The varmint Minks are just like rodents, in that they can enter any hole their skull will pass through! That is a very small opening! About a dime size hole for a mouse and one and one half to two inches for a large rat or an average mink. I live within a few miles of many thousands of acres of wetlands and hundreds of small creeks, punctuated by ridges or small hills/uplands. As a young man I trapped mink and muskrats and later as a county health inspector and field services employee in their vectorborne disease control, did trapping for the county. This included trapping minks from their Penal Farm Chicken Houses! In our rural areas, especially near the wetlands, mink are plentiful and hungry! I have caught from 6 to 10 from the same mile of a local creek every year! I had three creeks I worked from about a mile to three miles, every year for about 6 years. I would run them for about a month every winter. They are the most difficult of local predator to keep out around here. Dogs, fox, coons and raptors kill most chickens here but when mink get in they are so devastating! They will return if you don't get them! Actually sad to me, to have to kill these beautiful creatures, now , in my older years, but I would not hesitate! If a mink weighed forty pounds they would be one of the most dangerous predators in the world to humans! So Sad for your losses! The mink typically hunt in small family groups in the summer, before the males branch out and pairs hunt together often. If you get one don't drop your efforts to control them! There is a very good chance one or more will return. Your pictures should clearly illustrate to the uninformed, the devastation a mink will deliver in a single attack! I think some people have thought I exaggerated about minks killing up to and over a hundred birds in one night attack and eating only a few choice organs from two or three! They had exploited rat holes that had been chewed a few inches below the soil line on the barns( the old barns had vertical heavy treated planks siding that extended about 6 inches deep)Hardware cloth aprons had been removed or where damaged from the buildings and several open knot holes had been chewed open as well! The largest of these holes were about 2 1/2 inches. I trapped three in the same week on three different days. I also closed up all access except the locations of my traps. They exploited the old rat holes. I had eliminated the rat problem the previous year and had set them up on a prevention/monitoring program. They had missed repairing a few small holes on the several large houses. Keeping up the constant vigilance is something I have to remind myself of! It is easy for me to ignore little details and put off maintenance work! I doubt I have a mink proof run, but keeping the coop mink proof is something I am working on, with my new shed to coop conversion. There are so many little details! Thanks for showing your tragic losses to your home flock, so that others can see the reality of a single predator attack and how easy they can exploit a tiny weakness in our coops. PS. You have a beautiful piece of Earth to live on! May your flock be blessed and give you bounty.
My Spring snares are up. I have a fur bearer's tag.
I got the monster and he was large.
I'm sure he's bred, but food here is plentiful, I was surely on his path from his den across the road to the females downhill towards the creek. Wild ducks and geese will be nesting soon and chicken will be off the menu.
The hole was 100% my fault, I saw it and didn't fill it and put it off to this weekend's chores, which was too late. Bad alignment of the stars. HE hasn't been around before, or our cameras would have triggered on him.
I reset the traps last night in case there was another, but nope, all I caught was a very large male skunk. (what a way to start April 1, right?!? LOL)
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While I was out waiting for my siding estimate guy (so he didn't ring bell, trigger dog, and interrupt a zoom meeting in the office), the guy that owns the two dogs was out walking them. I waved him over. THEY ARE HUGE dogs. I told him his electric fence wasn't doing it. He was clearly sad the dogs were an issue, and apologetic, and said the kids mentioned they went after Suzie. He asked if they attacked her or were just playing (UM NOT the point. My lame, 28 pound,10 year old beagle stands no chance and just wants to run away from two 90 pound all muscle 2 year old Weimers! They're built like PitBulls, bigger and more muscular than ANY weimer I've ever seen, although the ones I deal with are hunting bird dogs, not house pets.) I told him they didn't draw blood, but I and DH cannot pick up her to protect her AND fight them off. It's NOT playing, it's aggression. He said they went after the little girl and her lab last week. He said they're perfectly fine until something gets their attention and then they blow through the fence. He said he doesn't want to be that neighbor with the bad roaming dogs, but besides chaining them, he doesn't know what to do. (UM CHAIN THEM or put up a kennel or a fence! HELL of a lot cheaper than a vet or doctor's bill or a law suit)
I nicely told him that we have purchased citronella dog repellent spray, and WILL be using it. It won't hurt the dogs, but they'll stink. And if they do come home stinking, they've been out running again.
I'm friggen SICK of this. His kids told him and he never followed up?!?! Who does that?
HE knows and admits they're a problem, so FIX IT!
End of rant. I feel better now.
