Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction What did you do at your pond today?

Not at the pond, but the past few days have been interesting....

I'm watching the neighbors chickens (21 birds) until their house is closed (they already moved to Florida) and the new owners take possession which is supposed to happen the end of the month. Well, Tuesday night the coons chewed a hole in the chicken wire about 3' off the ground and got inside the pen/coop. 9 birds were either killed and dragged out of the pen or dead & partially eaten inside the pen/coop. The hole was about 18" dia. I patched the hole and reinforced some other areas that looked iffy. Wednesday night they pulled hard enough on the chicken wire at the same height that they opened up a hole large enough to squeeze in, but not large enough to get a bird out. 5 more dead, partially eaten birds. I said enough is enough, blocked off the door to the coop just enough to put a live trap in the doorway, and set five Z-Traps (Dog Proof coon traps) outside the pen and baited them with Optimal Starter #4.

Friday morning I had 4 'coons (one boar, 3 females that all showed that they had a litter) waiting for me and none had entered the pen, so there was nothing in the live trap that was blocking the coop door. I felt better, but reset the traps, found two more areas that they had torn the chicken wire AND one wire from the 2"x4" galvanized inner wire that was around the perimeter of the pen at ground level. I reinforced those areas, closed up the hole that they had made Wednesday night, and moved the live trap outside of the pen. So now there were 6 traps outside of the pen.

This morning there were 4 more coon waiting for me. Again, one boar and 3 females. All the coon were adults, and THESE 3 females showed signs of recently having a litter too. So, that's 8 'coon in two days.... These also went to feed the buzzards and I will re-set/re-bait the traps tonight. I ordered 1/2 dzn more traps yesterday from Z Traps and they should be showing up soon. I'm seeing coon keeping the deer away from the deer feeder on the trail cam, so I will be putting some traps around that as well.

There is a "neighbor" (about 1/2 mile away) that "loves" coons. He will sit on his porch and feed them dog food, even having a few crawl up into his lap to eat. He even contacted the local animal control company and told them that they could release their caught 'coons on his place. A few years ago when the neighbors had a problem in their coop I fed 31 coons to the buzzards in the span of a few weeks. I am peeved to say the least and I will keep the traps set until I don't catch any more for a month. I'll rotate different baits just to be sure I'm not educating any. The buzzards should thank me, as should the turkeys and other nesting birds.

They won the first two skirmishes, but I WILL win the war - at least this year.

Now for pond related stuff, I rebuilt a TH feeder that I bought from FireIsHot a few years ago. The spin plate motor shorted out, and it fried the timer control. it seems he had some issues with moisture getting in around the sight glass too, plus the blower motor was making a funny noise. The feeder is old, I don't know how many years old it is, but it's old enough that the decals on the outside were all sun rotted and gone. I took the feeder completely apart, fixed the blower motor noise (blower was barely rubbing on a rivet head, I moved the squirrel cage about 1/16" on the motor shaft and that fixed that problem). I replaced the spin plate motor, replaced both sight glass windows gave the inside a good cleaning and installed a new timer and battery. I also put new TH decals on the outside and replaced both latches. It's gong to be a test bed for some modifications I'm doing to see if I can get it to throw the 3/8" Triton feed reliably. (3D printers are wonderful things).

I also had some Watermeal show up at my pond, so I'm hitting it with Propeller when the wind blows it to one side.

This morning I returned a Vertex single piston compressor that I rebuilt for a customer; reinstalled it at the pond, and drove over to their chicken coop to look at it. I was half way there to the coop when this guy jumped from the back seat to the dash. Needless to say it scared the you know what out of me, as I *thought* I was the only one in the truck and all the windows were up.



That's what I get for leaving the truck door open while I was re-installing the compressor.

O.K., we are here by the birds, now you can get out, no charge for the taxi service.