Rat numbers in the Eastern Bay “exploded” last year and may do the same this year.

With plenty of food in the bush, Federated Farmers Bay of Plenty president Brent Mountfort said the population could "explode".

“The danger is they build up massive numbers, then eat all of the available food – then are desperately looking for replacement food. That’s when they become dangerous.”

One man who knows all too well about rats is Edgecumbe Soldiers Road resident Garry Bryson.

“One of my neighbours has lost several hectares of maize to rats,” he said.

Mr Bryson took The Beacon onto one of his fields to see the multitude of holes dug by rats along the drains. There were even visible paths through the grass, carved by the rats.

Only an ongoing and vigilant effort had solved his problem.

“I am on top of them now,” he said.

Home-made traps, a fox terrier, drowning and poisoning are some of the weapons he has used.

However, Mr Bryson said he was disappointed in a waxy, blue-coloured poison he had used as the rats ate it without dying.

“It goes through them, but they still run around,” he said.

Mr Bryson said farmers might have to try different poisons to find one that worked for them.

Whakatāne district councillor Wilson James said he was aware of the problem.

“I’ve spoken to the regional council and our district council – they both say controlling rats isn’t really their problem, although they acknowledge there’s a hell of a problem,” he said.

“I’ve spoken to the Department of Conservation as well, they don’t seem to feel it’s their problem either, unless it’s on DOC land.

“It comes back to private landowners, really.”

Mr James said he knew of Mr Bryson’s problem specifically.

“There’s a lot of maize in that area and the Edgecumbe wastewater ponds are nearby,” he said.

“So they're all contributing and it makes you wonder whether we should all be pulling together to make a concerted effort.”

Mr James said the community needed to be aware of “the huge scale of the problem”.

Former Kawerau mayor and sitting regional councillor Malcolm Campbell said there had been a sizeable rat problem in Kawerau as well, but the owners of the land by the thermal power station, Tūwharetoa ki Kawerau, were getting on top of it.

“They’ve got an extensive eradication programme going,” he said.

“But, yes, it has been a real problem.”

Mr Campbell said when he was Kawerau mayor, the council gave out free rat bait.

“Because we’ve always had rats around the Ruruanga Stream and the riverbanks,” he said.

“If anybody needed help or rat bait we used to supply it for free.”

He said if everybody got involved and did their bit, the problem would not get out of hand.

“But if we don’t, then we really will have a problem.”

Mr Campbell said he was aware of the problem in the Edgecumbe area and that residents were unhappy.

“They want to get it sorted but no one is taking responsibility,” he said.

“It does come down to the territorials and the regional council, whether we like it or not. It’s not our duty to have to do it, but somebody must take leadership on it.”

Mr Campbell said he had seen the tracks made by rats on Edgecumbe Soldiers Road and that they were “running around among the cows”.

“Some of the poisons are not as brutal as they used to be,” he said.

“They are eating the stuff and getting away with it.”

In his younger days working in the butchering industry, he said they even used cyanide.

“People say, rats – we don’t have any rats,” he said.

“But if you have dogs, chickens or anything around – you have rats, I tell you now.”

Mr Campbell recommendes having a cat to help against rats.

“If you get a good cat that knows its business, they kill the little ones and that’s a real good help.”

Whakatāne Farmlands sales representative Rachel Billinghurst said the company had sold lots of rat poison last year and this year.

As well as farmers, customers included DOC and Whakatāne District Council.

“The rats are really bad in crop areas,” Ms Billinghurst said.

Having previously lived in town, Ms Billinghurst has used the Pest Off! poison and recommends it.

“When I lived in town, I heard rats running in the roof cavity,” she said.

Nailing a few of the poison blocks into the roof cavity had killed them.

“The poison dried the rats out, so there was no issue with smell.”

Ms Billinghurst said the poison had to be fixed in place – otherwise the rats would take it with them, storing it in their nest.

“We recently had a customer who experienced this,” she said.

“He found the rat nest and the rats had not eaten the poison, just stored it.”

Now living in the West Bank Road area, Ms Billinghurst said there were problems with rats around the silage stacks.

“We put the poison in the Pest Off! Traps, which have wires in them,” she said.

With entrances from both sides and four hoops that can hold the poison in place, the traps can be left to do their work.

Traps in the Farmlands store are checked once a month.