Gun and Game Forums - View Single Post - Rodent-Proof Food Storage

Cyrano · 03-24-2008, 03:40 PM

A point no one has brought up That I've seen so far is rodent-proof food storage. Here's why I think we need to kick it around. An example follows.

My wife stored a lot of clothes "that will fit me in 5/10/15 pounds" in the storage shed I'd intended as a shop, which she preempted for general storage, in plastic sterilite boxes. When she dieted down (the better part of a year later) she went to get the clothes out to try them on. She was appalled to find mouse nests in some of the boxes.

One year we stored 100 pounds of cracked corn to feed the damned deer we can't shoot because it's a residential area with in an attempt to keep them from eating the shrubs in a big rubbermaid bin. The mice got into that, too. If there is something they're after, plastic won't stop them. They'll just nibble through it. We need to find something or some way that's affordable to keep the vermin out of food supplies.

Canned goods are bulky but rodent-proof. Thinking along these lines, a solution to keeping vermin out of your emergency food might be a new galvanized metal trash can with a tight-fitting metal lid to put unitized bags of staples in. The bags will keep mold and bugs out of the food, and the can will keep the mice and whatnot out of the bags.

Sportsman's Guide also has some big medical chests with six or eight latches on them that look like they'd take a couple of fifty-pound bags of rice or beans or flour. I think they are either gasketed, or could be made airtight by putting that liquid gasket material you can find at auto parts stores on them. They cost a bit, but they look like they are too heavy a gauge of steel for rats to eat through.

During World War II, some of the British kreigies who went into the bag at Dunkirk evolved a solution to their problem of keeping the rats out of their Red Cross parcels. They cut the ends off their cans and cut them so they could lay the metal into flat sheets. Using the solder from bully beef and condensed milk cans, they would sort of french-seam the flat sheets together and then solder them so they would stay together. When they had sheets of metal big enough, they lined the storeroom used for food parcel storage with them to keep the rodents out. You could do the same thing today. You can get metal sheets left over from fabricating air ducting and screw them together with an overlap to rodent-proof a storeroom. Just put duckboards or something like that down on the floor to walk on, and put up your shelving to store food on. It might be tedious to build, but it would keep the vermin out.

Humans have been trying to keep the mice and the rats out of our food for thousand of years. So far, the rats and the mice are ahead on points.

I did six months in a grainship once. We tried traps, warfarin baits, poison baits, lowering the hatch covers into the harbor with our cargo gear and letting them sit six feet under for 15 minutes to drown the rats living in them, sending the crew ashore and putting a tent over the deck and the superstructure and gassing the whole ship, and anything else we could think of. We never got them all. No one ever does. The best you can do is ratproof small spaces. It's a point to consider when talking storage of large quantities of survival food for bugging in or for long term storage at your bug-out destination.

03-24-2008, 03:40 PM	#1
Cyrano Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: New York Posts: 1,605	Rodent-Proof Food Storage A point no one has brought up That I've seen so far is rodent-proof food storage. Here's why I think we need to kick it around. An example follows. My wife stored a lot of clothes "that will fit me in 5/10/15 pounds" in the storage shed I'd intended as a shop, which she preempted for general storage, in plastic sterilite boxes. When she dieted down (the better part of a year later) she went to get the clothes out to try them on. She was appalled to find mouse nests in some of the boxes. One year we stored 100 pounds of cracked corn to feed the damned deer we can't shoot because it's a residential area with in an attempt to keep them from eating the shrubs in a big rubbermaid bin. The mice got into that, too. If there is something they're after, plastic won't stop them. They'll just nibble through it. We need to find something or some way that's affordable to keep the vermin out of food supplies. Canned goods are bulky but rodent-proof. Thinking along these lines, a solution to keeping vermin out of your emergency food might be a new galvanized metal trash can with a tight-fitting metal lid to put unitized bags of staples in. The bags will keep mold and bugs out of the food, and the can will keep the mice and whatnot out of the bags. Sportsman's Guide also has some big medical chests with six or eight latches on them that look like they'd take a couple of fifty-pound bags of rice or beans or flour. I think they are either gasketed, or could be made airtight by putting that liquid gasket material you can find at auto parts stores on them. They cost a bit, but they look like they are too heavy a gauge of steel for rats to eat through. During World War II, some of the British kreigies who went into the bag at Dunkirk evolved a solution to their problem of keeping the rats out of their Red Cross parcels. They cut the ends off their cans and cut them so they could lay the metal into flat sheets. Using the solder from bully beef and condensed milk cans, they would sort of french-seam the flat sheets together and then solder them so they would stay together. When they had sheets of metal big enough, they lined the storeroom used for food parcel storage with them to keep the rodents out. You could do the same thing today. You can get metal sheets left over from fabricating air ducting and screw them together with an overlap to rodent-proof a storeroom. Just put duckboards or something like that down on the floor to walk on, and put up your shelving to store food on. It might be tedious to build, but it would keep the vermin out. Humans have been trying to keep the mice and the rats out of our food for thousand of years. So far, the rats and the mice are ahead on points. I did six months in a grainship once. We tried traps, warfarin baits, poison baits, lowering the hatch covers into the harbor with our cargo gear and letting them sit six feet under for 15 minutes to drown the rats living in them, sending the crew ashore and putting a tent over the deck and the superstructure and gassing the whole ship, and anything else we could think of. We never got them all. No one ever does. The best you can do is ratproof small spaces. It's a point to consider when talking storage of large quantities of survival food for bugging in or for long term storage at your bug-out destination.