Best Mouse Glue Traps

A quick breakdown of mouse glue traps

Glue traps are very simple devices, so their breakdown will be a rather quick one. Glue traps work on the straightforward principle of gluing everything that makes the mistake of walking over them to the ground and keeping it there until it dies. Insects die quickly and easily on glue traps as they almost never have the strength to break away from the glue. Rodents such as mice and rats stand a chance of breaking away from some mouse glue traps by sheer strength and determination. Still, if the trap is good enough, most mice will be done for after just one step on it.

There are lots of ways for mice to die on a glue trap:

• They stay stuck on it until you find them and “mercifully” kill them.
• They stuck on it until they die of hunger and dehydration.
• They break their neck trying to escape.
• They peel off a large enough portion of their skin while trying to (or succeeding to) escape, that they later die of blood loss.
• They chew off a foot in an attempt to break free and later die of blood loss.
• They get their nose stuck in the glue and suffocate. That’s the easiest and the most pain-free way from the mouse’s perspective, should it happen early enough.

Those are more or less the standard ways in which mouse glue traps work. It isn’t pretty, but it is effective.

What variations are there in terms of the design of mouse glue traps

With a device that simple there aren’t that many differences in the shape, size, and design the traps can have. The main difference between glue board traps is in the type of glue they use. Generally speaking, each brand uses its own type of glue which they obviously advertise as “the strongest”. Some glues are thin-layered, while others are thick and pasty. Both can work for rodents as long as they are strong enough to hold on to the animal.

There are also minor design differences between some glue traps. There are two major types of glue traps – ones that are fully foldable boards that can either be laid out flat on the ground or folded into tents or boxes and larger boards that fold only in two, which are intended for edges of rooms. Both designs have their positives and negatives.

Fully foldable glue boards give you the versatility of being able to be placed anywhere you want in whatever position you want. They can be placed flat underneath furniture or folded into “insect motels” so that they are better protected from dust, as well as to offer better capture potential for mice that go inside of them.

Partially foldable glue boards have the advantage of typically being bigger and stronger, but they are disadvantaged in their lack of versatility – they can only be placed on edges or flat on the floor, due to their shape.

What should you do when you find a live mouse caught in a trap

According to the UK’s Animal Welfare Act, there is only one thing to do when you find a living animal caught in one of your traps, regardless of the species of the animal and the type of the trap – to kill the animal ‘quickly and humanely’. The Animal Welfare Act clearly states that “Any animal becomes a protected animal when it is under the control of man, whether on a permanent or temporary basis”.

The accepted method of quickly and humanely killing a captured rodent is with a swift and sharp blow to the head. Unfortunately, such a blow requires both skills, as well as nerves and unwavering resolve, which a lot of people don’t always find when faced with such a situation. Comment sections and message boards on various forums are filled with people sharing their experiences of choosing to drown mice, leaving them to die on the trap, or even throwing them in the trash together with the trap so they can die out of sight. Needless to say, all those methods constitute an offense under the Animal Welfare Act in the UK, for example, and killing the mouse or rat quickly and humanely is the only acceptable method. If this seems too hard for you then maybe glue traps are not for you.

What alternative measures can be taken instead of glue board traps?

There are a lot of more humane mouse traps out there that come in hundreds of varying designs. They can be easily summarized in two main categories:

• Snap traps. These devices work on the principle of quickly, instantaneously and painlessly snapping the rodent’s neck or spine through the sheer force of a spring. They may still be killing tools but they are at least not torture devices. Of course, snap traps pose a danger for kids and pets, since they can get hurt on them as well, but with glue traps, you are also looking to place them away from your kids’ and pets’ reach, so you can do the same with a snap trap. There are also snap trap designs that are covered, which offers additional protection for your children, dogs, and cats. An additional positive of snap traps is that they are reusable, so, while they are more expensive initially, over time they also become cost-effective.

• Non-kill traps. There are hundreds of different models and designs of humane non-kill rat traps out there. They work by attracting the rodent inside the trap and then keeping it trapped it inside. What you do with the mouse or rat from then on is up to you. You can either kill it as you would have to do with a glue board trap anyway or can just release the rodent into the wild, away from your home or generally human-populated areas.

Aside from using different types of traps, you can also use poison. Setting up poisonous baits around your house or property is very effective against rodents, as it is against insects. Of course, you’ll have to be careful to place the baits out of reach for children or pets, but aside from that, they are a great way to quickly and painlessly kill the rodents that are pestering you without sacrificing effectiveness. Such poison baits can also be used to set up a perimeter around your property for prevention, although to be effective they will need to be frequently replaced.

And lastly, you can also call an exterminator to help you out. Rodent exterminators have all the tools needed to get rid of a rodent infestation and you can even ask them to use a specific method if you have your preferences. This is a clean, fast, easy and humane way to rid yourself of rodents.

With mouse glue traps being rather simple devices, their buying guide won’t be exactly “complex” either. There is one chief question you need to ask yourself before making a purchase – “IS this going to trap and kill the rodents I want to get rid of?”

Mouse glue boards may come in various different shapes and sizes, but you know best what size your uninvited rodent guests are, as well as what design and shape of the traps would be most suitable for your home or storage space. So, by using these factors you can easily determine which traps you should go for.

It’s easy to say that bigger mouse traps are just better because they can catch both bigger and smaller mice, but this isn’t strictly true. Bigger mouse traps do have their key disadvantage and that’s the fact that they can’t be placed in that many places.

Still, you’ll need to make sure that any trap you purchase is going to be big enough so that your mice actually go inside it instead of over or around it.

The second most significant factor in addition to the traps’ design and shape is the glue’s strength and quality. After all, the last thing you’ll want after setting up a couple of dozen mouse traps is to see mice just going through them as if the traps were just a minor inconvenience.

Aside from picking the right size and design, there aren’t that many other factors to consider. Still, here are a few notes to keep in mind:

• Decide on how many traps you are going to need as well – do you need just 5 to 10 traps for a small area or for monitoring purposes, or do you need 50+ traps for a large scale extermination?
• Do you want the traps to be scented or not? Mice are known to be ravenous animals, so a nice and attractive smell can easily catch their attention. At the same time, such a smell can repel insects. Besides, if you want to trigger a mouse’s ravenous instincts, a small piece of delicious food in the middle of the trap can do a much better job than some scented glue.
• Price also matters to an extent. Mouse traps are not the most expensive products out there unless you are buying them in truly industrial quantities. Still, if you can save some pounds on cheaper glue traps, there is no reason not to, as long as you won’t make a compromise with the trap’s quality.

To make sure that you’re buying traps of a high enough quality, considering the traps’ brand is often a good idea. There are some brands that are known for their industrial-strength glues and good designs, and others that are known for their poor quality or are not known at all. If you are new to the subject, the brands we’d recommend to you include Catchmaster, Masterline, Panamela, Topcat, Alazco, Supply Guru, Trapper, Victor Tin Cat, Pest Pro, KChoies, and others.

There are plenty of things that can be said about mouse glue traps but we can’t really go through every single one of them in one quick article. Still, we’ll try to answer a couple of the other most frequently asked questions about mouse glue boards.

Are mouse glue traps an effective long-term prevention method?

While mouse glue traps can be effective in dealing with individual rodents, as well as for monitoring purposes, it’s worth pointing out that they are not a good long-term solution to a rodent problem. Glue traps do nothing to target rodents’ nest or to prevent their future spreading. You may opt for simply buying more and more glue traps and continue having to kill the captured mice yourself, but if the mice are left to keep breeding, this simply won’t be an effective strategy.

One aspect in which mouse glue traps can benefit your long-term prevention strategy is by being placed on strategic entry points in your home and thus preventing rodents from coming inside the premises of your home or storage area. If you already have rodent problems, however, this won’t be enough to fully deal with it. Additionally, it should be pointed out that snap traps are more effective and efficient than glue traps for this type of prevention as they don’t need to be frequently replaced.

Can you make a DIY mouse glue board yourself?

Absolutely. There’s nothing complicated that goes in the making of a mouse glue trap and you don’t need much of a know-how nor an engineering degree to make them. All that’s needed is a piece of plastic, metal, cardboard, or any other flat surface, an industrial-strength adhesive without a noticeable odor, a bait if you choose to use one, and that’s all. It’s important that the glue is scentless so that it repels neither insects nor rodents. If your local hardware stop doesn’t have a strong enough glue you can search for one online, although in that case, you might just as well buy a ready-made trap.

Once you’ve got the right glue, all that’s left is to apply it carefully to the board without getting any on yourself, and place the board wherever you see fit. That being said, we don’t really recommend you to do this. Whatever you decide to craft, there’s little chance that it will actually be better than the commercial glue traps offered online or in your local shops. You only risk using incorrect glue and with that – losing your time. The only benefit from DIY mouse glue traps is that you can have the freedom of fashioning the exact design, size, and shape you need your trap(s) to have so that you can fit them in the right places.

Living with and managing mouse glue traps is not a complicated matter. After all, being mostly just boards with glue on them, they can just be left anywhere you want and be forgotten about. Still, if you want them to do their job as effectively as possible, there are several things to keep in mind:

• Set the mouse glue traps on locations where the mice won’t be able to / willing to go around them. Mice instinctively try to be stealthy when moving, meaning that they like to stick to corners and edges of spaces, to go underneath or behind furniture, to walk over high beams and pipes, and so on. As a result of that, simply putting a trap at a random spot doesn’t guarantee that any mice will go in it – they might just well go around it. However, placing the trap somewhere where the mice would prefer to go through it will drastically increase the chances for a capture.
• Folding the traps has an added benefit of protecting the glue from dust. When the traps are laid out flat on the ground they gather much more dust, which quickly lowers the effectiveness of the glue on them.
• Remember to check the traps regularly. A trap of the right size can stay active for a long time, especially if the trap won’t gather too much dust. If the trap is big enough it can even keep working with several victims already caught in it. Still, it is obvious that the trap’s effectiveness will diminish with each additional rodent or insect that dies on it. Not to mention that bigger and stronger mice or rats can actually break free from a mouse glue trap if given enough time. All these are good enough reasons to check up on your traps regularly. If you see a mouse caught up in your glue trap, the best thing to do is to down the mouse and either return the empty trap to its place or to throw it away and set up a new one. Killing a mouse can be stressful if it is our first time, but keep in mind that a death in a glue trap is much slower and more horrific for the animal, so you’ll actually even be doing the mouse a favor, so to speak. If the thought of it still bothers you then maybe glue traps are not for you.

• Make sure that the glue traps are placed away from the reach of children and pets. After all, mice and insects are not the only ones that can get glued to a mouse trap. Your child may not suffocate on a glue trap the way a mouse will, but having to peel away an industrial-grade glue from a child’s skin is still not fun for neither the kid nor yourself. Pets are even more commonly interested in glue traps since both cats and dogs are curious by nature.
• Speaking of getting glued by accident – be careful not to glue yourself to the trap. It may sound silly, but as easy as glue traps are to set up, you can still get glued to one with a minor slip of the hand.

Mouse glue traps, board glue traps, box, and stick trap and other similar devices are an effective, albeit questionable tool for rodent control. They can work really well for detection and monitoring of rodent activity, and even though some are too small or too weak to catch bigger mice and rats, good mouse glue boards are generally strong enough to capture and kill even average-sized mice.

What makes these devices questionable to use is the manner in which they kill their victims. People don’t need to be members of PETA to acknowledge the horrible fates that await mice caught in these traps. Considering that mice are known to be smarter than most pets, including even dogs and cats, causing such immense pain to so intelligent creatures is something that a lot of homeowners understandably decide to avoid. And with many other more humane options on the market, both lethal and non-lethal ones, it’s not like glue traps are the only way to go.

Still, either as detection and monitoring tools or even as killing tools, these traps are indeed effective in what they do. And to give you an idea of which are the best traps on the market right now, let’s briefly mention our Top 3 suggestions again:

The Trapper Max Glue Trap comes in a pack of 72 and has the classical foldable board design. With dimensions of 5.5” x 7.5”, they offer good coverage for both insect and pest control, especially thanks to their super strong glue formula. When folded they are not big enough for some larger mice or rats, but even then they work well against most rodents.

The Victor Tin Cat Mouse Trap share the classical foldable board design of most other mouse glue traps, but they do come at a slightly larger size of 9” x 5.5”, making them better suited to catch larger mice. Their strong glue formula is more than enough to retain most mice, giving these traps a great success capture rate.

The ALAZCO Glue Traps come to us in a smaller pack of just 6 traps. With their dimensions of 5.25” x 7.75”, they are a great monitoring tool and can serve as capture devices too, although larger mice and rats may be able to escape if they are strong enough.