Has anyone had success with deer cams? *updated with pics!*

[NicInNC]

When approaching a trapped skunk, it's best to have a big towel or blanket handy.

When you cover the trap, it tends to calm them down a bit.

Then just submerge the trap in a big water illed plastic tote, or the nearest creek for about 10 minutes beore opening and dumping the drap contents.

 
Hang your jacket outside for a week or so in the sunshine.

Oh, I had a blanket covering it. It was my stupidity that caused me to get sprayed. I kept lifting the blanket to take pics of it so I could Facebook them.

 

[NicInNC]

I heard tomato juice is good for skunk smell.

I made my coop and run actually rat proof.  4 years later, there's some chewing on the corner of the door.  Desperation.  To solve the coop thing, you need to put a layer of hardware cloth on the floor.  My pen has 3 feet of hardware cloth flat around the inner wall sides.  So the only ground not covered in hardware cloth is just the middle of the pen.  Every once in a great while I take the hose and spray the ground really hard thru the hardware cloth and see if there are any tunnels.  

My silkie coop is completely covered in Hardware cloth, even the floor.

Knock on wood, I haven't had anything else yet.

Tomato juice didn't work. Nor did Peroxide, Alcohol, lots of different soaps, etc. It took about 2 days for the smell to go away.

Last night, we had an International Children's Choir come perform at our church. I brought my camera and as soon as I started taking pics of them, I smelled skunk something awful. I kept smelling my jacket, my shoes, etc. Finally I realized it was my camera. People around me kept asking what that smell was. Apparently the zoom lens that comes out got sprayed when I was trying to take pics of the skunk and I didn't realize it. LOL!

Anyways, what a great idea about covering the floor and lower part of the coop with hardware cloth!

 

[Puddin Fluff]

You mentioned the construction near your home. Also, this time of year is mateing season so the skunks especially are on the move. We have dead ones on the sides of the roads everywhere this time of year and you hardly ever see them at other times.

Good luck to you. Predator losses are frustrating.

 

[NicInNC]

We have skunks all year long. They are ALWAYS roaming our neighborhood. Other neighbors will post pics on FB of skunks on their patios eating their cats food. That's what's attracting them I think.

The past 3 nights I have only gotten cats on the trail cam. One cat belongs to my next door neighbor and the other 2 belong to the woman behind us. I just have a hard time believing that they could have killed the chickens because they've hung out around here for years and we've never lost a chicken to something besides a hawk during the day. The only real way to know would be to leave the trap door to the coop open (like we did for many years and never had a loss) and put the cam inside the coop. I'm not willing to leave my chickens as "bait" though, so I may never know what killed them.

 

[Maeser]

A neighbor child taught me to only partially open the can of cat food when using for skunk bait. The skunk has to work at getting to the bait, which makes it more likeli it will trip the trap. The mixture of fresh peroxide, baking soda and a little dish detergent works for taking skunk smell out of our dogs fur. Sometimes it takes two baths. Google for correct amounts of each ingredient. To kill a trapped skunk we cover with a tarp then pipe vehicle exhaust under the tarp. Drowning works too, but I never wanted to get that close to a trapped skunk.

 

[12321]

A neighbor's cat killed my Welsummer rooster last summer. I left him alone outside the run, maybe that's why the cat went after him, and it WAS a big cat. I was rather shocked since the neighbor has all his chickens free ranging all the time. My wife has also seen a cat chasing the chickens back and forth along the run just like a dog would do. Cats will be cats, but problem cats aren't problems for
long around my chickens.

I put a trail cam by a hole under one of our buildings last spring because we smelled skunks for 3 days in a row. In a few days, we saw one skunk and 7 or 8 different cats going under that building.

 

[Mikedero]

Last year my neighbors chickens where getting picked off one at time (he lost his whole flock of 12) I decided to lay out some traps. I have some raccoon leg traps only raccoons get caught in them as they have to pull to trigger it and 2 hava heart traps and 1 skunk traps. I also made 6 weasel traps set up in the woods and streams by my property

So for the first month the totals where
Raccoons 15 Dispatched (Tanned the hides)
Skunks 6 dispatched (tanned the hides)
Possums 4 Dispatched
3 cats Released unharmed
1 fisher cat (tanned the hides)
14 Weasels dispatched and tanned their hides.


I will start the trapping again as I noticed more tracks.

So far knock on wood I have not lost a single bird, but I did stink for 2 days as I put down one of the skunks, and oh my property is ½ acre but there is 50 acres of woods right behind my property

 

[HD Chick]

I've been reading this forum for days trying to figure out what the heck has been burrowing into my chicken run below our coop, which is about 3 feet off the ground. The holes look very similar to yours, and we haven't been able to find any definite tracks or scat. It can squeeze into very small crevices under the run and avoids baited rat traps and sticky traps along the walls. It's happened 5 nights in a row! We lined the floor and sides with small wire and brought it about one foot past the border and framed the perimeter by bending the wire down all around the area when we built the coop and run before burying the wire with sand (we live in a rural area of the Mojave Desert). However, the varmit has obviously found the only weak link we had where two sections met and burrowed in-between. We'll be reinforcing that this weekend, and setting up a live trap and rat (water) trap in a trash can. We do not free range and coop up the chickens every evening.The problem occurs at night, although we have solar lights around the coop, and a decorative perimeter fence. I figure it's a weasel but some people here advised if it hadn't made a kill yet it is more likely a rat. I hadn't considered an opossum or skunk! We cover up the hole every morning but it reappears again the next. Today I noticed a lot more feathers in the run, so I'm thinking something startled our 6 chickens and feathers fell out between the metal sliding tray on the bottom of the coop. There isn't any gnawing in the run, and we don't leave food or water in the run at night. I posted this question in another link, but any additional advice is always appreciated!

 

[NicInNC]

Isn't it driving you crazy not knowing?! I keep the traps baited every single night. Last night I had hot dogs in them and whatever got in there, managed to get the hot dogs, but not set the trap off. In one of my trail cam pics, a cat is halfway in the trap. I'm wondering if they're smart enough to reach in and grab the hot dog without setting it off. Last night a new cat was snooping around. I posted the pic of it on FB and a neighbor about 12 houses away replied and said it was her cat. lol

Anyways, I haven't seen anymore holes under or around the coop since we've raised it. Yet, we do have a few holes with tunnels in other parts of the yard now.

So you haven't had any chickens killed? We keep ours locked up completely now. I hate it cause it's a pain having to go out first thing in the morning to open their little door so they can get out into the run.

I've been reading this forum for days trying to figure out what the heck has been burrowing into my chicken run below our coop, which is about 3 feet off the ground. The holes look very similar to yours, and we haven't been able to find any definite tracks or scat. It can squeeze into very small crevices under the run and avoids baited rat traps and sticky traps along the walls. It's happened 5 nights in a row! We lined the floor and sides with small wire and brought it about one foot past the border and framed the perimeter by bending the wire down all around the area when we built the coop and run before burying the wire with sand (we live in a rural area of the Mojave Desert). However, the varmit has obviously found the only weak link we had where two sections met and burrowed in-between. We'll be reinforcing that this weekend, and setting up a live trap and rat (water) trap in a trash can. We do not free range and coop up the chickens every evening.The problem occurs at night, although we have solar lights around the coop, and a decorative perimeter fence. I figure it's a weasel but some people here advised if it hadn't made a kill yet it is more likely a rat. I hadn't considered an opossum or skunk! We cover up the hole every morning but it reappears again the next. Today I noticed a lot more feathers in the run, so I'm thinking something startled our 6 chickens and feathers fell out between the metal sliding tray on the bottom of the coop. There isn't any gnawing in the run, and we don't leave food or water in the run at night. I posted this question in another link, but any additional advice is always appreciated!

 

[HD Chick]

We were almost giddy last evening when we set rat traps inside and outside the run alongside our brand new live trap specifically for smaller sized varmits like weasels. We used bloody raw liver in the live trap and a combo of liver and peanut butter on the rat traps, since we weren't sure what we are dealing with except it doesn't like deli turkey. "Whatever you are, we've got you now, sucker." is what we thought. We got up several times during the night to check the chicken run but nothing seemed disturbed. This morning we discovered the thing had burrowed into the run again and avoided every last dang trap. Sigh. We will fight on! We're relieved we haven't lost any chickens yet. This photo is outside the back of the run.