Traps – Helen’s Blog

Ways to get rid of foxes

Haved recently suffered the lose of my much beloved rooster and hens that lived here at the shop – mostly likely to a fox. There is a certain irony that I’ve recently written an editorial about Fox traps and ways to get rid of foxes. So I thought it was worth sharing it here, given that recently fox traps have been just about more popular than rat traps.

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“Ways to get rid of foxes

Due to the large number of rabbits that have been around in recent years, the fox population is higher than usual this year. Government agencies recently released the Korean strain of Rabbit Haemorrhagic Disease Virus, known as RHDV1 K5. This seems to have caused a severe reduction in rabbit numbers in many places. So now we’ve a larger number of foxes, and without the rabbits, they are looking for alternative food sources.

We offer a number of fox trapping options and deterrents. Cage traps of various sizes with either paddle and hook style mechanisms. These start with our standard ‘metro’ fox trap and increase in size to the 1.2 meter long dog trap.
Another trap option is the rubber jaw leg hold traps – some of the local Landcare centres are running courses in their use. A different way is to deter the fox with a device such as the Foxlight, which is designed to keep foxes and other night predators away from stock by emitting random bursts of bright light with a spot light type result.

Fox/ dog trap Fox cage Trap

These items, along with many others can be found at our Baldivis shop or the web site, where you will find traps for many sorts of pests, rodents and vermin. As well as a huge variety of poultry equipment.

Foxlight Traps Victor Soft Catch

Phone 08 – 9524 1251 in WA or 1300 881 170 within Australia. or call in to the store at 1170, Baldivis Road, Baldivis, WA.

www.wapoultryequipment.net.au ”

To find

Big Cage Dog Traps

Heading into the ANZAC day long weekend and the surprising best seller for the last week or so has been the big cage dog traps we sell. The biggest of the traps here in the shop are the 120 and 180cm Dog traps and I got a lesson in just how big they are when we made up a bunch of them for a local order. Mostly they get sent out flat packed – heaps cheaper for freight – so you never truly get to see just how huge they really are. As this photo below shows – 2 of the 120cm traps packed up ready to box doesn’t really look that big 🙂

But get a few of them made up and you end up with a proper idea of their real size. The stack of traps on the right are the same 120cm dog traps, but made up.

Jeff in the process of making up the 180cm dog trap…

In order to test this huge 180cm long trap, the easiest way was to get Mr nearly 7 to get inside the trap and set it off. It worked perfectly but he wasn’t particularly happy about being ‘caged’.(Yes we let him out!)

It was terrier day (Molly and Thomas love visiting) at the shop and the stack of traps was still here. As the photos show, our dogs are dwarfed by these traps… but 5 or 6 kg terrier isn’t really the intended target! I’m told by the station guys up north that the dogs caught in these traps are getting so large that they aren’t only attacking baby calves but they are also taking on small steers.

To find these traps on the website: https://wapoultryequipment.net.au/product-category/traps-and-trapping-equipment/large-animal-traps/

Ultrasonic Repellers for Rats and Mice

It’s been a bad mouse and rat season… We still have customers coming in to get traps even now. I first heard of these little ‘machines’ about 10 years ago and ever since have had one aimed at my pantry, in that time I’ve never had a mouse or rat in my pantry. We also have a number of them around the shop too. No one has ever heard one… we have dogs, a cat, a small child, a wireless computer network, mobiles and the rest at home and it has never effected any of them.

The idea behind the ultrasonics is simple, they make a noise only the rodents can hear and it annoys them so much that they leave, if they are smart enough – like rats or stagger around in a drunken/headachy state if they are less intelligent and get caught in traps – mice. Neither species likes the noise so once the existing occupants are gone, new vermin aren’t like to move in.

I’m not alone in my like of these devices, many of our customers come back for additional units once they have proved their use to themselves. We currently carry two versions of the ultrasonic rodent repellers – the simple black box unit I have on my fridge – this covers about 40 m².

To find it on the website: https://wapoultryequipment.net.au/product/rodent-repellers-ultrasonic/

Note: (1st Aug 2018) As of this year, the larger unit has been unavailable

And a larger, weatherproof unit as pictured below, that does 350m². This larger version has additional features – the frequency of the sound can be changed and is used by people wanting to keep possums out of their ceilings, or birds off their car mirrors – my father-in-law uses one for this purpose – the bird setting doesn’t affect his ‘older’ ears at all but I can hear it when I go to visit (and the first thing I do is turn it off!). The unit also has a motion detector which can be useful for the larger animals such as possums.

There is a mouse in my bedroom.. and I don’t want to kill it.

One of the more memorable days I’ve had working here was made by a lovely 11 or 12 yr old girl who came in looking for a friendly mouse trap. She had googled live catch mouse traps and after finding us, gotten her mother to drive her nearly 100km to come and get her one so that they could take the mouse out of her room but not kill it. I believe the plan was to catch the mouse and release it in the park nearby. While this particular memory is unique the sentiments expressed by the girl are not. We have many customers who for many different reasons prefer a live catch trap for rodents. Some live in rural areas and wish to check for native rodents (and remove them) before disposing of the vermin, others don’t wish to kill any thing they have caught. For those of you wondering how to tell the natives from the vermin here is a very interesting article on how to tell which rodent is which – from The Australian Museum… http://australianmuseum.net.au/Which-is-a-Black-Rat/

So if you are after a live catch trap (for any reason!) what choices do you have??

Well if you definitely do not want to injury the critter in anyway your best bets are craypot trap – made in both rat and mouse sizes or the mouse tip trap. Since these traps don’t have any moving parts there is much less risk in any injury occurring.

Craypot Mouse trap:

Tip Trap:

Other choices include the ‘see-saw’ multi-catch mouse traps with either one or two entrances. See my post on these traps:
Mouse traps – the ‘see-saw’ style live catch trap…

Aluminum folding trap: ‘Elliot Style’ for small marsupials

Had a question this morning about the inside workings of our ‘Elliot Style’ folding trap for small marsupials and since I took some photos of the trap thought I’d share them. Most of these traps are sold to environmentalists or universities doing fauna surveys. We do have people asking about them as a rat trap, but we don’t recommend them as a rat trap, as the rats can chew the mechanism if left in the trap too long.

Being interested in the uses and history I did some quick ‘googling’ and found that the ‘Elliot Style’ trap is based on a Sherman trap invented in the 1920’s – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_trap. Most documents about the trap are related to scientific trapping practices.

To find these traps on our website see: http://www.wapoultryequipment.net.au/products/alumium_folding_trap

All about Foxlights…stories we hear about them

Sold a few more Foxlights this morning… and for once they were actually for sheep 🙂 Naturally enough most of the lights we sell are for around the poultry yard and anecdotally they are working very well.

Sheep with Foxlight

The word about Foxlights must be getting out there as instead of meeting customers the day after they have lost all their chooks to a fox attack (which unfortunately we had quite a number of cases of last year – 2013) now we are getting customers buying their Foxlights before they buy the chooks.

So what is a Foxlight? The simple version is a Fox deterrent. It runs on a large 6V rectangle battery like the dolphin style torches and has 9 LED lights around the top. No switches, nothing to do – the Victorian sheep farmer who designed it wanted it to be simple – it comes on a sundown, turns off at sun up and totally randomly flashes light around – rather like someone being out there with a flashlight. I’ve been told that the flashes occur between 5 seconds and 2 minutes apart and that you get anything from 1 LED to all 9 of them at once. The light appears to come out sidewards (not from the top) so it seems to come from different directions – tricky 🙂 It is made to put onto a star fence picket or hung from wire.

So a great Australian invention that is doing a wonderful job (here & overseas) of protecting your livestock from the vermin fox. To find them on our website see: http://www.wapoultryequipment.net.au/products/foxlight-fox-deterent

Foxlight with cm

Mouse traps – the ‘see-saw’ style live catch trap…

Even with the event of wet weather, it appears that WA still has a big mouse problem – rodent traps are very popular. One of the advantages of a multi catch, live catch trap is that the caught rodent makes a noises and their ‘friends’ come to join the party. I watched this work at my parents farm over Easter – at breakfast time we had one mouse squeaking in the trap, by morning tea there were 3 of them, I left at 11:30am when 4 were eating the peanut butter and when Dad emptied it mid -afternoon the trap held 7 mice.

Mouse Trap - Repeater

The ‘see-saw’ style mouse traps, are sturdy and it is easy to see what you have caught (esp if you are looking for marsupial rodents before disposing of the vermin.) They can also be used as a ‘bait station’ – by putting the poison inside the trap, you don’t have the problem of the rodent running off to die in the most awkward corner of the roof, or in the wall. Nor do you run the risk of secondary poisoning as the deceased mouse is contained where other animals can not get to it.

We sell two sorts of these – one with a single entrance and a double ended ‘repeater’ version. Both are for sale on the website:

http://www.wapoultryequipment.net.au/products/trap-mouse-ail-metal-box-type

https://wapoultryequipment.net.au/product/mouse-trap-repeater-metal-box-type

25th July 2018: All the mouse and rat traps can be found here: https://wapoultryequipment.net.au/product-category/traps-and-trapping-equipment/mouse-and-rat-traps/

Rat Traps are the order of the day

Well to start us off on our tour of the shop and it’s many many items. I downloaded the stock listing when I started and discovered we have about 1500 different items in the computers. Given about 500 of those are parts, that still leaves 1000 different things to talk about 🙂

This week, as indeed the last few weeks, we have had a lot of Rat Trap questions. It has been a long rodent season this year. Mouse and rat traps been very popular sellers. I’m not sure if it’s been the weather conditions or what, but many areas of Western Australia seem to have plague numbers of rodents. We often get asked if there is a trap for both mice and rats and the short answer is No. Anything a rat can get into a mouse can get out of and to keep a mouse caught means having a trap that is too small for a rat to get into!

Rat photo

There are many ways to catch a rat and we have at least 5 styles of traps for doing so, this post will just deal with the tunnel rat trap. The first question I will usually ask, is do you want to catch it alive or not. We have many people who wish to check the trap before disposing of the vermin, to ensure there are no native marsupials in the trap. Live catch traps also allow you to release the rats to another location if you desire.

A trick for people who don’t want to deal with live rats is to use a live catch trap as a ‘baiting cage’ to put poison in. This way the rat dies in the trap, not in the wall or back corner of the ceiling. The poison is also out of the way and can’t be got at by larger animals.

The Tunnel rat trap is one of the most popular rat traps we sell. They can hold up to 10 rats, depending on their size and like all live catch traps, have the advantage that once a rat has been caught, the noise it makes tends to attract further rats to the trap. The rat simply walks though the hole onto the trap door – which is counter weighted – and finds its self caught in the back ‘holding’ area of the trap – where you put the bait (see suggestions below). The trap door bounces back up once the rat has fallen into the back of the trap and there is no way out!

Rat Trap: Tunnel

Baiting suggestions:

The first bait suggestion for catching mice or rats is good old peanut butter – it’s the oil in it that gets them in. However if you have more gourmet rats, some bacon rind or chicken skin also has that delicious oily aroma. But we have customers who swear by chocolate or nuts as great bait. It’s a matter of finding what your vermin will go into a trap for.

As a final tip, no matter what style of trap you chose to use, always after use wash the trap in warm soapy water. All rodents when caught release pheromones that scent the trap and if it isn’t washed between uses you will probably find the rats avoid the trap.

http://www.wapoultryequipment.net.au/products/trap-rat-multi-catch-rat-trap