Rodent Battles: A palatable solution

Ashley Roden has been in the pest management business for the past seven-and-a-half years, and she has become very experienced in rodent management. Roden started at Sprague Pest Solutions, based in Tacoma, Wash., as a route technician, working her way up to regional entomologist.

After dealing with a particularly difficult roof rat (Rattus rattus) infestation, Roden knew that to continue giving the same care and commitment Sprague had been giving for the past 90 years, the team would have to shift the way they were doing things. Enter BASF’s Selontra Rodent Bait.

“We weren’t rotating our rodenticides, and we were stuck on a few active ingredients,” Roden admits. “We knew we needed to do more. Our BASF representative, Matthew Bloom, told us about Selontra and gave us samples in November 2017.”

To test out the product, Sprague ran an initial pilot program centralized in Puget Sound, Wash. The team focused on areas where the rodent issues were the worst. The goal was to see whether Selontra would be more palatable to the rodents, and to get a better understanding of its effectiveness.

With the active ingredient cholecalciferol, Selontra is designed to work quickly — promising a fast kill and high palatability for rodents.¹ Following the pilot program, Roden knew that when trying to handle even the most difficult infestations, Sprague would need a product like Selontra to ensure that rodents didn’t stand a chance. It’s now an essential tool in the team’s collective rodent control toolbox.

“When we set up a new account, we put out bait stations with monitoring bait to see the rodent activity,” Roden explains. “Once the rodent has fed on the monitoring bait, we will then use Selontra.”

Roden reports that many Sprague accounts that are approved to use Selontra have benefitted from the product. Since Sprague has partnered with BASF, she says, the company has gained the upper hand on rodent control.

“Our rodent issues were getting more difficult, and I think Selontra helped things from becoming more difficult,” says Roden, noting that Selontra’s scent attracts the rodents, and the taste gets them to feast upon it. “They are intelligent animals, but they can’t pass this up,” she adds.

“I appreciate that BASF is continually coming up with more options for us to use. We need as many options as possible when it comes to rodent control.”

_{1 - U.S. Field Trials (Indiana Grain Farm, 2017; NC Pig Farm, 2016)}

_{- http://www.npic.orst.edu/factsheets/rodenticides.html. Erickson, W.; Urban, D. Potential Risks of Nine Rodenticides to Birds and Nontarget Mammals: A Comparative Approach. U.S Environmental Protection Agency; Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances; Office of Pesticide Programs; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2004}