Moving to a new farm with a weasel

[Woobsie]

Ha I am moving to a new farm at the end of this month and while we have been doing reNos to the burn we noticed that there is a weasel in the barn. I think it's be living off of mice and we have seen it eating out of the alpaca trough at night using the camera that was in the barn. we spent two full days of making part of the barn raccoon proof for my flock of 23 chickens and ten ducks and now that I seen there's a weasel I'm seriously second guessing moving them in there at all. there is no way to get that part of the barn we've been fixing to 1" cracks or less as they recommend because it is so old and there are so many beams and irregular corners and things like that. we have put a lot of work into it but I know that the weasel is living in the barn and I feel stupid for even thinking of moving them and now that I know a weasel is living in the room next to the chicken room. I put a small live trap for squirrels and 2 more smaller traps baited with liver in the barn for the past week and haven't caught anything and we haven't seen the weasel but I still know that it wasn't afraid of us when we saw it in person. we wanted to build a chicken coop from scratch close to the house with a fenced in run but that wasn't going to happen until a year or more. should I bite the bullet and say that we should build a coop earlier than later and just move them in there directly or would you risk putting them in the other barn? I would have to delay my moveand my boyfriend probably thinks I am nuts since we just spent 16 hours with his dad on this barn? (we only saw it was a weasel the last part of the day we were working on the barn...thought it was a rat or something from the camera)

 

[ChickenCanoe]

A few things.
Weasels can't be trapped with bait. They and their cousins, the mink need live bait. Mice work pretty well. Another thing you can do is get some conibear type #110 body traps and put them at openings where you see the weasel come and go from. A length of 4" PVC with a trap at the ends can work because they like to explore things like that. I've had mink escape from a hav-a-hart trap so weasels probably could too.
If you successfully trap a weasel, don't think there isn't another or even many more in the neighborhood that may move in.

My best advice is to keep working on the chicken area you have made in the barn and make it weasel proof. As daunting as that seems, it will be cheaper and faster than building a coop.
Even if you have an external coop, if there's a 1" hole in it, the weasels will still come.

ETA
You can get 6 conibears here for $30
http://www.flemingoutdoors.com/duke-110-body-t.html

Sometimes rat traps are strong enough for weasels. You can make a box with a hole at about 4 inches up on the side and put the rat trap inside where the weasel will drop onto it when it investigates. A caged mouse in there is good bait.

 

[jetdog]

Weasels can absolutely be trapped with bait do a search for "box trapping" something as simple as a ball of fur will catch a weasel or a mink.

 

[myfarm4579]

X2

 

[Folly's place]

Night time coops for chickens and ducks need to be predator proof; 1/2" diameter hardware cloth and no larger openings to be safe. Mary

 

[centrarchid]

For weasel control consider either an active dog or cat that can dispatch it for you. Even most dogs are pretty good at catching weasel or at least running them off.

 

[Paula D]

We used a rat trap with chicken skin bait. It took 24 hours.