I have a preadator

[33yardbirds]

I agree, a weasel or mink will kill for the sake of just killing.......if the trap works finish with a .22 HP

 

[NarutoTn]

my mother found them dead.she did not give me further info.

 

[NarutoTn]

what is a mink?

 

[lilolmec]

I lost a chicken this week too, I suspect either a weasel or raccoon, I have had chickens for 5 years without a loss to a predator so I guess I got over-confident. I addressed the issue of where it got into my coop and am looking into getting a trap. Very upsetting as my "Ladies" depend on me to keep them safe and I failed. Sigh.
Carole

 

[Traffa]

Quote:
Obviously, different predator behaviours over in the US. I used to wonder, as a kid, why I'd find a whole stack of chooks with their heads off, uneaten. Apparently, the female fox will drink the blood of younger poultry, to aid in raising her young.

This whole discussion has been a mine of information........but as someone said, the first step for me, at the farm, was to "predator-proof" my coops and fly runs. In this way, they would be safe at night.

Another issue is: could there be something else attracting them? My brother would simply heave carcasses of deceased poultry and pigeons into a vacant area of bushland behind the coops. He was just asking feral cats to come for a meal.....which they did. I always dispose of any carcasses, guts etc by burying it while my dog is elsewhere.....even placing something heavy over it for a time to dissuade digging it up. Some of our feral cats are almost the size of a Lynx. Silent and deadly buggers they are too. Took me 4 attempts to catch one particularly nasty one, somehow the cat cage fell into a local river with a rope attached so I could pull it out.

We can't use steel-jaw traps here anymore....I think the fine for having them is AUD$15,000 or so. Maybe more. They now have a version with rubber on the jaws (holds, doesn't hurt) which is semi-legal....whatever that means.....smaller fine?

 

[NarutoTn]

good news we didnt loose one last night yay!!!

I hope it wont get anymore.

 

[aprophet]

Quote:
it is a really big weasel almost the size of a stovepipe sometimes

 

[Brahma Mamma]

Quote:
We have the same problem. We have our chickens out on the field in chicken tractors. One morning we went out to move the tractors and one tractor had all the birds dead in it. There were 74 dead. The weasel had killed them all. They all had neck wounds and most had bites either at the bowels or on the legs! We fortified the rest of the tractors by putting metal roofing on top (there used to be tarps) and when we move the tractors we make SURE there are no gaps on the bottom. So far so good. We have only lost 3 birds since then - ones that the weasel grabbed through the wire (it's 1" wire).

OVEN READY: Can you give more details about your trap? What size was the leg snare?

 

[Oven Ready]

Can you give more details about your trap? What size was the leg snare?

It was long time ago, when my father used to breed show budgies and he always had weasel trouble, so my measurements may not be accurate but I'm pretty sure it was like this.

A wooden box, with no bottom on it; about 8x8inches and about six inches high.
It had a round hole drilled into one side about 1-2 inches in diameter.
On the side away from the hole (inside the box) were half a dozen small nails that he would attach a blood soaked rag to. I'm not sure what kind of blood but I had to cycle to the butchers to get it in a old milk pint bottle. It could have been pig blood for making black puddings.

The leg trap was only about 5 inches long and the actually 'teeth' of the trap we probably half that size, it had a small plate in the middle which triggered the trap. He attached the trap by a small chain to one of the nails in the box. The trap wasn't strong, it could clamp on my hand without causing pain - a bit of a shock but not painful. This picture is similar but I think it only had a spring at one side not both.

He'd put the trap with the teeth in the middle of the box and leave it overnight inside the shed but not inside the birds enclosure, after smearing the whole in thing in blood. In the morning the weasel would be trapped not by the leg but usually across the body killing it.

I searched on the internet for 'weasel cubbyhole' and couldn't find a single mention so perhaps it's something he'd thought up himself or cubbyhole is a UK term for this type of trap.

Weasels in the UK are very small - only about twice as long as a mouse and no thicker around than a house mouse. They seem to go into a killing frenzy, as you described, without actually eating much of what they kill.

I hope this helps you​

 

[Oven Ready]

OK I found a better image - this is much more like it