How it works
You keep paying for treatment. The rats keep coming back. Here's how the 90-day rodent fertility management program breaks that cycle.
Your pest control vendor is doing their job correctly. Standard treatment removes the rats that are there. The problem is what happens to that territory in the weeks after it empties.
Why the cycle doesn't stop
Treatment clears the rats that are there. It doesn't change anything for the ones coming next.
City rats — primarily Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) in urban buildings — are territorial. When a colony establishes harborage in your block, they mark it with scent signals that tell every other rat the space is taken. As long as that colony is there, other groups stay out.
Remove that colony with treatment, and those signals fade within days. The food source is still there. The building is still there. Every rat in the surrounding block can now tell the territory is open. They move in. That's where the new infestation comes from — not from far away. From the same block, within four to eight weeks.
This isn't the vendor's fault. Standard pest control removes what's present on the visit. The industry runs on a scheduled cycle because that's what the biology produces: clear it, wait, clear it again. The cycle doesn't end because nothing changes the rate at which new rats fill in.
Treatment week
Colony cleared. Active population removed. Site is clean.
Week 2
Territory sits empty. Surrounding rats start detecting that it's open.
Week 3–4
Rats from the surrounding block test the space. No resistance. Food is still there.
Week 5–6
New group moves in. Breeding starts at full rate immediately.
Week 7–8 → next treatment
Colony re-established. Population back near where it started. Cycle resets — same cost, same outcome, same timeline.
The fertility management mechanism
Fewer babies. The population shrinks on its own.
Evolve is a bait made from cottonseed, developed by SenesTech. It doesn't kill rats. It changes how many babies they can have — which is what actually stops the cycle.
Male rats that eat the bait regularly produce significantly less working sperm. Their contribution to the next generation drops. The effect builds over several weeks.
Females have fewer litters, and smaller ones. Pups born during the program period are less likely to survive. Across the whole colony, more rats are dying than being born.
Within 8 to 12 weeks, the population stops replacing itself at its normal rate. The territory is still occupied, so surrounding rats don't flood back in. The colony just gets smaller. Track count monitoring shows the decline over time.
Why it's safe for food environments
The active ingredient in Evolve comes from cottonseed — the same plant. The EPA classifies it as minimum risk, the same category as products made from cloves or citronella. It's not a synthetic chemical. It doesn't build up in the environment.
It produces no secondary kill risk. If a hawk or a fox encounters a rat that's been consuming the bait, the predator is not exposed to anything harmful. That's what makes it safe for continuous use in restaurants, food storage, and occupied residential buildings.
EPA minimum risk clearance means no special permit is needed to deploy Evolve in or around food-handling spaces.
The 90-day program
Two phases. Your existing vendor stays.
Phase 1 clears the current population through your existing pest control operator. Phase 2 prevents the next one from forming at full size. Both run together as a single integrated pest management program for 90 days.
Clear the current colony
Your existing pest control vendor handles treatment. We coordinate with them to get a clean, documented baseline before the fertility management starts. No contract changes. Your vendor keeps their relationship.
Deploy fertility management
Evolve bait stations go in along travel paths, near entry points, and around the property perimeter. Stations are checked and refilled each month. The bait runs continuously through the full 90 days.
Monitoring (baseline + monthly): small tracking plates sit at each station. Rats walking across them leave footprints. We count the tracks each month and compare against the Week 1 baseline. The count goes down over time. That's the documented record — the 90-day declining trend you can show an inspector.
At 90 days, you get a full comparison: track counts per location, how the numbers moved, the documented trend. That record goes with you into any inspection or any conversation where proof of active management matters.
What the program is and isn't
It's a second layer. It runs on top of what you already have.
What it handles
- The replacement cycle — the rats that move in after treatment
- Population fertility across the 90-day period
- Documented activity decline between scheduled PCO visits
- The gap between "we treated it" and "it stays gone"
What it doesn't replace
- Immediate treatment of the current infestation — that's Phase 1, your existing vendor
- Sealing entry points — that's structural exclusion work, handled separately
- Your existing pest control contract
- Compliance documentation required from a licensed exterminator
Start before the next treatment visit.
Tell us about your property and who handles pest control now. We'll coordinate Phase 1 with your vendor and run the fertility management layer through the full 90 days.
- Layered onto your existing pest program
- EPA-designated minimum-risk bait
- Documented monthly reporting
- Month-to-month, no long contracts