A hen’s egg and fresh rabbit are ideal bait for your trap.

The predator control season starts this month and runs for the next six months until March next year.

Ferrets, stoats, weasels, rats and hedgehogs are all extremely mobile during summer  so it’s really important to get a head start and remove as many as possible if we are to give our bush birds any chance of success during this coming breeding season.

Mammalian predators have a significant impact on all of our wildlife, and when successful predator control is undertaken the increase in birdlife can be quite amazing.

If you are have been studiously following all my advice this winter and now have possums, rabbits and rats well under control, adding predator control to your list of property protection tasks really will be the icing on the cake. You can then look forward to a pest-free summer.

Effectively catching predators is fairly straightforward once traps are in place. They only require checking and re-baiting once every week or so which means labour requirements are minimal considering the huge benefits.

The traps to use are the DOC series Kill traps (see www.predatortraps.com). While these come in three sizes, the middle size (DOC200) is by far the most commonly used, the big 250 is specifically designed for situations where large numbers of ferrets are present. All DOC series traps come housed in robust timber tunnels and are baffled with mesh to keep out non-target species and pets.

Trap spacing:

All predators tend to have incredibly large home ranges (40-256ha). As a good starting point, place traps 200m apart.

On properties up to 10 acres,  one to four traps is often all that is required to catch all predators that are passing through.

Trap Placement:

Set traps on well-defined linear edges, fence lines, track edges, pasture/forest margins, natural intersection features, stream edges and near the chook house. These are all great starting points.  Trapping around these features tends to catch more predators and makes traps easier to service.

Baits:

Many types of bait are used for predator trapping including rabbit, hare, possum, salted rabbit, freeze dried rabbit and fresh hen eggs.  The choice of bait depends on availability and how long it will last in relation to your trap-checking regime  but a really effective combination is a hen’s egg and a piece of fresh rabbit replaced weekly.

It’s always a good idea to rub a piece of fresh rabbit on natural features leading to the trap and on the trap itself as this will help attract animals passing through to your trap.

Predator trapping can be a lot of fun, but be sure to get around your traps once a week to avoid having to deal with excessively decayed victims.