Back in the day, rat and mice control was the job of the farm cat, back up by traps and judicious use of baits. Over the years, rodents have developed a taste for electrical insulation, typically available in abundance when complex machines are in storage.
While Kiwis are credited with inventing the electric fence, Irish company Cheetah Electronics Ltd of Carlow has taken the idea on a tangent with their Rodent Shield, which consists of a low physical barrier that can be placed on the ground around the machine to be protected, delivering a shock if rats and mice try to climb over.
Rats are naturally neophobic, so don’t like new things. They will investigate slowly - in this case the Rodent Shield - and once they receive a shock, it turns to both a psychological barrier as well as a physical barrier.
The moulded barriers, available in one metre lengths, feature an integral positive and negative strip, with individual panels simply joined together with bolts and butterfly nuts, held upright by plastic towers, which insulate the barriers from the floor.
Taking the form of an electric fence that works at ground level, the system is easily assembled and disassembled, allowing the machine to be quickly removed from the protected area.
Power comes from a standard charger unit, with the only requirement being a reasonably flat floor, although an adjustable plastic extrusion is attached to the lower edge to fill minor gaps, which might allow mice in particular, to “squeeze” into the protected area. One can only assume that the farmyard cat will have to take care when in the area.
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