A few days ago neighbor Bill killed a woodchuck for me over my lunch hour that we had trapped. I was telling this story to a coworker, who was judging me for killing such a big, furry creature. Coupled with the 'inability-to-kill-baby-mole' story, this brings up the question; at what point do we kill something on the farm?
Well, what we do is weigh how much damage the creature is doing and multiply that by what the creature is damaging (venue), subtracting a few points for cuteness.
For venues the creature is damaging, in ascending order of importance is:
yard < garden < barn < chickens
So if a mole is ripping the hell out of the yard, we have big damage, less important venue. If a possum bites a chicken but doesn't kill it, we have small damage but most important venue. In conclusion, we would attempt to drive the moles out of the yard through humane solutions, and shoot the possum.
When we first started trapping the woodchucks, we attempted to relocate them. However, the barn is freakin' GROWING woodchucks like it's a petri dish. We trapped seven woodchucks last year and we're having massive tunneling already in April. So we will continue to relocate them when it's convenient, but lets be honest, I'm not going to drive every woodchuck in Monroe County out to a farm. The huge tunneling is a problem because it compromises the foundation of the barn and also creates huge entries into the barn for raccoons and other chicken eating predators. So we have big venue damage to both barn and chickens. Even with the points they get for being cute, it's just impossible to treat them like pets when there's an ARMY of them.
So ends the explanation of how we determine what gets dumped in the back field for coyotes and what gets to live another day to annoy the crap out of us.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
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I wouldn't have bothered explaining it to anyone and ignored the co-worker who doesn't own your farm but in this age of growing political correctness, animals, at times, have more rights than humans. Sorry to hear you're being overrun though - them critters can do a lot of damage.
ReplyDeleteVery clear explanation about the realities of farm living to those who just don't get it that there is a chain of survival going on. I remember how disgusted I was by the killing of groundhogs in Lexington when first I moved there until I rode horses having to watch constantly for their holes in a field, and knowing the horse breeders also worried their horses would break a leg in one. So, in the end, after years, groundhogs simply had to go. I think they are the same as a woodchuck (different part of country terminology?)
ReplyDeleteI think you have an outstanding plan going on at Helpful Gnome, and wish you all the best.