The highest price you pay for having rats and mice on your premises is the health risk they pose to your livestock. Rats and mice are carriers of some 45 diseases, contaminating both your livestock feed and water. They can spread disease from contaminated to uncontaminated areas and from one animal to another. Although droppings are the most common way they transmit disease, diseases can also be spread via their fur, urine, saliva, and blood.
 
Determining the exact cost of a disease outbreak is difficult but we know it's enormous with expenses for laboratory testing, veterinary services and medications, sanitizing and disinfecting facilities, and the cost of losing livestock.
 
Outbreaks of Salmonellosis, for example, cost pork U.S. producers an estimated $100 million a year. And poultry producers are equally susceptible. Beyond those costs, salmonella poisoning in the public threatens human health and can seriously undermine your efforts to produce safe food products.
 
Long-Term Costs of Disease
With less acute illnesses, there are other substantial long-term costs such as slow growth of livestock and decreased feed efficiency. For swine, fertility also is reduced, litter sizes are smaller and the number of stillbirths and abortions increases. In poultry, egg production decreases.

Disease outbreaks today can be more damaging than ever before. In our global economy, they can affect not only your operation but your local economy and, as we've seen in recent years, can also adversely affect export markets.