The Magical Mouse Box is a simple solution we have been using for years to help control the mice population around our chicken coop and compost bins. Build a few of these and your mice problem will magically disappear!
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We live in the suburbs of the city. The town we live in used to be pretty rural. In fact, when I was growing up our town was still the country. Over the last 30 years, the city has invaded pretty heavily, but our city council has done a fairly good job of defending the country feel of our town. Most developments in our town require at least half-acre lots and there really is a lot of farmland (or at least pasture land) around. On top of that our city hasn’t allowed much development surrounding the Jordan River. We live less than a half-mile from the river so there is a lot of open land surrounding our neighborhood. That means that we still get to enjoy some of the natural wildlife. We have lots of migratory birds, birds of prey and even a small herd of deer. But along with the good come the bad including raccoons, skunks, and MICE!
Cats Always Help
Our first line of defense against mice in our house is Kiwi. Yes, you read that right Kiwi. No, we don’t spread tropical fruit all over our house, that’s the name of our cat! Getting a house cat was the best thing we ever did to deal with mice coming into the house. Since Kiwi joined the family we have only seen one mouse in the house and it was quickly dispatched by our feline friend!
Liz over at suburban tomato and I had a discussion the other day about dealing with mouse problems in the garden. I told her about the magical mouse box and promised to post a few pictures. What makes our mouse boxes magical? Mice go in the box in droves but they never come out!
How the magical mouse box works
Mice love dark places with small entries. They can’t resist checking out the dark confines of the magical mouse box. All we have to do is keep the inside of the box well stocked with mouse traps and the rest takes care of itself.
The main advantage of the magical mouse box is we can place it anywhere in the yard and we don’t have to worry about the chickens or the cat accidentally getting caught in a trap. We are not much for chemicals in our family, so the commercially available poisons make me nervous. We are afraid to put out any poisons for fear that the chickens will eat them and die or even worse poison us through the eggs.
Simple to Build
The magical mouse box is very simple; the bottom and top are made from 12″ x 12″ plywood or OSB. The sides are 2×4’s; two are 12 inches long the other two are 8 inches. Just off-set the short sides and you will have a 2-inch hole on each side. Attach the sides to the bottom piece of plywood with some screws and use a simple hinge
to attach the top.
I put 4 mouse traps inside the box, two right by the entry holes. No need to bait the traps they will crawl over them to get in.
Location is important
I put the magical mouse box anywhere we have a mouse problem. Chicken coops are mouse magnets and so are compost bins. We have two boxes one stays in the area around the coop and compost bin. The other gets moved around the yard as needed. They work just as advertised, catching tons of mice. Since we first put them out in the early fall we have caught 20 plus mice (most by the chicken coop). The other day we noticed a mouse in the garage so I brought one box in and placed it close to where we had seen the mouse. The next morning he was history!
I think I first read about this idea in one of Elliot Coleman’s winter gardening books. My 13-year-old son built both of ours out of scrap we had laying around. We maybe spent two dollars each on the materials and that includes the hinges. It is a very simple and inexpensive solution to your mouse problems.
8 Garden tasks you should be doing this Fall
awesome! thanks for this tip! simple is always better
Excellent instructions. But, you need to correct your measurement… it says 12’x12′. It should read 12″x12″.
Corrected! Thanks for pointing that out!
Dam, I built mine 12′ x 12′ it only just fits in my garden so we keep our motor home on top of it. 😀
hi, wouldn’t all the traps go off from the first one’s vibration?
No they are not that sensitive. I’ve never had a second one go off. Many times I will open the box to find 3 of the 4 traps have caught a mouse.
Love this Idea. I’m going to expand this idea to roof rats and give it a go.
We have a feral cat that lives in the neighborhood and she does a pretty good job, but we still see evidence of damage to oranges and other structures.
These rats are very smart. I’ve tried dunk tanks, pneumatic kill traps and several other DYI things I’ve killed more birds than rats. They work for a while then they stop working. I put a game camera on them and they get really suspicious. I would need to expand the size to account for the larger traps. I’ll let know you if it works for me. I don’t like to use poison for the same reasons you said.
Hi Dave,
I know your comment is a year old but wanted to share some wisdom I received from a pest guy.
As you know, rats ARE very smart. He says you have to rotate between baited and set traps, and baited but not set. He says start with baited and unset. That way they will associate the trap with food, and come play rat snack roulette.
This is brilliant! Thanks for sharing your ideas with the rest of us that prefer non-chemical alternatives to pest control around our poultry and pets.
This is brilliant! I like you have a house cat, she spends the majority of her time in the house and only really goes out for an hour once a day (if that), although I’ve never seen her catch anything, I’ve also never seen a mouse in the house. I however have seen lots in the shed and garden. We also live on a half acre lot, with pasture land across the street so field mice are the norm here.
I’m always leery about using poison, as I’m convinced that one of my pets will eat the rodent and get the poison. So this is perfect, best part, I think I have all the supplies I need to build them. I’m thinking I’ll make 3, one for the shed, and one for my mother and another for my sister (both of whom have mice problems). Thank you so much for sharing.
Ricki, Glad I could help!!
Do you just throw away the box when you have caught the mice or are you supposed to put your hand in the box and clear the box of the dead mice and reuse the box ?
Of course you reused the box. The ones we have are 7 years old now and just going strong. That’s why they have a lid, so you can easily get the used traps out and reset others. I fact you can reuse the traps too if you are okay getting rid of the mice.
Just made 2 today should know by Monday how effective they are. I have been using bucket traps the last couple of years but mice must be training their young to be wary of them. I think mixing different kinds of traps might confuse them and results might change.
I quit using poison ( the green pellets) after I found 3 dead opossums in my pole barn and empty poison dishes scattered around. I don’t like to kill opossums as they eat thousands of wood ticks per animal and my place in Minnesota is crawling with ticks from May to September!
Thanks for the tip!
Not necessarily for catching mice, however we had to be creative in catch some raccoons without catch all the neighbors cats. We began baiting our traps with marshmallows. I’m assuming it catches their attention due to resemblance of an egg, but 28 coons in 29 can attest to its power.
What kind of traps are you baiting for raccoons? I can see why marshmallows would be tempting, with the resemblance to eggs, but what are you using for traps? Raccoons are huge! I’ve yet to see one smaller than the average housecat.
We use a standard raccoon trap that we purchased from the feed store. It has a trap door on one side, with a pressure plate on the other. When then go across the plate, it triggers the door closed and they are trapped.
Nice design. If the short ends are 8″, then the door opening is only 1″. Correct?
correct
We have caught lots of racoons and possums in these traps using cat food, which they love, but also several silly hens, who also love the cat food. The “marshmallow” idea is great! Thanks.
I hot glue dog kibble to the trap. Nine times out of ten you get them with their mouth open on the kibble.
That’s a great idea.
I even bought a new glue gun for this – 3 mice in the attic in 2 days! Great design, great suggestion!
I made one (and still working) years ago. I bait mine with peanut butter.
Has anyone tried these to catch rats or chipmunks?
I haven’t tried that, but I would think it would still work. You would just need to make the box taller to allow for clearance for a larger trap.
I have a trap I made from scrap plywood and a few odds and ends. Plywood “tube” about 8″ square and 16″ long … 1/4″ screen on one end sliding trap door on the other. Used all kids of bait … including none. Rats are curious and will go into the trap with no bait. Caught 25 rats last year.
Ok thanks
GeoAz – any chance you have a link to a picture or anything? Having trouble visualizing what you mean.
My mom used a piece of snikers bar it worked every time!
That’s a great idea. How many can you catch in a day or week?
Totally depends on the time of year. In the fall when the mice are thinking about moving “indoors” I get a lot. I keep one in my garden during the summer and get several during the year. We don’t have chickens right now, but when we did, we kept one in the coop and caught them daily, until the population dropped!!
Great idea and trap. Isn’t the entrances a little big tho?
They seem to work fine as is, but you could certainly make them smaller.
Once the first mouse is caught in the trap at the entrance do the rest that follow just crawl over them??
Yep, there have been times when I have found 4 mice in the trap, more often just 2 at the entrances, but at the first of the season I will often have 3 or 4 mice at a time.
Do any chickens ever stick their head in? I can see why you would not place any food bait there.
We have never had a problem with them sticking their heads in, but I wouldn’t put it past them. That’s why you need to make the openings fairly small.
I may do this and use sticky glue traps!!!
Sticky traps work but once you catch one it cries until it dies and deters any others from being trapped. Not as effective as the snap traps.
I’m making this tomorrow, but jumbo-sizing it. My neighbor & I have shared custody of Frank, a roof rat the size of a small cat. This little jerk has evaded baited rat traps, so It’s time to declare war….
Thank you for sharing. I plan on making a couple tomorrow.
Have you ever had a problem of a cat sticking it’s paw in the entrance? I have woods right behind our fence with several feral cats. I would hate one to stick it’s paw in the trap.
That would for sure be a danger, but it has never happened to me.
awesome! I have problems in spring and fall, so know what I’m doing this weekend.
I am visualizing a cheap hook-and-eye latch on the box lid to keep nosy critters from knocking the box over and spilling the traps/mice! We have dogs, goats, chickens, ducks………..
This is an *A*W*E*S*O*M*E* idea! Thanks for sharing!
That’s a good addition. Hasn’t really been much of a problem for us, but the area we live in is pretty urban so not a stray critters around here. Our chickens have never bothered the lid.
Great idea! I have two questions; how often do you check the traps and do you reuse traps? I catch a lot of mice spring and fall tossing both trap and mouse in the bin. Since mice travel more by smell than site I’ve always wondered whether they would approach a used trap.
I check them more often when I first put the box out, I get more slack as the season progresses. I don’t reuse traps, I just toss them like you.
Chickens are such a great army against all vermin. My chicken yard is up against our large garden fence. I cut a chicken sized gate through and made a sliding wooden door to open or close it. When we figure the garden has about it we let what will grow go ahead and then let the chickens in. There were 8 large red hens. They ate that garden totally gone, nothing was left. All fall and winter and spring those hens would go in there and scratch and turn everything over and over. I had a near bug clean garden. They destroyed anything that burrowed and all types of bugs were just gone. Mr earwig I’m sure had to take a bus in to our place. Those fat old hens sure did their job. I kept their feeder full in case bug city began to evacuate and it did, also a chicken will run off or kill a snake. They will grab a mouse, small gopher, anything. Remember that’s a dinosaur out there working for you.
That really nice box. But I’m lazy and don’t like to empty the mouse trap, I get snaped when I try. So our answer was a 5 gal bucket with lid we had laying around. We cut a hole in the center of the lid put 6 or 7 sunflower seed in the bucket. The nice go in can’t get out, in the morning I but some water in the bucket and wait in 5 min I take the top off and just empty the bucket. Once in our co-op we got 8 nice in one night.
I made a mousetrap like this but used a CARDBOARD box. Cut some holes in the corners, leave a small hole in the top so you can peek in. When you catch a mouse, throw the whole box away. No need to touch the mouse or the trap. I know you use more traps this way, but it’s worth it to me not to touch the trap again!
Great idea!!! I will try the cardboard box method instead.
They don’t eat the cardboard and get out? I’ve had a mouse eat through a thick plastic container.
I’m not sure I understand your question. The boxes are made of wood, not cardboard. And these are kill traps, so the mice are dead.
I was referring to Sandy’s statement where she made one out of cardboard. Sorry for the confusion.
Years ago my brother was in charge of mousing. He buried a metal coffee can half way down, filled it about a quarter with water, then laid a light weight flat stick, like balsam or popsicle stick with peanut butter on the end over the can. When the mouse went up the stick to get the PB, its weight was too much for the stick so it flipped that end down so the mouse fell into the water and drowned. He was constantly balancing a new stick, always had drowned mice, and we never had a mouse problem in the house. He just pulled up the can, dumped it out in the woods and put a bit more water in it.
I made one of these magic mouse traps yesterday as we have cats and didn’t want them getting sick on poisoned mice. It was the first time in twenty years I saw a mouse in the house! I put the trap out where it looked like the mice were getting in around the dryer vent and caught two the first night! Thank you for the great idea!
Awesome!! Love it when it works right away!!!
I built 3 of these last year when my coop was plagued with mice they are all completely gone now. I was catching 8-10 mice a night I placed them right in the coop and never had a problem with any of my chickens being hurt. I found this idea after spending 3 hours every night shooting mice with a bb gun I was too afraid to use poison. I couldn’t get them with just the gun I had to do something else so glad I found this idea it works! Thanks for posting
Great, and simple, way to catch mice. I built one yesterday, put it out next to my shed, and caught 3 overnight. Thanks for putting this on the web. Easy to make, and satisfying to be eliminating the mice. Thank You!
You’re welcome!!
Do you think a larger one would work for rats?
Fortunately, I don’t have any experience with Rats. So I don’t have an answer for you. But I would think it would work. You just need to make sure the box is tall enough for the rat trap to swing closed.
I was referring to Sandy’s statement where she made one out of cardboard. Sorry for the confusion.
Here is a YouTube video of a guy building a Magical Mouse Trap.
https://youtu.be/d2FkVSUOffg
Charles!! LOL! Thanks for including the link! That’s actually me! 🙂
This is genius! I built 2 this afternoon. I can’t see any reason that they should fail.
I will see in the morning what I caught! Got your idea from Pinitrest.
This will be awesome. I’ve had good luck with the glue traps but they are sticky and the mice can’t be recycled for our owls in our owl box. I built 2 mice size and one rat sized and baited them tonight to give them a free meal before I catch them and make them the meal for our owls. Tomorrow I will install traps. I like to deliver mice. rats and gophers to the owls, like doordash.
This looks like a great idea but my concern is chipmunks. We don’t want to kill them. Do they fit in these boxes too?
Unlikely, but I don’t know much about chipmunks.
My mice are much smaller than yours so I just used 1×4 for the sides and 1/4 inch plywood for the top and bottom. Instead of hinges, I just put 1 screw at the corner of the top into the side and turn it out to get to the traps.
Also a great idea!
Wondering what you are using for bait? I use peanut butter, but I don’t see yours having bait.
I don’t use bait at all. I just the traps with the yellow pressure pads. They have to cross them to get into the box and that takes care of it.
In garden or yard it is very difficult to manually do anything about these rodents. The best thing would be to have plants which deters them or have fencing. Because of the damp soil it would be difficult to prevent burrow being made. Other best option is to go for pest control services.