Nope, it didn't at all....my reminder was more in response to the "dispatch" method debate.
But I'm going to ramble on generally in your direction now... so don't take that as really meant for you either
...
I'm pretty open minded about other people thinking differently than me, and adopting other solutions than what I choose and I know this stuff is never always black or white... Your approach isn't so different than my own, other than I do trap in a preventative manner around my coop... at least for raccoons... we have coyotes and foxes, but I don't expect them to be a real problem for my chickens... but if it happens I'll deal with it.
I've trapped different properties here and there, and often the goal is to reduce the nest robbing critters (skunks, possums, coons) to help populations of ground nesting birds such as quail and turkey... sometimes the goal is to remove coyotes to help fawns survive in order to help the deer herd..... sometimes it's both, sometimes it's something else....
It's always just management of a wildlife population or dealing with a specific problem... it's never about true eradication as many seem to assume.... So I naturally carry this idea of managing populations over to defending a poultry flock.
Now is this management effort long term? It just depends on the effort you put into it each year as far as how long it will be helpful... but I assure you if I remove a lot of raccoons in the fall, the number of hungry mommas with hungry kits I have in the early summer and the number of teenage raccoons I have in late summer is going to be much smaller.
As an example: I had a friend with 100 acres remove something like 75 raccoons and possums in a matter of 2 weeks the first year that farm was trapped... can we expect that helped the quail, turkey and even cottontail populations on that farm?... of course it did. Did it wipe out the raccoons and possums long term?... of course not. And so it's the same thing for anyone around their coop... reduced numbers simply means reduced opportunities for problems... but you are never going to remove them all or prevent more from moving in.
But I guess it's important to remember too, that if someone lives in town, they might actually have more raccoons and red foxes... and in many places these days maybe more coyotes... than I have living in the sticks.... and they will have a much smaller area that they can control to remove critters... so they have the problem of defending their coop from a large surrounding population of chicken eaters... it's a different ball game than what many other folks face.
I know what I'd do in that situation, but it's hard to know what to tell others sometimes... and some of the reasons it's hard to do so, is because of some general lack of understanding, as well as a lack of details, and a lack of knowing what details to provide.... and well let's just say it out loud... there is often a lot of misinformation on these threads that comes from folks with knowledge but no experience:
- Knowledge ( I read this, so I know it)
- Experience ( I read this, so I know it... AND ...I did it, so I now also know what I don't know).
I don't comment on threads about how to treat chicken health issues, because I've never done it, and I'm unlikely to ever do most any of it... but I do read them some times, so I have knowledge of certain issues of that type... but I think it would be silly for me to tell someone else how to apply this or that medicine when I've never done it.
Likewise on these predator problem discussions, I see a lot of misinformation handed around, based on assumptions and guesses, and regurgitated knowledge, and a few things tend to happen:
- bickering
- confusion
- nonsensical suggestions that are obviously detached from experience
And there's one thing that often never happens... the OP getting help with the problem.
Which brings me back around (finally) to the point about the ethics of how to dispatch the critter... it seems a bit premature to get into that before the critter is caught, or the species is identified
... but that's pretty typical of how these threads tend to go.
Certainly, I've contributed to the noise from time to time too, and I'm not at all against a nice discussion on coyotes or coyote behavior, etc.... but maybe that can come a little later?
I guess I would just ask everyone to focus more on helping the OP of these discussions learn what details to provide in order to be able to offer targeted suggestions.... and less on guessing and providing broad strokes of general information about this critter or that critter, or this approach or that approach to dealing with critters... at least until we've helped determine some basic information, that get's the OP closer to some help in dealing with the problem that they've created the post for.[/QUOTE)
I totally see your point and it's valid also though I have been in an emergency and old threads are the only info so I'm trying to think for future reference. Many of us never consider but would like to know if this may hurt other animals and having more info is better for making better informed devisions This farmers quote tlis something that pops into my head often for non farming problems. If there is a coyote on your farm you are doing something wrong. That boy wanted to kill that coyote that's the easy solution but what else can you do? That's harder
