Video shows scale of mouse plague affecting rural NSW

A new video has surfaced showing just how bad the outback mouse infestation has become. The footage will make your skin crawl.

A horror video shows thousands of mice overrunning a farm in regional NSW.

The scale of the mouse plague affecting the state and parts of Queensland, Victoria and South Australia is made clear in the footage, shot near the town of Warren, NSW.

Ben Storer, 47, who shot the video, said it was the worst he had seen since the 1980s.

“Have seen them that bad before as a young fella in the early ’80s in Mallee where I grew up, so I sort of knew they could get that bad,” Mr Storer said.

An expert from CSIRO has said the mouse infestation is a result of heavy rainfall, which means there is plentiful food for the rodents.

“Mice start breeding when they’re six weeks old, and have a litter every 19 to 20 days after that. They can have up to 10 pups per litter, which means the rate of increase is really dramatic,” CSIRO research officer Steve Henry said previously.

Several rural towns have been overrun by mice. Picture: Supplied

“As soon as they have a litter of pups they fall pregnant again. They gestate the next litter while feeding the previous one.”

Locals have been putting out bait to try to kill the rodents.

During a previous mouse plague in 1984, a farmer was shown on the evening news using a flamethrower to wipe out mice eating his crops.

But the best hope to get rid of the pests is a cold snap or heavy rainfall, the mayor of nearby Coonamble, Al Karanouh, has said.

His district has also seen huge amounts of mice multiply over the past few months.

“A good cold snap, or lots of rain will do it. All their holes in the ground get filled up and they die,” Mr Karanouh said.

Mr Henry said there was another hope as well: when the rodents multiply too quickly, they tend to deplete their food sources and spread disease among each other.

“As the food runs short and disease goes through the population, they start to eat their offspring. That makes the population crash away rapidly,” he said.