Watch Rats Burst From Hay Bale in Skin-Crawling Video: 'There's So Many'

Hundreds of rats have been filmed bursting from a hay bale in a skin-crawling video.

The video was taken by U.K.-based pest control service Suffolk and Norfolk Rat Pack while removing rats from a farm. The service posts videos of its work to its YouTube and Facebook accounts.

The service, which uses dogs to catch rodents, said on a Facebook post that its workers had been on the job for a "grueling 2 hours" and were about to call it a day. By that point, they had already caught an estimated 270 rats at the property.

But after lifting just one more hay bale, the workers were met with "an utter explosion of rats."

In the video, dozens of rats can be seen jumping out of the bale. "There's so many, there's so many," a man can be heard saying. "I don't know what to do! There's endless rats. Oh my God!"

The dogs can be seen chasing the rats as the rodents continue to leap from the hay bale, and one dog catches a rat in its mouth.

Ed Cook, who manages the service, told Newsweek: "The rats jump at the dogs when they are healthy and well fed. We have seen this a number of times before. However when they are fed high-quality, high-protein pig food, then they are at their healthiest. This allows them to have the strength to really fight back against the dogs.

Cook continued: "On this particular day, we had rats measuring at 20 inches long. Rats are habitual, and sometimes in our videos it can be seen that we are using our boots to scuff the route of the rat. They lay urine wherever they go, so other rats follow. This can be seen when they are trying to evade the dogs, and they know where to go and the dogs lose them. We do not catch them all."

Suffolk and Norfolk Rat Pack uses traditional forms of pest control, like dogs, to reduce the impact of rodenticides on the environment.

"The days out are very different, depending on the location. However, they are all centered around using the dogs to locate and exterminate the rats. The speed and accuracy of this method cannot be rivaled," Cook said.

One of the service's original aims was to reduce the amount of poison applied in the countryside, he said. "By using dogs we aim to not need to use poisons and therefore reduce the amount of secondary deaths from bioaccumulation up the food chain so the rare predators are in no way affected."

Cook called the damage that an infestation of rats can do "horrendous, whether this is to buildings, cars or animals."

"We have had buildings rendered structurally unsound due to rat damage, cars' wiring eaten so the car is written off and seen them eating other animals or eggs," he said.

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