Rodent control in Riga — rat and mouse extermination

Why rodents only

Most pest control firms in Latvia offer everything at once. We work with rats and mice only. That means rodent behaviour, the routes they travel, the logic behind where a bait station goes and the differences between species are the only things we deal with, every day. In practice it changes two things: the inspection is more precise, because we know where to look in a building of that type, and the method is chosen by species rather than by whatever happens to be in the van.

How to tell there are rodents on the premises

Rodents are rarely seen — they are active at night. The commonest signs are droppings (3–6 mm for a mouse, 15–20 mm for a rat), rustling or scratching in ceilings and walls once the house goes quiet, round gnawed openings in wood or packaging, dark grease marks along walls 5–10 cm above the floor, and a sharp ammonia-like smell in closed rooms. Two signs at once all but confirms it. If a rodent is seen during the day, the population is usually already large.

Why extermination without removing the cause does not work

If the entry points stay open, new rodents from the surrounding area move into the space you have cleared — sometimes within weeks. A mouse squeezes through a 6–7 mm gap, a rat through a 20 mm opening, or widens an existing one by gnawing the material around it. So on every job we do more than place stations: we point out the specific places that need sealing, and with what. Metal mesh and cement mortar work; expanding foam, silicone and wood do not.

When it is the whole building's problem

In an apartment building rodents do not recognise the boundaries of a flat. They travel through ventilation shafts, pipe runs and partition walls, so the source is often in the basement or in a neighbour's rooms. If activity comes back within weeks of a treatment, or if the neighbours are complaining about the same thing, treating a single flat will not fix it. In that case the effective answer is to treat the shared areas — the basement, the stairwell and the bin store.

Autumn is the busiest period

In September and October, when night temperatures drop below roughly ten degrees and food outdoors runs out, rodents move inside. Enquiries in this period run several times higher than in summer. The first rooms they show up in are basements, garages, sheds and lofts — warm, quiet and rarely visited. Preventive treatment in August and early September stops that wave at the outside wall, and costs considerably less than a treatment in November.

The price we give you before the work

Treatment starts at 40 euros, and the figure we give is the final price. It is set by the type of property and its floor area, not by the number of rodents or the time of day — an urgent night callout costs the same as planned work during the day. The price covers the inspection, finding the entry points, placement and a return check. For commercial premises we work the figure out individually by floor area and type of site.