I’m beat. I lost ALL my huge Earligrande peaches before they were even ripe and now it’s my Mid Pride peaches and Dorsett Golden apples (none of them ripe yet).
It’s possums:
I trapped two large ones about a month ago and relocated them far away. Now there is no interest in the traps. My neighbor convinced me to try an electric fence. You can see from one of the photos above that the beast just walks right through it! I know it “works” because I got a nasty shock through my pant leg one day when I had forgotten to unplug it.
My current fence (I’ve changed it over and over…) has a ground wire about 1" above the ground and then alternating hot and ground wires (3) at 3" spacing. I live on dune sand and can’t rely on an earth ground, also there is no bare earth. All is heavily mulched.
Please don’t suggest a large dog. I love dogs but my yard is just not designed for a big lumbering beast running around at night. It would do more damage than anything else. Don’t suggest a gun. I don’t own one because I would be too tempted to use it on my neighbor-from-hell, although I would not shrink from killing the possum.
This is all so disheartening. I’ve had a little damage in years past, but this is beyond the pale. I’m supposed to be enjoying my trees, all lovingly raised from bench grafts. Now they are finally all coming into fruit and I can’t get any
We all have planted trees, got really excited, thought we’d have fruit the following year and then. . . le deluge!!! Insects, rodents (of all sorts) deer, mold, fungus, drop, the remarkable terrible borer or six, and then comes weather. Too much rain, too little sun, no heat late frost. I think we should have a prelude to this site that says, Hey, think you want to grow fruit trees? Are you tough enough?
I have heard spreading mothballs around your trees will help. Possums don’t like strong smell. Even ammonia smell will turn them around. I have caught them in live trap with a fried chicken leg or wing.
What are you baiting the trap with? I don’t think possums are particularly intelligent so something fishy like sardines should work well. I would be concerned that possibly the culprit had been previously trapped and that might make it more difficult. Maybe a snare in the tree would work
So sorry. That’s frustrating.
Many people question the efficacy of relocating problem animals. Can you catch and dispatch? Or spray paint so you can tell if they are coming back?
Hang in there Steve. It may not help to hear other’s sob stories, but it sometimes help me. I had every piece of fruit in my entire orchard wiped out one year and 19 trees killed- all thanks to careless spraying of a neighbor. This year I was guarding a nectarine I’d waited 4 years on to fruit and tree produced just one. Two or three days before I picked it I looked out my window and literally saw a squirrel running across my yard carrying my prized nectarine! Trust me, we feel your pain.
Keep trying- you will find a solution. I have put some of those foldable dog pens around my trees and they work pretty well (I didn’t have one on my aforementioned nectarine). They are made up of multiple fence panels that fold like an accordion. They don’t require posts of any kind so they set up in 2 minutes. Some are 5 feet tall. You could put electric across top if they climb it. You could also put poison out inside that fence knowing the only thing that can eat it will be tree robbing animals.
THere are air pellet rifles plenty powerful enough to kill oppossums. Also, as someone who has a pet oppossum (crazy, I know) I can tell you that I doubt seriously they have “learned” to avoid your trap. Try some other foods. They love cat food. THey are really dumb, as someone said above.
Good luck. Hang in there…we’ll help you and I’ll bet you can figure something out. How many trees do you have that need protection at any given time?
Oh, oh, oh…Well, I’ve baited with fruit, peanut butter, dog food laced with fish sauce. You name it, I’ve tried it–except poison. Obviously I did have some success in the past, but there are no takers now. A friend suggested the foul-smelling repellents. I am very skeptical but I guess I should try.
The taller dog fencing panels (throw more money at it now that the electric fence didn’t pan out…) also sounds OK but I can see them climbing over and the whole thing crashing into the trees, breaking branches, etc. They already break off branches pulling down the fruit. I tried netting last year and they just chewed the fruit right though the net, leaving a gooey mess. I’ve stapled window screen pouches around apples and they pulled them down and made apple sauce right in the pouch.
Right now I have three groups of trees that need protection. I’m not going to even try to do anything with the plums, cherries or apricots. But I know the possums will eat the peaches (duh) apples and pears (last year they took all my first crop). So I’ve got the non-effective electric fencing around these groups of trees.
OK…so you definately have some determined thieves. And it sounds like You’ve tried most things and we aren’t likely to think of thing that you haven’t…but we’ll try!
One other option would be the old fashioned steel traps. I know…lots of people and animal rights folks hate them, but in large part that is because people often leave them unchecked and the caught animal has to chew its leg off to get away. The truth is it would probably kill the opossum instantly, but if not you’d dispatch it first thing in the A.M. The beauty of these is that 1) its a different set-up from what you think your possums have learned to avoid. Two, you can lay them around the base of the tree or even hang on the trunk, so that even if the critter isn’t trying to eat your bait food, it may well step on the trigger of the trap while going over it to get to the fruit. These traps are cheap so you could do them IN ADDITION to some of the other options we’ve discussed.
Its also possible to make an electric trap that would electrocute and kill an animal. Such traps are very dangerous and should only be employed inside a fence or up in a tree where dog or kids could never reach. If you google electrocution traps you can find some plans.
Dogs can catch possums really easy. They smell very strong, my dog always can find where they hide and she cannot find rabbits the same way. They pretend dead when scared so it is very convenient for the dog to catch them. Even medium to small dog with a good hunting instinct can catch possums, they are not really big. You can borrow a dog for several days from a friend or neighbor. Just a thought.
My neighbor is a trapper by trade. He traps dozens of possums a week. He exclusively uses corn soaked for a day or two in water. He just calls it sour corn. He says the they are attracted to the scent and love corn. I’ve shot no less than 100 eating from the ground under my hanging feeder that is just corn…he uses cage traps. They just walk in after the corn. then shoots them.
Please don’t relocate trapped varmints, this just creates a bigger problem for you or somebody else. Shoot them with air gun or drown them. Hopefully, one of the bait recipes mentioned above will work for you.
When I started a garden first time I had everyone come in for salad, deer, rabbit, and groundhog, in increasing order of obnoxiousness. I put a 4 ft chain-link fence, and that stopped the deer for a while while the other two kept coming by burrowing under the fence. I added 16 inches of chain-link laid on the ground outward from the fence. Only the groundhog kept coming in, climbing the fence. I put a hot wire four inches from the top and finally no one came in. When the groundhog touched that wire they had their hind legs on the metal fence, and they were zapped mercilessly. The deer too touched the wire and stayed away for years.
I know someone who has an olive grove and keeps meat rabbits in there to keep down the grass (and for food). In the back of the grove is a state park with all manners of predators. He only has electrified netting. He says the rabbits are smart enough to get under the numerous objects he puts in there when a raptor or owl is around, and he has not lost one in years. He says he has seen foxes several times trying their luck. Pastured poultry types use EN mostly. And the attraction of an obligate carnivore towards meat is far stronger than the attraction an opossum has for unripe fruits.
Two things: 1) be open to the idea of modifying your yard, with such things as electrified netting or chain-link 2) use the strongest power supply you can find 3) run a ground wire underground under the fence for best contact. Dry soil is quite insulating. I have three of them by now, and the two which are sold for cattle are really no good. My oldest one occasionally fries a squirrel, and it is continuous.
You could also maybe add a ground wire or two at the bottom of the fence and ground it with a suitable earth ground. (A well watered copper rod?) I’d try to set it up in a way the possum have to touch the earth and the hot wires to get through. Probably a bad idea but you could also ground it to the ground on an outside power outlet.
IMHO, and surely there are other ways to do it, a steel wire buried 2 inches under the fence works. The wire runs underground to where the PS is, and I hammer a grounding rod only there (which has its own connection to the PS). This costs me only one rod, 6 ft of regular electric wire, and I do not have to water because 2 inches is not insulating enough.
@Steve_in_Los_Osos, I feel your frustration…I’d been catching a lot of squirrels with my WCS tube trap, but I also had a possum problem. Didn’t know whether the tube trap would work on that type of critter. On a chance I left it out one evening baited with a peanutbutter covered apple core and caught one. Not sure if that was dumb luck, but it did the trick either way…
