Rodent Removal in Davie, FL
Davie keeps horses, barns and feed rooms on lots the rest of Broward County never had, and rats know where the grain is. The call gets a free inspection of the house and the barn.
Free Inspection in Davie
The free inspection in Davie covers more ground than in most Broward towns: the house roofline and attic, then the barn, the feed room, the hay stack, the tack shed and the canal bank at the back of the acreage. Davie is in Broward County immediately southwest of downtown Fort Lauderdale, centered where I-595 meets I-75, so the drive from the downtown office is a short one along 595.
The phone is answered at any hour. Describe what you have seen and where, because a rat in a feed room, a rat in a 1970s ranch house attic and a rat in a gated subdivision built in 2005 are three different jobs. Book a free inspection and the quote lists each part of the work on its own line.
Barns, feed storage and a town full of horses
Davie is the equestrian town of Broward County: it carries Cowboy Town on its seal, horses are allowed on its public streets, the town runs a community barn watch program and a large-animal disaster registry, and the acreage communities in western Davie keep horses, goats and other livestock on lots of an acre to several acres. That makes it the one town in the county where the rodent call is as often about a barn as about a house.
A barn is a rodent's ideal building. Grain and sweet feed in bags or open bins, hay stacked on pallets, spilled feed along the aisle, water in every stall and a hundred openings in board siding. Roof rats nest in the hay and in the rafters; Norway rats burrow under the slab and along the manure pile. The work on a barn is different from the work on a house: sealed metal feed bins with lids, hardware cloth on the feed room walls up to the height a rat climbs, doors that close to the slab, hay moved off the wall and rotated, and traps along the runs. Rodenticide near livestock is a decision for a licensed operator, and the EPA restricts second-generation anticoagulants to tamper-resistant stations; the contractor we route keeps bait away from horses, dogs and barn cats and leans on trapping and sealing, which UF/IFAS notes also avoids a poisoned animal dying inside a structure. The commercial rodent control page covers boarding barns and any operation with a feed room and a manager.
1960s and 1970s ranch houses beside newer gated subdivisions
Davie has two kinds of housing side by side: the ranch houses built in the 1960s and 1970s on the older acreage streets, and the gated subdivisions with tile roofs and dug lakes that filled in the former groves and pasture from the 1990s onward. The town was incorporated in 1925 and again in 1963, and the older streets still carry houses from that second era, with shingle or flat gravel roofs, wide open-board soffits, original aluminum-frame windows and outbuildings added over fifty years.
The older house lets rats in at the soffit, the fascia and the outbuildings. Soffit boards have gapped, the screen on a gable vent has rusted out, and a lean-to on the side of the garage meets the house roof at a joint nobody has looked at. The newer house lets them in at the tile eave, where a missing or broken bird stop, the metal eave closure the Department of Energy recommends on tile roofs, leaves the first course open along the whole run. On both, the contractor we route measures every opening against the quarter-inch rat-proofing standard from UF/IFAS and closes it with metal and galvanized hardware cloth. Details on the material choices are on the rodent exclusion page, and the attic side of the job is on roof rat removal.
Canals, fruit trees and the storm years
Davie was drained from the Everglades by canal, and the canals still run along the back of the acreage lots and between the subdivisions, lined with Brazilian pepper, hedges and palms. A canal bank is cover and a travel route, and roof rats use it the same way they use a sea wall in the coastal towns, moving along the vegetation and up a palm trunk or a fence to a roof. UF/IFAS puts the species' range at about 150 yards from the den, so the canal easement behind the neighbor's barn is inside it. Davie's citrus history left mature trees on many lots, and mango, avocado and starfruit have joined them; fruit on the ground in season feeds the colony.
Wilma in 2005 and Irma in 2017 both crossed western Broward. The Department of Energy documents wind breaking and displacing roof tiles, with one broken tile leading to the next, and a barn with a metal roof loses panels and siding the same way. Debris piles along the canal roads become harborage, and rising canal water pushes rats out of bank burrows into barns and garages. The CDC ties leptospirosis case increases to hurricanes and floods, names rodents among the reservoirs and recommends rodent control as post-flood prevention, which matters more on a property with livestock. A post-storm rodent inspection covers the house and the barn together.
What We Handle in Davie
Every rodent service on the site runs in Davie, and on an acreage lot the work covers the outbuildings as well as the house.
- Roof rat removal: the attic call on a 1970s ranch house or a newer tile-roof home, with traps left on the runs at least a week.
- Rodent exclusion: soffit and fascia repair on older houses, metal bird stops on tile eaves, and hardware cloth on feed rooms and tack sheds.
- Rodent inspection: a free walk of the roofline, the attic, the barn and the canal bank, written up as a list of openings and harborage.
- Commercial rodent control: boarding barns, feed and tack businesses, nurseries and the plazas along Davie Road and University Drive.
- Dead rodent removal: finding a carcass in a wall, a ceiling or under a barn floor by smell and access, then closing the route.
- Attic cleanup: clearing droppings and soiled insulation from an older attic once the animals are gone.
A Typical Davie Job
The situation: The owner of a two-acre property on one of the older Davie streets keeps three horses in a four-stall barn behind a 1970s ranch house. Grain bags in the feed room have been chewed open at the corners, there are droppings on the hay, and at dusk something runs the top rail of the stall partitions. A week later the family hears scratching in the ceiling of the house too, and the owner is tired of being told that every barn has a few rats.
What gets done: Whoever attends finds a roof rat colony nesting in the hay stack and the barn rafters, a run along a canal-side hedge to a queen palm that leans over the house, and a rusted gable vent screen at the end of the house nearest the barn. Feed goes into lidded metal bins, the feed room walls get hardware cloth to rail height, the hay is moved off the wall and onto pallets, and the stall aisle doors are fitted to close to the slab. The gable vent is rescreened, the palm is flagged for trimming, and snap traps go along the rafters and the attic run. No bait is used near the stalls. The quote itemizes barn exclusion, house exclusion, trapping and a follow-up.
How it turns out: The barn traps are busy for the first two weeks and then stop, the house attic goes quiet, and the follow-up visit finds no fresh droppings on the hay. The owner gets a written list of what was sealed on both buildings and a feed-storage routine to keep it that way.
What This Costs in Davie
Rodent work in Davie prices inside the national typical-job bands HomeGuide published for 2026, and the free inspection produces an itemized figure for the house and any outbuildings.
| Line item | National band (HomeGuide 2026) |
|---|---|
| Standalone inspection | $0 to $175 nationally; no charge here |
| Trapping and removal | $250 to $1,200 |
| Full-home exclusion | $500 to $2,500 |
| Attic cleanup and decontamination | $600 to $2,500 |
| Insulation removal and replacement | $2.50 to $5.50 per square foot of attic |
| Dead rodent removal | $150 to $500 |
| Full-scope restoration | $3,000 to $10,000 or more |
What moves a Davie quote is the number of buildings. A house alone sits where any slab-on-grade Broward house does, and often under the national spread, since the guides price crawl-space and basement work a Florida contractor never sees. A barn, a feed room and a tack shed add exclusion lines of their own, and a tile eave on a newer house pushes the sealing toward the top of the band because the whole length has to be closed. Ask for each building on its own line.
Rat holes around a building
What a burrow looks like, and where it leads.
Video: RAT holes around your house? How to stop rats burrowing, from Pest Interceptors.
Common Questions in Davie
What callers from Davie want settled before they book.
Barns and horses
Is rat poison safe to use around my horses and barn cats?
Trapping and sealing are the default on a Davie barn, and bait is a licensed operator's decision made with the animals in mind. The EPA restricts second-generation anticoagulants to tamper-resistant bait stations, and a barn cat or a dog that eats a poisoned rat is at risk of secondary poisoning. UF/IFAS notes that trapping avoids a poisoned rat dying inside the structure. The bigger win is the feed: lidded metal bins, hay off the wall, spills swept, and hardware cloth on the feed room. Remove the food and the barn holds far fewer rats.
How long does it take to get rid of rats in a barn and house together?
Weeks for the house and longer for the barn, because the barn keeps feeding them until the storage changes. On HomeGuide's figures a small population is trapped out in two to three days, while a severe one can run one to two months. In a barn the feed goes into sealed bins first, then traps go on the rafter and rail runs and stay at least a week, since roof rats avoid new objects. UF/IFAS states the species breeds all year in Florida, so waiting through a season lets the colony grow.
Houses and contractors
What keeps rats away permanently from a Davie property?
Closed buildings and no free food. On the house, every opening a quarter inch and larger at the roofline gets closed with metal or hardware cloth, and palms and limbs come back off the roof. On the barn, grain lives in lidded metal bins, hay sits on pallets away from the walls, and doors close to the slab. Fruit gets picked up in season. A roof rat ranges about 150 yards from its den according to UF/IFAS, so the canal bank and the neighbor's barn are part of the picture, and sealing is what settles it.
What license does a rodent contractor need in Davie?
An FDACS credential, and you can check it before the work starts. Trapping rats or mice in, on or under a structure for hire in Florida requires at minimum the FDACS Limited Commercial Wildlife Management certificate; applying rodenticide or running a general pest business requires an FDACS pest control business license with a certified operator in General Household Pest and Rodent Control. FWC does not license rat and mouse trappers. Every contractor we route holds the credential the job needs. Ask for the number, an itemized quote, and the warranty terms on the exclusion.
Still have a question? Call (954) 790-6402 and ask.
Nearby Areas We Serve
The contractors dispatched to Davie cover the neighboring Broward County towns as well, and the whole county is inside the service area.
Book a Free Inspection in Davie
Call (954) 790-6402 or use the form to book a free inspection in Davie, house and barn included. Someone picks up around the clock, and the inspection is free.