Rats and Hops

We are in the planning stages of adding a 10 acre hops field to our property on the Central Coast of CA. Previously alfalfa has been grown here, but with a huge rat problem. does anyone know how rats like Hops? Should we be concerned?

Cheers!

I've had some nibble young shoots, which can be frustrating. But when the hops get going, they don't have much use for them, at least where I live. Granted, I don't have a huge rat problem but they tend to find other things in my yard (cherry tomatoes, for example) that they prefer. I can't see how ten acres of hops could get overrun by rats. Maybe some owl boxes around the fields would be worthwhile...they'd be easy to mount on the poles. Good luck!

Rats are $2-4 at the pet store. You could get one and see if they have the same affect on rats as they do dogs. If so hopes would be a winwin.

Ps I'm not condoning killing snake food, but science has to be tested some how. right?

well at least they only seem to like the young shoots... that should give us only a short season of worry. We currently have 140 acres of wine grapes growing, so plenty of established owl boxes with more on the way. I've also been trying to find a snake breeder who can sell me a bunch of baby gopher snakes to help our rodent issue (for grapes it's just gophers and ground squirrels). maybe we should put grow tubes on the rhizomes for the first year...?

I can say for certain that Brown Wood rats do not eat hops, don't know about grey or black rats.