Do you sometimes think about how digitalization may influence your future work as PCO? In this blog post, we seek to uncover how digital management of rodents will in fact make your job as a PCO easier, and not jeopardize your role as an experienced pest controller as some may think. Moreover, we will also reveal how our TrapMe traps are now capable of catching both mice and rats, and how our digital tools may help you. First of all, we will briefly look into rodent behavior in order to understand part of the building blocks for digital traps.
Understanding rodent behaviour
According to Urban Rodentologist and consultant, Bobby Corrigan, it is crucial to understand rodent behavior, if you want to succeed as a PCO. You should never underestimate rodents, as they are far more complex than what you may suspect. Also, pest control is so much more than just setting up traps and hoping for the best. An essential aspect of pest control is first and foremost to properly inspect an area and figure out where the rodents are likely to be encountered. The house mouse tends to find a warm place before it begins looking for food and prefers to stick close to its nest and not run very far away. However, the brown rat often prefers burying into the ground and does not mind running far from the nest to seek food and water.
You can read more about techniques for mouse control
What does rodent behavior have to do with digital traps, you may think? Digital traps can be a tool for monitoring rodent activity, in which you get a chance to quickly find the best pest control strategy fitting the context. The quicker you get to know the character of the rodent problem, the better, as you can react faster and decide on the best pest control tool. In some cases, you might need to install more digital traps, and in other cases, the traps may need to be moved, but how can you tell, if you do not know where rats or mice prefer to stay and how they move?
Digital traps will always tell you where and when a rat or mouse has been trapped, so as the PCO you can spend your time on the current pest situation, and save time checking rodenticides and indicator blocks for bite marks.
As Bobby Corrigan states:
“It’s our job to go to them, not for them to come to us,” Corrigan said. “So our equipment is only as good as where we put it.”
Read the full article with Bobby Corrigan
Many products, one platform
Our TrapMe trap used to only be able to catch rats, but now we have added more products that can be connected to our online TrapMe Portal. Thereby, you have one platform to get an overview of all rodent (both rats and mice) activity on your multiple devices.
Meet JERRY – a digital mouse trap capable of catching two mice in one trap. You can connect this digital mouse trap to any network of your choosing – whether you prefer WiFi, NB-IoT LoRa, or Sigfox. JERRY, the digital mouse trap, is suitable for indoor as well as outdoor usage and you can set it up in small places, which are difficult to service frequently. Jerry is fast to set up, easy to manage and provides reliable alarms when there is a catch. This trap is highly suitable for usage in the food industry and other production facilities as well as in any facility management. With the option of using Wi-Fi to transmit the data to the TrapMe servers, you can run this solution without any fee for connectivity.
You can read more about JERRY, the digital mouse trap
However, if you are satisfied with your TrapMe Rat Trap, but want to be able to also catch mice and you do not need other types of network connections – then you might as well use the TrapMe trap you already have because you can in fact turn your TrapMe Rat Trap into a Mouse Trap. You can get a Mouse Trigger Add-on to your Rat Trap. The Mouse Add-on is easy to slide on and the trap still fits into industry-standard-rodent boxes. Moreover, the mouse-add on ensures that the mouse enters the trap in the correct way and the add-on is designed to ensure the trap is triggered despite the mouse’s lighter weight. Our trap is not just any mouse trap – it is the strongest mouse trap in the market, and the add-on is designed in a way that ensures the mouse is guided correctly into the trap, thereby which ensures you get a humane kill of a mouse every time. With digital TrapMe traps, you get an alarm every time there is a catch.
We will continue adding products to our platform, in order for you to be able to use the same platform for all of your products. You can view the status and activity of your rat traps being sewer traps or surface traps, bird alerts, or mouse traps in the field while sitting in the office planning which device to service and when. TrapMe’s online platform helps you stay organized, save time and plan your day.
Why digital traps and management?
The benefit of a digital trap is that you can analyze the collected data in multiple ways whether you need an overview of the situation, analyze trends, locations, usage, etc. Moreover, you always have proof of whether it was a mouse, rat, or another rodent who stopped by. A quick look on your phone or tablet allows you to plan the day and check the traps, that have a catch. Rodenticides and traditional snap traps can still be a part of your PCO toolbox, but with digital traps and data, all tools can be used in a more efficient and effective manner.
Digital traps are more sustainable than other tools, and by just reducing the use of rodenticides, the pest control strategy will be more sustainable. However, digital pest management solutions will never replace your expertise and knowledge as a technician, but rather provide you with more resources for providing a fully satisfying service to your customers. On TrapMe’s portal, you can also allow the customer permission to go into the system and follow the evolving rodent process. Your customer thereby gains more insight into the situation and it encourages better cooperation.
Sources:
- PCT – Online. (2020, march). https://www.pctonline.com/article/think-like-a-rodent/
- Pest Management UK. (2020, August). Investing in intelligent traps.
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