Originally published at: New York feeding rats tasty birth control - Boing Boing
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From Gail Sherman
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Of course eliminating their food sources by being smarter about waste management is the most effective solution. They’re working on that too, but it’s amazing how long it’s been taking for the city to make a serious effort to modernize garbage cans and avoid leaving big bags of refuse sitting on sidewalks for pickup.
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Summit of Vermin
Good band name or appropriate designation of GOP meeting? 
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Can we get this for feral cats? It’s incredibly difficult to find low cost spay/neuter resources in my area. If I could put birth control in their food, it would be a miracle!
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We got our colony here neutered for $20/cat. Now, we had 18, so that’s still not cheap, but it was way cheaper than anything else.
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I’m not sure if there’s an oral option(and I wasn’t able to determine what flavor of contraceptive they are using on the rats, from the article); but it looks like there has been a fair bit of poking around with immunocontraceptives and immunocastration of cats to reduce the cost and complexity of processing trapped feral cats from ‘surgical’ to ‘single injection’.
The fact that some of the injectables use a viral vector to deliver an engineered transgene makes me suspect that you could probably markedly improve efficiency by leaning harder on the viral vector; but I assume that the closer you get to Kittens of Men the less happy people are with you.
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We had a vet in our area capture spay and release ferals in the woods around our area starting in 2009. The last feral that hung out around my deck passed away right before Christmas. I come across no ferals these days.
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I used to live in Oakland where there are a ton of feral cats. I probably TNR’d at least 100 cats. Very low cost or free resources were available.
I’ve moved to Sacramento. Resources are very limited and reserved to certain weekdays per month. You have to trap your cats and line up at 5 am, because they only take the first 10 cats, which is difficult because it’s hard to trap on a schedule and I have a job.
There are tons of feral cats in my neighborhood. I’m currently feeding a colony of 7 cats, all not spayed or neutered. It’s heartbreaking because I can’t find any resources and I know they are going to continue to breed. None of the rescue places will return voicemails or emails.
There is a birth control pill available - which from everything I read is perfectly safe if you have a colony you consistently feed. Unfortunately it’s only available by prescription and I can’t find a vet willing to prescribe it.
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There is a pill available, but only by prescription. I can’t find a vet willing to prescribe it.
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I’ve recently been adopted by overflow from our neighbor’s community cats. As you’ve observed, getting them trapped and fixed is difficult. Wish it were otherwise, as cats are fine, but too many are a scourge.
/derail
Returning you to your regularly scheduled program…
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“So, how do you get rats off an island, hmm? My grandmother showed me. We buried an oil drum and hinged the lid. Then we…”
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