您只有几只老鼠（实际上是两只老鼠）可以在您的练习中幸存下来，那么这两只老鼠将在一年内变成大约15,000或更多。因此，研究人员在小型哺乳动物或啮齿动物防治世界中一直在做的事情是，他们正在遵循人们一段时间以来一直在做的昆虫控制，这是控制害虫的致命方法之外的其他工具。

And that's where fertility management, or the case of insect control, sterilization tools have become really, really popular. So just to pivot back to insects for just a second, they use fertility management to control major insect pests like fruit flies, for example, on mosquitoes. Globally mosquitoes are controlled using different types of fertility management tools, be they genetic, sterilization etc.

And same with screw worms, which are big pests of cattle in the United States. So the idea to try and manage the fertility or the ability of these survivors to populate up has been brought into the small mammal pest control world – rat, mouse control world. I think long term, it's a tool that is here now and it will be an ever-present part of the IPM program in those facilities where you have a need for things beyond just traditional exclusion and sanitation and legal means. Fertility management will be a terrific tool for quite a few in the industry going forward.

Schafer:太好了,之前你提到这个术语,但can you just explain what is an integrated pest management program and the benefits for a grain facility?

克劳斯：That's an excellent question. So integrated pest management, I think, has been mis-defined historically. But all integrated pest management means is that you consider all your options available for your particular need. So that's step one.

Now in considering all your different options, you might only select to use one tool, or one practice for control. So for example, in controlling rats or mice in a grain elevator, you might consider all the options and decide, hey, all I have to do is really repair my facility to exclude it from entering and then I'm good to go. Often, that's not quite the case and you might need to do other things. You might need to have some supplemental pesticides applied, but IPM is a consideration of all the tools.

Like for example, in the rodent control world, similar to the insect control world, fertility management is becoming an important tool available for IPM program managers. The EPA, for example, has registered a product for fertility control of rats. It's showing great success in many different environments and this particular product is called ContraPest. And ContraPest immediately reduces the female and male rats’ ability to have offspring.

We've shown some great results in ag settings and municipalities and elsewhere in using this, again, on a site-specific and as needed basis to help supplement your ability to control your rodents. So I think considering fertility management, using ContraPest would be an important tool for any IPM manager.

Schafer:Thank you, Steve, for your insights into pest management and new ways to control rodent populations. If you'd like more information about what you learned today, visitwww.senestech.com。

That's all for this edition of Feed & Grain Chat. Thank you, everyone, for watching and we'll see you next time!

—Elise Schafer