Milton, WI Public Health Rules: Rodent Control (2026)

Chapter 26, Article II defines public health nuisances broadly. Section 26-31 lists ten specific conditions, including accumulations of decayed animal or vegetable matter, trash, rubbish, rotting lumber, bedding, packing material, or scrap metal in which flies, mosquitoes, disease-carrying insects, rats or other vermin may breed, along with stagnant water where mosquitoes multiply and privy vaults or garbage cans that aren't flytight. Section 26-32 flatly prohibits any person from erecting, causing, continuing, or permitting a public nuisance to exist within the city. Separately, Chapter 30's Article IV, Sanitary Requirements for Animals, requires under § 30-101 that every structure, pen, building, stable, coop, kennel or yard where animals are kept be maintained free of rodents, vermin and objectionable odors.

The city's own backyard-poultry permit rules reach the same point from the other direction: § 6-203(c) requires that chicken, quail and duck feed and water be kept unavailable to rodents. Enforcement runs through the nuisance-abatement process at § 26-36: a complaint triggers inspection by the chief of police or building inspector, and if the hazard poses great and immediate danger, the mayor can order the owner to abate within 24 hours before the city does the work and bills the cost as a special charge on the tax roll.

Day-to-day vector control is also a standing public-works duty; § 2-573(3) assigns the director of public works charge of citywide mosquito and rodent control alongside garbage and refuse collection.