Pack Rats and Squirrels for food collection

Hi there everyone! I'm wrapping up Geoff Lawton's online PDC course (it's been amazing) and I have a practical question-
Both Bill Mollison and Geoff refer to utilizing wildlife such as pack rats and squirrels to collect food by creating a good habitat for them (involving pvc pipes, boxes, etc) to collect in, then using 85% of the seeds they collect, ensuring the animal has enough to feed itself for the winter.
Pack rats seem like a brilliant way to harvest wild rice for human consumption, as wild rice harvest can be very difficult for people.
and squirrels, too, as Geoff says the nuts and seeds they collect are high quality and can be sprouted to use as animal fodder.
So practical points here- /
Has anyone done this? What are your real world experiences with this? How do you attract the right type of rat to your habitat? How much grain/seed/nuts might a rat or squirrel collect and store? Would this work near a valuable nut tree to have a squirrel collect the good nuts for you?
Also, what about predators? Most of us have LGD's and cats to help prevent critters like this getting access to our crops... how would you keep them from killing your fuzzy little workers?
Thanks everyone!

When you choose to co-exist with wildlife that includes eliminating human introduced factors that limit their ability to thrive.

Cats would have to be indoor only, or be contained with some kind of fencing or electric netting.

Harmful practices such as chemicals or destruction of habitat required for the wildlife to thrive would need to end.

Nature will balance herself IF us humans will allow it; and yes, that includes predators.

We need to learn how to safely contain our livestock WITHOUT compromising or going to war with those who naturally reside with us.

As to using squirrels etc as suppliers of forage for humans, yes, I have heard of this, but I suspect this is more often "chance" than a "reliable" practice. At the very least you would need rodents who use single caches as opposed to scatter caching (Eastern Gray (and black) squirrels). Red squirrels (aka Pine or - can't remember the other names) in North America are one that tends to stash loads of nuts and/or mushrooms in "larders" or en mass in collections that one could pilfer from, judiciously.

I lived and taught in a native american community in Alaska for 2 years.  The locals would collect "mousefood" which was actually the food cache of a local vole.  They used the roots to make soups.

Interesting idea, but I feel like encouraging rodents to collect food, rather than harvesting what they don on their own, might prove problematic in the long run... it seems they will be more successful robbing your larder than you robbing theirs, and I can only imagine it won't take them long to figure it out.

Anna Marie Spackman wrote:Hi there everyone! I'm wrapping up Geoff Lawton's online PDC course (it's been amazing) and I have a practical question-
Both Bill Mollison and Geoff refer to utilizing wildlife such as pack rats and squirrels to collect food by creating a good habitat for them (involving pvc pipes, boxes, etc) to collect in, then using 85% of the seeds they collect, ensuring the animal has enough to feed itself for the winter.
Pack rats seem like a brilliant way to harvest wild rice for human consumption, as wild rice harvest can be very difficult for people.
and squirrels, too, as Geoff says the nuts and seeds they collect are high quality and can be sprouted to use as animal fodder.
So practical points here- /
Has anyone done this? What are your real world experiences with this? How do you attract the right type of rat to your habitat? How much grain/seed/nuts might a rat or squirrel collect and store? Would this work near a valuable nut tree to have a squirrel collect the good nuts for you?
Also, what about predators? Most of us have LGD's and cats to help prevent critters like this getting access to our crops... how would you keep them from killing your fuzzy little workers?
Thanks everyone!

Hello Anna! I just went through Geoff Lawton’s PDC presentation 12.39 today that mentioned this and I cannot find any additional information! I think your post is the only relevant result on the internet. I live in Tennessee within the range of the eastern woodrat(Neotoma Floridana) and it makes me so curious if I could grow seeds they would prefer, harvest, and store that I could also feed my chickens with in the winter. I imagine building an artificial pack rat nest that you could harvest seeds out of just like honey from a hive, but I can’t find a scrap of information about this strategy past the brief mention by Geoff in his PDC. I absolutely love the idea of animals having different natures, habits, and tendencies that we can keep lists of and refer to when we are in need of that work in our systems. Always leaving enough food for the animal worker, but benefiting from their work, just like honey bees. Geoff throws around the number 85% of the collection is uneaten and only 15% is used, but I can’t find those numbers anywhere either. There has to be resources he’s siting, but I can’t find them. Someone, help! This also reminds me of a story I heard about doves and dovecotes where peasants who were desperate for food would massage grain seeds back up out of the dove gizzards and mouths, wash and dry the grain, and mill it into flour for bread. I’m not willing to go that far haha, but it was so interesting that peasants would use the birds to steal the king’s wheat and passively import bread. So they had squab meat, bread, and manure for the vegetable garden, all from the dovecote.