Raccoon Poison

I guess you found this web page because you have a raccoon problem and want to poison the raccoons. Here is an analysis of various poisons and what they do:

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Anticoagulant (rat poison): Includes warfarin, coumatetraly, difenacoum, brodifacoum, flocoumafen, and bromadiolone. These are primarily used as rodenticides, to kill rats and mice. Anticoagulants damage capillaries (the tiny blood vessels), and cause internal bleeding (hemorrhaging). This process takes a few days. Documented cases of human warfarin poisoning record severe pain from bleeding into muscles and joints. In the final phase, the animal dies of hypovolemic circulatory shock.

Antifreeze - Ethylene glycol: Yeah, you've probably heard that you can leave out a bowl of antifreeze and kill dogs or cats or raccoons. The liver metabolizes ethylene glycol into glycolate and oxalate, which cause extensive cellular damage in various tissues, especially the kidneys, but across many different organs. So after an initial stage of nausea and vomiting and muscle twitches and stuff, kidney, liver, even heart failure cause death, usually in about 24 hours.

Bromethalin: This is another type of rat poison. Attacks the nervous system, and causes limb ataxia, extensor rigidity, opisthotonus, lateral recumbency hind limb hyper-reflexia, seizures, hyperthennia, and finally death after 36 hours or so.

Cholecalciferol: Another type of rat poison, it produces hypercalcemia, which results in systemic calcification of soft tissue, leading to renal failure, cardiac abnormalities, hypertension, CNS depression, and leads to death in 24-36 hours.

Strychnine: causes muscular convulsions and eventually death through asphyxia or sheer exhaustion.

If you want a good, easy, alternative to poison, read my raccoon trapping guide. Trapping is easier than poison!

These are just some of the poisons available to kill raccoons, or rats, or dogs, cats, humans, or any other mammal. I'm here to tell you that using them is a horrible idea. They are very inhumane - they cause prolonged and painful suffering deaths. You may not care about that. If so, crap. Raccoons, like dogs, are really cool and smart animals, and like dogs, they have real personalities. Okay then, some practical reasons:
- Using poison for raccoons is illegal: that's correct. Registered rodenticides are for rats only, and using them for any other animal is against the law.
- Poison isn't an easy solution: first you've got find and buy the poison, then make sure that the raccoon eats the poison, then you've got to make sure it's an effective dose. Not necessarily as simple as it sounds.
The wrong animal might eat the poison you left out: Yes, that includes dogs, if you care about the risk of poisoning a dog. I've seen it happen twice, and the responsible parties were very sorry.
- You may well wind up with a rotting animal carcass on your property, or if you're dealing with a raccoon in the attic or walls, when it dies there, you have a WAY BIGGER problem than you had before. The stench of a dead raccoon is unbelievable.


Kill those nasty raccoons with raccoon poison! Right?

If you want to know how to kill raccoons, there are actually several more effective and humane ways to do it. Poison is the absolute worst thing you can do.

But killing them is pointless, since there are way easier ways to handle the raccoon problem. Unless you derive satisfaction out of killing animals, and you might, and I think killing a raccoon is pretty much the same as killing a dog, and you might not think that, but please consider raccoon prevention if you can, and a much better and MORE EFFECTIVE way to get rid of the raccoons is by raccoon trapping. Also, if you have raccoons in your attic, there are far more considerations than just getting rid of the adult raccoon you see. The job is more complex. Click here to learn everything about how to get rid of raccoons in the attic, from the web's best guide.

You can also call a professional from my listing of hundreds of professional raccoon removal experts serving every city in the USA, and they will be able to do an EFFECTIVE and humane job, way better than poisoning.