If you’ve seen baby mice around your home, you should get in touch with a pest control provider right away. Baby mice are one of the worst things you can find, because it means that adult mice or rats are surely present. Not only are baby mice the sign of a larger population, it’s a sign that these other rodents have already had time to reproduce. Here are some tips to prevent baby mice from becoming a problem in your home, as well as the steps you should take to get them out:

Seal Your Home From Rodents

Baby mice will never be a problem if your home has been properly sealed. Many homeowners take an afternoon to inspect their property, and then assume that pests have no way in, but a proper sealing requires a much closer look than this. A full grown rat can enter your home through a hole that’s smaller than a quarter, so you can imagine how tiny an opening needs to be for full grown or baby mice to enter.

Proper sealing requires attention to every level of your home. This means carefully inspecting main levels, basements and attics to look for potential entryways. Gaps beneath doors or windows, unsecured ventilation, and even sewage pipes can all make it possible for these rodents to sneak into your home. The best way to ensure that your home is properly sealed is to get in touch with an experienced home pest control provider. They’ll know all about rodents and the entrances that they use.

Don’t Rely On Mouse Traps and Poisons

Each year many homeowners spread rat poison throughout their home in hopes of keeping rodents at bay. What they’re actually doing is putting themselves, their children, and especially pets at risk of becoming poisoned by these substances. If mice are present in your home they’ll scurry all over your home, including the areas where you prepare foods. If they’ve recently run through this poison that’s been spread, they could be leaving trace amounts of it behind on your counters, stove top, and cutting boards.

That’s not all, many homeowners put poison in areas that their pets can easily reach. You may think an area is safe, but you may be surprised by the areas your pets sneak into: Especially when you’re away from home. Plus, they can come in contact with small amounts of the poison that rodents have spread throughout your home after passing through it. It only takes a small amount of this poison to make your pets sick, and it could even prove fatal.

Mouse traps are also not the best choice for getting rid of a rodent infestation. If you’ve seen baby mice in your home, it means there is already a substantial population living within your home, one that is too large to be controlled by mouse traps. At best, mouse traps can catch a few mice — this will hardly make a dent in an advanced rodent population. Furthermore, emptying these traps and disposing of dead mice is no pleasant chore. You could even come in contact with the disease and bacteria that these pests spread while attempting to remove them from the trap.

Glue traps, non-kill traps, and other new types of mouse traps will produce the same results as the traditional variety. The only way to ensure that a rodent population, baby mice and all, is fully removed from your home is to get in touch with a professional pest control provider. Make sure the provider that you hire is experienced in removing baby mice from homes and taking steps to prevent them from returning.