What's different in Pukekohe
Vegetable country
Auckland Council says Pukekohe Hill and the wider Franklin area are renowned for vegetable production, thanks to volcanic soils and a relatively frost free climate. It says the Pukekohe economy has some of the highest vegetable yields in the country.
Farmland all round
The Franklin reporting area is about 120,500 hectares, Auckland Council's 2018 report card says, and over 70 per cent of it is farmland. Native forest and scrub cover only about 15 per cent.
Crops are rodent habitat
Auckland Council lists crops among the habitats of both rats and mice, and both are under sustained control across the region. Sheds, packhouses and stored produce near homes can give them shelter through winter.
A termite find, long since dealt with
MPI reported in 2014 that elimination of Australian subterranean termites was declared at Pukekohe after a 2010 find. Mud packed into timber is still a call to MPI, never a pest job.
Rodents on rural sections
On a lifestyle block, rats usually show up in the shed before the house: chewed feed sacks, droppings by the chook food, burrows along a wall. Mice follow the same trail into pantries and wardrobes once the weather turns.
Bait is where care matters most with farm dogs, stock and children around. Health NZ says a qualified pest management technician can advise on and monitor toxic baits, and that's the part we'd hand over.
Mild winters and wasps
DOC says German and common wasp colonies can become huge if they survive the winter, and a relatively frost free climate makes that more likely. Hedgerows, banks and sheds give nests room to grow unnoticed until someone mows too close.
Your part, and theirs
You can
- Store feed, seed and pet food in sealed bins.
- Keep stacked timber, sacks and old machinery away from the house.
- Lid the compost and pick up fallen fruit.
- Find out where a wasp nest is, from well back, before mowing near it.
Leave to a pest business
- Bait stations on a section with dogs, stock or children.
- Wasp nests in banks, hedges or sheds.
- Keeping rats from the paddocks out of the house.
Our take on pests in Pukekohe
In Pukekohe we'd check the sheds before the house. Droppings in the feed store or chewed sacks show where they're living, and that's where a pest business starts. Then tell us Rats or mice with what you found, or A wasp nest if that's the trouble.
Want someone to look at it?
Tell us what you've seen and your postcode, and a local pest business that handles exactly that calls you to talk it through.
