How do you handle a skunk caught in a live trap????

[Lbrad7]

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Great point! Rabid skunks and coons are a big problem in our area. I would never release a skunk back into the wild to have to deal with it again either in a trap or after it has killed more of my birds. You just need to be very careful in handling them after you do what has to be done.

 

[Rebel Rooster]

I ain't goin' out there!

 

[WisconsinChickenWhisperer]

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In our recent attempts to foil the raccoon predators around here, we inadvertently live trapped a skunk. Fortunately, I had draped a tarp over the back half of the trap the night I set it b/c we were expecting rain and I didn't want the bait to get washed away. It turns out that was a good move. When I saw Pepe le Pew in there in the morning, I sloooowly approached the cage and pulled the tarp all the way over the cage. I then got a second piece of heavy duty construction grade plastic and draped that over the top of the tarp. Next, I took an old bed comforter and placed that on top. I secured the sides of those coverings with nearby rocks.
I then proceeded to hook up the tailpipe of my car with aluminum foil and a drain pipe and tucked it under the tarps. Twenty minutes or so later, Pepe was asleep and pushing up daisies shortly thereafter. That's how we dispatched all of the critters we caught. No mess, no drama.

Rocky. Our first trap tenant. He was the SMALLEST (that trap is 42 inches long).
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/43104_7-11-10_raccoon.jpg

I had to do this just this morning as a matter of fact! We have a family of fox running around town, and my good friend that lives 4 blocks away from me has lost 6 chickens to them. I have the boys from my work (a group home for troubled teenage boys) coming over and cleaning brush, etc. from my back lot (which is directly behind my chicken coop) so I can see a little better back there, but I also decided that I would try setting out some live traps and see if I couldn't catch them. (If I catch any fox, they will be relocated to a wildlife preserve about 15 miles from town). Anyway, to my dismay, when I checked the traps this morning, I found a skunk in one. First, I approached the trap very slowly with a blanket unfolded in front of me and gently threw the blanket over the trap. The skunk sprayed, but at least it was just the blanket and not me! Then I came in here and re-read this post (thank you, thank you, thank you) because I would have never gotten the trap open as the skunk was on the trip plate. So, I rounded up a tarp, covered the trap with it, dragged the trap to the edge of my garage where I could back the car up and hook up a piece of conduit to the tail pipe with tin foil. I then placed several bags of leaves on top of the tarp edges to seal it off, put the pipe under the tarp, started the car, and went in the house. It may have been overkill (no pun intended), but I let the car run for 40 minutes, just to be darn sure the thing was dead. I used the same pipe to lift up the tarp and blanket to make sure the job was completed. No muss, no fuss. Pepe looked like he just layed down in that trap and took a little nap.

I salvaged a piece of large diameter PVC conduit with a beveled end on it from work today. This way, the beveled end fits over my tail pipe and I wont have to mess around with tin foil again if I happen to catch another skunk. Or raccoon. Or the fisher that has been seen running around town. Done deal.

 

[Show Me Chick]

I shoot them while they are in the live trap if they spray before being shot I let the cage sit for a few days and put on gloves and dispose of them.

 

[mangled]

We have only ever caught one skunk, and man, it was terrifying to come round the coop and see it in the cage. I could smell it, but I was so hoping we hadn't actually caught one. My husband would have NOTHING to do with it, LOL. I put on my oldest pair of clothes, and grabbed an old tarp and walked very slowly up to the cage and dropped it over. The skunk didn't even seem the least bit phased by the tarp. I carried the trap way up to the property line, about 1/8 mile from the house, and my husband disposed of it with the .22. The skunk sprayed when he was shot, and after a couple days, I went up in my old clothes and dumped the carcass. The cage will hold the smell of the skunk for a while. I bleached ours three or four times to get the smell off it.

We've trapped TONS of coons, and there are a lot of skunks around here as well, but for some reason (*knock on wood*) we have only ever caught that one.

Good luck-
Em

 

[Peep_Show]

We set the trap out on the lawn away from the henhouse and instead of the coons we were hoping for, we had a skunk. Actually, we got several over several occasions. The first one we shot and our local taxidermist friend volunteered to take it off our hands. (Turns out he mounted it in a snoozin' skunk position and then would place it on people's car seats....yeah, a real practical joker).

What we ended up doing after that was shooting the skunk and then emptying the cage out onto the lawn. We were out in the rural country and within 12 hours the turkey vultures had come in and all that was left was a little inside-out strip of pelt. Now THAT'S recycling....

 

[WisconsinChickenWhisperer]

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Unfortuneatly, I live within the city limits and it is illegal to discharge a firearm..........

 

[Lbrad7]

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Unfortuneatly, I live within the city limits and it is illegal to discharge a firearm..........

I would go with that car tail pipe thing a few posts back. From what others say...it works great and it seems very humane. No muss no fuss....and most important NO STINK!!!!

Opps..sorry, I just realized that you were the one who tried this method as suggested in a earlier post. I can tell you this...its the way I am going to do it if I ever catch one.

 

[Bassleg]

Skunks make very good pets they are smarter than a dog.

 

[WisconsinChickenWhisperer]

I had a friend in high school that had a pet skunk. Her name was Cuddles. She was cute, and yes, very smart. However, she was very little when my friend got her, and was never allowed to roam in the wild. She was descented, vaccinated, and kept as a pet much like one would keep a ferret as a pet. There is a big difference from that situation to trapping an adult wild skunk that you have no idea where it's been, what diseases it's carrying, and it's hanging around your chicken coop.