COVID-19’s interruptions to the supply chain have affected our ability to send overnight orders.
These orders are being fulfilled as fast as possible, but ground shipping has caused delays and these shipments are taking an additional 2-3 days.
We apologize and will make sure all customers get their Burrtec orders as quickly as possible.

For obvious reasons, we talked to Dr. Bobby Corrigan about the issues that doors present when not properly protected from rodent access. He had some great insight about rodents and doors in both commercial and residential settings.

“Doors of all of all types are famous for letting in rodents,” says Dr. Corrigan. “You have the typical front door of the home or you have the main door of a restaurant or anything like that. Oftentimes, we don’t seal them correctly at the bottom, we leave that seal or gap because we don’t appreciate it when you’re standing up and you’re like 5’8” looking down a small gap of 6 mm you almost don’t see it. So, it’s the unseen open door of a closed door. It’s an open door for rodents.

“Doors of course come in different shapes and sizes we’ll have double doors in commercial accounts and in office buildings and hotels and even if we correctly seal them, we don’t often seal between the doors, that thing called the astragal gap. We get an ‘F’ in terms of school grades on how well we keep our doors sealed. And because of that rodents come in sometimes just at will. I don’t have any data to prove it, but it may be the number one types of gap for them.”

Tips for PMPS?

Dr. Corrigan has a few tips he always shares with PMPs that focus on rodent control services.

“For the PMPs, they have to if they’re a reputable company proceed down the path of Integrated Pest Management (IPM),” he says. “And the reason IPM is the kindergarten level of pest control is because it combines all the good things. First, you inspect to see, can you build them out? So, you’re doing inspections so that you can see are all the doors correctly sealed, do they have something as a pest excluder device. Check all the doors, check the holes, check the penetrations. I always advise them if they’re not sealed you should offer to seal them. Do it for them, it’s a great service. So that’s the first thing, keeping them out.

“And then, after that – and this is the hard lesson, you try to advise customers, please don’t attract them with dog food and food and garbage. So, the second (tip) is trying to get the customer to be a partner and not attracting rodents.”

Two more tips are truly important, as well, Dr. Corrigan added.

“Third is what non-chemical tools are they going to use to control. Are they going to use snap traps for example for house mice or use multiple catch traps? Glue traps? What’s their non-chemical approach.

“The last one, which should be last and not first, are you going to use some poisonous bait of some sort to kill them because that’s the least desirable and least effective for the long term. The most effective is keeping them out of the building in the first place. Like I said I’m a fanatic about that. Why charge them every month and put more poison out every month to kill them when you can try to keep them out from the very first week. That’s the way it should be.”

Burrtec appreciates your business and would like to thank you for supporting us! We wish you and your families an upcoming year in 2022 filled with health and happiness.

As you may know, we will be closed from December 24 to Jan 4 but will be reachable on a limited basis via email during that time.

If you have any orders you wish to place to receive them prior to the Christmas or New Year’s holidays, please get them in through our web site’s online store by December 21^st. (this is meant for online store purchases only – shipments from distributors are subject to their timelines)

Happy Holidays!

Dr. Bobby Corrigan is a true expert when it comes to rodent control – he’s been consulting on urban pest management for more than 30 years, has published more than 160 articles and is in the Pest Management Hall of Fame.

We caught up with him to discuss the state of the rodent management industry and to talk about common entry points. Corrigan says the demand for rodent control services has grown 25-30 percent over the last few years, proving the strength of the rodent problem.

“Interestingly, there seems to be a tremendous surge in the urban rodent situation the last 10 years, and it shows no signs of letting up. We used to think well there’s a rat in the garage or there’s mice in the house, we need to get something to kill it. But now we know these rats or mice are carrying diseases, serious diseases, and a mouse in the house, if we keep it simple and take an ordinary ranch house in suburbia … that can be a big deal. So, the whole thing is what is your professional service to control rats and mice.

“It’s not as simple as showing up and putting out poisons or baits and say we just baited or trapped like we’ve been doing for 100 years. Why should we be putting out poisons when we should be getting them out of the house to begin with by keeping the house clean. I’m a fanatic about that.”

Dr. Corrigan’s three common entry points:

• Penetrations
• Gaps
• Holes

“Any penetration like a line that enters a home – a utility line, a plumbing line, a cable line, anything that goes through a wall and you do not seal properly the rodents will follow that line where the penetration comes out.

“For gaps or holes, if it’s more than a 6 mm gap it allows a mouse in, if it’s more than a 12 mm gap, it allows a rat in. As you drive down the street you look at people’s garage doors and if you see light leaking from the garage door, that gap – a little gap makes it easy for them to enter.”