Hi, we have a big problem with our possum dough being eaten in trapinators. It’s gone almost as soon as we replace it. Our trail camera shows it’s mice and rats. Ceramic lures would get around the problem but before we invest in them we’d like to know if anyone out there is successfully catching possums with them. Which flavours are best? Any advice on our problem would be helpful.
Thanks.
I don’t have any experience using ceramic lures, so I can’t help you there. There is a technique that you could use, but I wouldn’t bet money on it being very effective.
If you leave your traps un-lured for a 1-2 weeks, the rodents raiding your traps will look for food elsewhere. You would then have a brief window where you can re-lure your traps, before the rodents return. If you do decide to experiment with ceramic lures, using this technique (which I hope you don’t have to resort to) would allow you to re-direct the money that’s currently being wasted on possum dough, to pay for ceramic lures.
Cheers.
We use Poauku lures, mainly as secondary lures to overcome just this problem. (Which is something of an acknowledgement that nothing beats fresh licorice or possum dough or smooth blue or aniseed paste)
However, they shouldn’t be used in Trapinators or Flipping Timmy traps. That’s because the poauku lure hangs down too low. This means that a possum can bite down on the lure without their neck being correctly engaged in the trap. That can either mean a badly injured possum that will die cruelly or a possum that will be forever trap shy.
Nara blocks are a good alternative for now… but they have their own issues. If they’re smeared with primary bait, the mice will nibble them and we worry about the resultant microplastic problem.
We’re hoping that Connovation will be producing a shorter Poauku lure to overcome this problem.
Probably not what you wanted to hear… let me know if you have other experiences.
We used the connovation ceramic lures.
No success with either the possum ones in SA Kat2 traps, or the stoat ones in Doc 200. As soon as they were replaced with fruit and rabbit respectively, we started catching again.
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Thanks for your suggestions. Rodents eating the possum dough is a big problem for us. It would be great if the ceramic lures were suitable for our traps. We don’t like the idea of the plastic ones so much. Cheers ln.
Thanks for that, it’s helpful as we’ve only caught one possum on the ceramic, that’s why I’m interested to see if they work for anyone else. Looks like we’ll have to come up with another plan.
Get an AT220 put it in same place as trapinator this will wipe out rats and mice. Then move it on to next trapinator.
Yep, tried all sorts of different ceramic lures across several trap types. No capture, but the occasional trigger, as mentioned because they hang too low.
There’s no magic bullet here, bait is best. I station a rat trap (or toxin) at the bottom of the ramp up to the possum trap.
You have to get rats down for the bait to stay.
Thanks. Will try to target rats for a while and see what happens.
I also have had the issue with rodents taking possum dough. I have tried ceramic lures with no catches recorded. I have also modified the trapinators and use dried apricot with good success. However the best so far has been to rotate AT220 traps around the network and eliminate the rats and mice that have a taste for possum dough.