More good comments - thanks! I use an AT220, I agree the capital cost is off-putting. I think if they were built at scale in an automated manufacturing plant then the price could be brought down. China anyone? And yes, I understand the social good of making them here, and it could be done if the investment was made. I agree the F bomb looks very well designed and made. But again, the cost is prohibitive compared to a Victor tunnel trap IMHO.
I am not an economist, but I wonder if this is a case of “market failure”. The thing I find interesting is that the product made by “our most successful pest control company” appears to suffer from rather indifferent long-term performance in the field. Or seems to…it would be nice to see the results of and independent long-term field study in multiple environments and at various stages of control.
Hi, re your comment stoat on Nutella, one of the blokes I work with who runs 20 cat kill traps in Bush setting thought he would try something different from rabbit and cat biscuits and he used peanut butter as a lure, you would think rats would have cleaned it up but he said he is catching cats,might just be something different and maybe not catch again.
I think the AT 220 will have a place just not for landscape trapping, for possums you can buy 8 or 9 single set traps and cover a larger area, remember there are only so many possums in the area surrounding any trap so once the initial knockdown has happened you only have dispersing possums to deal with so the catch value of a $500 trap reduces, and you still have the higher running costs.
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I run a set of 20 traps on the Waikanae River. I get NO support from the local council so all the costs of new traps & lures/baits are on me. Therefore expensive traps such as the AT220 or A24 are not an option & never will be. I am interested only in low cost options. I use eggs & dried rabbit mostly in the DoC200s. And Nutella, peanut butter, mayo in the tunnel traps. What I am interested in is a lure for rats/stoats that is not attractive to slugs, snails, slaters & other little critters. A field for further research?
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Thanks Dave, more good comments. I just have one AT220, on my 11 acre section, which I move around. I think your point about about possum traps being more cost effective in terms of long-term control is correct. I manly catch rats with my AT220. It comes into its own during migration spikes in the rat population. The great thing about the AT220 is that once set you can pretty much leave it for a month or more. You can’t do that with a standard possum trap because often it will have been triggered or the bait will have gone off. I am sure you know all this better than I do!
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I find my terracotta lures work extremely well on my population of rats. They are not affected by mould, slugs or insects. I estimate after using them in the field for a couple of years that the catch rate is very similar to nutella. However, coming back to my original point: they work very well for me, but I can’t claim to know that they will work in your context.
Terracotta lures for Victor traps
Update - Terracotta lures for Victor Traps
One thing I find works really well in rat traps is the large size PESTOFF prefeed pellets, slugs etc eventually chew away at them but I generally get at least two weeks, what i do is I DON’T put the pellet on the trip plate where you put peanut butter I put it further back past the trip plate by the spring, rat walks over the trip plate to get to the pellet.
The problem is pest off only sell it by the sack 20gks, so I generally just keep a few Kgs after doing a pest operation.
The other longer lasting Lure using the same method of lure not on trip plate but further back are pieces of Walnuts or Macadamia, during walnut season March /April up here I used half a walnut
I’ve used the same technique with my T-Rex traps. Until they ran out a few weeks ago, I 'd been using some thumb-sized feijoas, positioning them past the treadle. It’s an effective way to kill rats that are able to eat lures out of the bait cups.
I’m going to try gluing some DIY lure cups onto the rear of the treadle plate, like a small bottle cap to put lures like peanut butter, Nutella, Goodnature Meat-Lovers’ lure, etc., inside. I think that Blu-Tack should work to stick solid lures to the treadle, like small walnuts, for example. The last 2 years, my neighbour’s walnut crops have failed due to bad weather, so I’ve been deprived of an amazing free lure.
Cheers.
I noted the discussion about AT220 traps. Here’s our 2c worth from Bluff Hill Motupohue. Our AT220 fleet of 150 traps has been deployed for 9 months on average. During that time, we have counted 327 rat and 253 possum carcasses under those traps. That’s an apparent kill rate of 0.24 rats/trap/month and 0.19 possums/trap/month. Pretty effective for a trap that lasts 6 months on one battery and 500ml of lure.
We know carcasses are being removed by cats and mustelids and after careful analysis (using the AT220 computer records), we believe that the actual number of rat kills is 1,210; possum kills 557. That’s a corrected kill rate of 0.89 rats/trap/month and 0.41 possums/trap/month. That’s really efffective!
We’re on a journey to achieve a predator-free Motupohue by 2028. So ‘effectiveness’ is a more important measure than ‘efficiency’ because we have an end date…
I’m putting a document together that sets out our data, the methodology, the analysis and conclusions. Let me know if you would be interested in receiving a copy.
Hi I had a quick look at your project and yes you are in an ideal situation with water all around to make it predator free which unforfunatly most aren’t.
I would be interested in your report djedwards@xtra.co.nz I guess a couple of questions would be do you do camera monitoring, roughly what spacings are your traps, are AT22 the only trap you use, what about Cats an Mustelids, is the number of animals caught trending down,
what we find on 1,000 hectares of possum control with 330 sentinels is there are very low numbers of possums in the core of block and most of the catches are now near boundaries where there is NO pest control, and politics make it difficult to do much about that
cheers
Dave
To come back to your original topic Dan, perhaps this would be a good candidate for a citizen science project (Get involved with citizen science; Conservation activities).
One of the problems is that we we have a huge range of experience among trappers and a large range of projects. Some people are trapping their back yard, some their life style block and some large blocks of native bush. Some have 5 traps, some 50 and some 500. This makes it very difficult to analyse with any degree of statistical relevance. Some people swear by certain lures out of a sample of 5 traps. Then there are the different species we trap for…and so it goes on. A decent survey with a citizen science approach could cover this. Needs a statistically (scientific) designed form to collect the information on. Needs a co-ordinator. Maybe there is a role for TrapNZ in this? Just thinking aloud at this stage
I think you are on to something here. Trap NZ must have a ‘back door’ to all our data for a data scientist to pull together a comprehensive look at what lure kills best what traps are most successful ect, ect all across all our trap lines and bait stations all over NZ.
Would Predator Free NZ have the funds to employ such a person?
My introduction to trapping in 2009, was advice from DOC and BOPRC - both completely different so we decisded to work it out for ourselves. Our work is in sand dunes and wetlands. After 14 years I reckon you just need a whole array of tools, and work out what works in which sites. Nothing works everywhere, we have the full range of critters, cats, ferrets, stoats, weasels, rats, Hh, you can never expect one system to work with all species in all sites. So I am not sure that science will actually help, each site is different, animals are very varied, we use DOC 200s, A2, A220 and live capture, they all work, but need to be varied - baits likewise, but forget about ping-pong balls and the like, smell is what attracts - that is science!
I’ll send the report once its complete - probably another week. To answer your questions:
- Yes, we do camera monitoring but only ad hoc at the moment - it’s one of the things we need to ramp up. Our primary source of monitoring is Environment Southland who do a quarterly RTI and an RTC every other year.
- We have an inventory of over 2,000 traps. 150 of those are AT220s, almost 400 A24 traps, the remainder are manual.
- In the true spirit of ‘whack-a-mole’ predator control, with rat numbers suppressed, we have mice tracking at 80%+. That means that mustelids and cats are fat and happy dining on the mouse population. But now that the AT220s are seen as a regular source of food (with a very loud bang as a sort-of dinner bell), it means we have a strategy for where to place leg holds!
- Our JFN funding allowed us to expand our dense trapping network from the 200Ha of the scenic reserve across the whole 1,000Ha of the peninsula. As you’d expect, that created a surge of rat and possum kills… which we’re only just seeing plateau. Now, as we’re turning the focus to cats and mustelids, we’re seeing those kills rise. In May, we killed more mustelids than possums… that’s a first!
Thanks David, I will link your comments to the Experiences with AT220 thread if that’s OK. If you felt able to upload or link your report to Trap NZ that would be very interesting.
Yes I think you are spot on. I am just not certain that Trap NZ has resources for this. I will seek a comment if we don’t hear from them. I also wonder if Predator Free itself could find some money for this. I think it might be money well spent.
Hi this problem with getting info out there has been ongoing for the 20 years I have been involved and also sorting out what is worthwhile from someone opinion.
There was a heap of good research done in the 90"s and early 2000"s by Landcare but trying to find it in their system is hit and miss.
I have had a bit to do with predator free over the years and they have done stories on parts of my work, unfortunatly the Lady who was keen to do more on getting worthwhile stuff out there left.
A couple of years ago I made a suggestion to the CEO on making Living Documents for common areas to help people get started. One example I used was a page on Mustelid Lures, list what is proven to work, pros and cons plus for say salted rabbit which I worked on in 2005 incl a section on how to make and store the Lure. Dehydrated Rabbit is the same .
Tools for DOC traps and how fine tune them , plus placement etc was another subject
What I was looking at was not one persons opinion but a small panel of experianced people to refine methods etc and weed out others. As something new and proven to be good comes along it would get added to the Living Document.
I didn’t get a reply to the suggestion nor to the follow up 6 months later, It’s all abit of a shame as people put in so much work trying to reinvent the wheel. unfortunatly on traps forum it is easy for things to get lost amoungst everything else. Like I did not see the questions on Sentinels which I have had a heap to do with and modifying so I was late in replying and the thread has not been visited by anyone who might benefit
A small example is the two attached photos a simple fold up tool for 220 / 250 and a better safety catch
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Thanks Dave, really appreciate your input and depth of experience. The store of information that Landcare keeps and the expert insights that they could provide would be an excellent place to start. From my own experience a letter to the Minister responsible for CRIs and Predator Free might be the way to go. Depending on the level of interest I would be happy to help draft a letter with the input of others old-hands on this site.
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…and I like your safety device, much better than the standard piece of bent wire.
Yes I agree as well that Predator Free is a good place to start. In my experience thought they are looking for donations from me rather than the other way around…
But without good statistics and knowledge of each persons situation when commenting on trapping it is a very fine line between someone’s opinion and facts. We need to get to the facts if possible. Haven’t heard anything from Trap NZ but as you say unlikely they have funds to commit to the project.
I do a trap line with FOF (Friends of Flora), they have over twenty years of data with trapping mustelids and rats. They solely use wooden traps (over 1,000) with double DOC 200’s in. Bait is either Erayz or eggs, roughly alternating. They publish catch data monthly for rats and mustelids. For mustelids the presence of a trapped rat seems a very effective lure. In the last 10 years we have recorded peaks of 0.25 rats per trap and 0.08 mustelids per trap. Traps are checked monthly.