Possums - MUST kavetch!!!

[threehorses]

I'm having a possum infestation. It's so seriously dreadful.

Earlier this year (new years eve) I had a horse get a deadly illness from possum feces after picking up hay they had been on eating eggs. (Possums poop where they eat - nasty creatures). The illness is EPM and he was paralyzed by it. Thanks to drugs, a specialist, and a lot of rehab he's permanently damaged (he has stroke-like symptoms that only his mom here could see from knowing how he was before) but ok. He can run, play, and is very happy. And I'm VERY glad he's alive!!

But now I have yet another reason to hate possums.

So we caught one earlier this year and dispatched it. A young one. I had seen an older big headed one eating some sweet feed but couldn't get back to it in time to do anything.

One night this week we went out to the barn very late to put one rooster up on a roost. (He's a little s l o w if you get my drift so we're training him to roost high.)

My boyfriend calls my attention to him and puts up two fingers. I thought it was a bit odd for him to give me a rude British hand signal. But he pointed down and did it again. (I was on the phone, hung up.)

He said 'TWO possums!"

No, there were THREE of them - AND a skunk in our barn!

I was livid. So we spent the next hour or so taking care of what is apparently an infestation.

Three of them! It was BigHead and two others about the teenaged size of the one we caught earlier this year.

And today, in the road in front of the house, another possum. Dead! (Just the way I like them these days after watching my horse suffer.)

I had to kavetch! I am an animal lover, so dispatching these creatures just kills me. I came back to the house and drank a strong beer in about 1 second which I usually don't do. Why is it that I have to do this for the other animals? And I can't just relocate them (to become someone else's dead horse, I mean problem.) I mean - three of them at once?

/sigh

ANyone else gone through this? It's war here!

 

[Soccer Mom]

Ugh! Sending you sympathy. I've had a bad summer for raccoons. Dispatched six of them to raccoon hell (cause they were bad coons raiding my coop and I'm sure that's where they went) so far this summer.

I don't go killing willy nilly. I have a trap set up on the TOP of my coop, so these were guys actively engaged in a little breaking and entering.

What a year.

 

[threehorses]

Thank you.

Were you actually able to trap the raccoons? Raccoons were responsible for leveling my flock a few years ago (except for a few beloved mutts). I know there are some around here. So I'd love to get them, too, to eliminate the threat.

I did lose a chicken this year with her head off. She roosted low and I suspect it was a raccoon. If there's one....

My birds mostly free range, my newest bantams are going into a truly predator proof coop I'll be building once they're out of growing age. The raccoons before were totally able to get into latched wire cages through the latches when they couldn't pull stuff out to themselves from the outside. I'm very sorry to hear you have raccoons, but any advice on trap bait would be GREATLY appreciated. (Live traps.)

 

[Soccer Mom]

I've learned the hard way that you have to give them something they can't just grab through the wire. I use potted meat or cat food and thoroughly smear the trigger mechanisms with it. They MUST crawl inside to lick it off. I also put the traps near the points of ingress. Mine drop like ninjas from the trees onto the roof and rip wire away from the vents.

Now I've hot wired the edges of the roof and they no longer can get to the vents, but before that I lost a bunch of birds this spring/summer. My worst year ever. They got 21 ducklings in one night.

I hate raccoons because they don't just take a bird, they slaughter everything in a pen.

 

[threehorses]

Smearing the trigger!! Nice! We used eggs - they got them through the wires.

I had the same experience (apparently a common one) with raccoons before ripping welded wire off of the wood to get into a coop. In the new coop, I will be screwing planks over where I stable the wire so they can no longer do that. I will have to think about what to do about vents. I will also be making all solid corners as poultry tend to run to corners, and raccoons can usually just reach through them.

I'm so going to try your meat-smear-trigger!! If I catch our resident feral cat, then I'll just take him and get him neutered and his shots.

Thank you!!

 

[Soccer Mom]

I continued losing birds through vents until I hot wired everything. I'm used to hot wiring for my horses, donkeys and goats, but it had never occured to me to hot wire my coops until I joined here!

And DH gets credit for the smearing the trigger idea. Potted meat is effective because of the stink.

Good luck locking down the new coop!

 

[redhen]

Its never an easy thing to do..

 

[threehorses]

You know, when I did the first one this year, I cried and cried and cried. I used to rescue the darn things, raised four one year for release into a wildlife sanctuary (on their approval) when their mom was shot.

So it really hurt me.

But three of them? At once! It was nearly insulting. I didn't cry until about 8 in the morning when I realized "oh man - what did I do?".

My boyfriend said "we had to". I told him I know, and I will do it again.

That afternoon, my horse (the one that nearly died) came up to me while I was sitting on a barrel in my barnyard that I sit on to watch the chickens. He just put his face right near my knee, his head all the way down looking at me. Then he came over and put his belly right near my lap - like he wanted to sit on my lap! I told him he was wayyyy too big to be a lap pony. But I realized then and there how important it is to keep possums away. One more exposure to the protazoa would definitely kill him. And I don't want to lose my other two horses to it.

It was like he was saying "I know it was hard - I'm worth it. Thank you...... now scratch my belly".

/hugs! Thanks, y'all.

 

[deerman]

Quote:
Ok yesterday it was "B" with bee trouble.

Now your user name THREEhorse you have THREE possum, carefully picking user name.

My count 8 coons, 3 skunks, 2 possum, 1 great horn owl. All caught in live trap, all killed except the Owl(they kill all three of the others) All caught with egg bait

 

[threehorses]

LOL Threepossums? Noooooo!! How about Nopossums?

I like that better!

My heart stopped a little when I read about the owl- glad you let the old guy go - silly owl!