New trap set up

[Jim c]

Hi made my self a ladder trap today it's all set up and ready to go so any tips I would be grant ful for

 

Crows are all in trees in back ground of picture

 

 

Cheers jim

[matth12321]

be sure to put a perch or are breaking the law!... Other than that it looks brilliant!

 

matt

[Mitchsan51]

Good morning

 

Looks ace but how do you get in to dispatch the birds ?

 

Put a road kill such as mangled rabbit inside the trap.

 

And.....good luck.

[Jim c]

Ok cheers guys a will put some kind of perch in it then. It's got a door on other side.

[olly321]

looks good perch as has been said ,and a few rabbit heads work well in mine and mitchs

[Bleeh]

Right, to stay on the better side of the law, make sure you:

1.) Check your trap every day (no more than 24 hours).

2.) Provide adequate food, water, shelter and a perch for trapped birds.

3.) Make sure that the trap is rendered of holding birds when not in use (Leave the trap door open).


My best advice for Ladder traps is to leave the door open (So birds can come in and leave freely), and keep feeding it every day. Corvids are very smart and will learn that they can get a good meal and start to come regular, and that in turn will attract more corvids. Keep feeding for at least a 10 days, (Left over bread, or Tesco 20p loaf will do) and then one night feed as usual but lock the door. Come back in the 24 hours to find it hopefully filled. I've caught up to 80 at a time using this method.

You can bait the trap with any old food, but make sure you bait it regularly and do so when it is dark, crows seeing you mess around the trap will put them off.

Edited May 4, 2013 by Bleeh

[Jim c]

Ok cheers for the advice everyone

[Dougy]

Looks good, but one i must ask again (i asked a while ago but the answer was a bit vague)

Once you have a trap full of birds how do you dispatch them all

[Teal]

Looks good, but one i must ask again (i asked a while ago but the answer was a bit vague)

Once you have a trap full of birds how do you dispatch them all

The short answer is you have to do it humanely. Someone setting one of these traps recently was prosecuted as he did not make sure the birds were dead, and was found to have not acted humanely in killing them, I believe he used a short piece of baton or similar to strike the birds when in the trap, breaking wings etc.

 

To stay on the right side of the law, you are probably safest using a net or your hands to catch them and dispatching them by breaking the neck in the usual way.

 

The trap looks good, speaking from personal experience, I would have made the trap a fair bit bigger, as access is always an issue, it is fairly imperative you can stand up inside the trap, or you will find yourself crawling around in muck, and also you need to have the room to move around in when you have birds to dispatch. I'd also be minded to treat the wood, as that stands out as it is, more for people seeing it than anything.

 

They can be very successful. I personally also leave one side of the top off, so that they can get easy access into the trap and feed. Corvids can be fairly timid, and you want them to build up confidence, and for them to be entering the trap through the top as routine prior to restricting their access. Some would do this by removing the "ladder" bars. As you can see from my photo below, I don't actually use the ladders as I find them unnecessary, you just need to adjust the width between the two sides to the correct distance.

[scolopax]

there are no crows in the background, but there are Rooks. Which are almost harmless and should be left alone. Concentrate on the carrion crows or don't bother if you do not know what they are are / what they look like.

[tignme]

there are no crows in the background, but there are Rooks. Which are almost harmless and should be left alone. Concentrate on the carrion crows or don't bother if you do not know what they are are / what they look like.

I wish someone would tell some of my farmers lambs that rooks are almost harmless as they peck their eyes out. Off to a rookery for branchers tomorrow.

[Teal]

there are no crows in the background, but there are Rooks. Which are almost harmless and should be left alone. Concentrate on the carrion crows or don't bother if you do not know what they are are / what they look like.

Depends what the farm is really before you say the rooks should be left alone and are almost harmless. For livestock farms you may find a significant portion of the feedbill is going on feeding corvids, in my photo it's mostly jackdaws but when I resited the trap from near the calf pellets (which they would peck open) to the silage (which the rooks would rip the covers off to primarily get at the maize. Farm Assurance then quite rightly brings up big problems due to disease risk with corvids crapping on everything. So further feedstock may have to be wasted which at the end of a long and rubbish winter is a very expensive thing to be doing.

 

In terms of pecking eyes out, I agree rooks wouldn't be the ones doing the damage but instead carrion crows. Rooks certainly do help to hammer the leather jackets on grassland, however for arable they also have a nasty habit of digging up seed and pulling chitting seeds as well as closer to harvest having a good go at the cereals.

 

In any case if you bait the trap with carrion you are unlikely to catch rooks anyway, so that's a good way of targeting the real culprits. I am not a sheep farmer but I understand one of the worst corvids for pecking eyes is ravens, but they are obviously fully protected by law.