Wildlife Damage - Recert

Greg Puckett Author

12/20/2021 Added

8 Plays

Description

Updated for the 2022 training season.

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[00:00:00.760]In 2021, an update
[00:00:02.870]to the Nebraska Pesticide Act made it
[00:00:05.210]so that all applicators that wish to apply fumigants
[00:00:07.890]to rodent burrows will need to have training
[00:00:11.040]and pass the exam for Category 11 Fumigation.
[00:00:14.530]Applicators with training in Category 14,
[00:00:16.940]Wildlife Damage, will not be able to purchase
[00:00:19.030]or apply fumigants to rodent burrows.
[00:00:22.130]See the new Non-Soil/Structural Fumigation Manual
[00:00:25.560]chapter 10 for more information on rodent burrow fumigation.
[00:00:29.150]Manuals are available for purchase at pested.unl.edu,
[00:00:33.330]or you can call 402-472-1632 for more questions.
[00:00:39.296](bright music)
[00:00:53.280]Hello, and welcome
[00:00:54.140]to the Wildlife Damage Control Recertification video.
[00:00:57.520]Today, we will hear from Montana Department of Agriculture's
[00:01:00.515]Vertebrate Pest Specialist Stephen Vantassel.
[00:01:04.020]In this video, he will cover thirteen-lined
[00:01:06.050]ground squirrels, moles, pocket gophers, prairie dogs,
[00:01:10.320]and we'll have a refresher conversation
[00:01:12.080]about nuisance birds.
[00:01:14.007](bright music)
[00:01:27.740]Hi, my name is Stephen Vantassel,
[00:01:29.357]I'm with the Montana Department of Agriculture.
[00:01:31.650]I'm the Vertebrate Pest Specialist
[00:01:33.660]and I'm here at the University of Nebraska Lincoln
[00:01:36.230]to talk about control of thirteen-lined ground squirrels.
[00:01:39.670]And as you can see, this is perfect habitat
[00:01:42.370]for thirteen-lined ground squirrels,
[00:01:43.950]they love low-cut grass, and so they actually create
[00:01:47.100]these little burrows in the soil,
[00:01:49.530]where it's like someone just punched a hole into the ground.
[00:01:52.770]So we have one here.
[00:01:54.191]You're looking at that something probably two inches
[00:01:56.380]in diameter, and so there's little pock marks
[00:01:58.720]of holes around here, 'cause they can get
[00:02:00.620]pretty high densities depending on the type of habitat
[00:02:03.480]that you're in.
[00:02:04.313]And so one of the ways
[00:02:05.560]to control thirteen-lined ground squirrels
[00:02:07.630]is simply let the grass grow, but understand
[00:02:10.460]when you make that decision
[00:02:11.960]and you let the grass grow taller,
[00:02:13.750]you are making habitat for bowls and other pest species
[00:02:17.280]that you may not want to have around.
[00:02:19.530]But one of the side effects
[00:02:20.700]of having thirteen-lined ground squirrels
[00:02:22.690]is actually having badger damage.
[00:02:25.050]So sometimes people will call and they'll say,
[00:02:26.667]"Hey, I've got badger damage.
[00:02:28.350]How do I stop the badger?"
[00:02:29.540]Well, the best way to solve badger problems
[00:02:32.250]is to remove the food source, no food, no badgers.
[00:02:36.060]So why don't we talk about how we're gonna be
[00:02:37.470]moving thirteen-lined ground squirrels
[00:02:39.940]and show you the strategies
[00:02:40.920]and how to control their populations.
[00:02:42.615](bright music)
[00:02:55.124]One of the simplest ways
[00:02:56.100]of controlling thirteen-lined ground squirrels,
[00:02:58.030]particularly if you have a small geographical area,
[00:03:01.770]maybe several acres, is simply to use traps.
[00:03:04.680]There are a variety of traps available
[00:03:06.307]that you can use with thirteen-line ground squirrels,
[00:03:09.020]this is one type of trap where you can simply
[00:03:11.390]bait the trigger and it uses a choker bar.
[00:03:15.440]So you can simply set this right near where the hole is
[00:03:19.470]and when the squirrel goes in and grabs it,
[00:03:23.480]what kind of bait would you use?
[00:03:24.930]Probably some seeds, you could stick on here,
[00:03:27.330]probably put a cloth on there.
[00:03:28.830]The idea is you wanna have him grab it
[00:03:30.780]and that will choke him out.
[00:03:33.080]I'd also blocked this back part with some screen.
[00:03:36.060]Typically, there's a piece of wood here
[00:03:37.760]but sometimes these are set so that the animal
[00:03:39.980]actually moves through the trap to get the bait
[00:03:43.030]in terms of a cage (indistinct) but if you do that,
[00:03:44.880]make sure that you block the seeds from being seen
[00:03:47.790]from above 'cause otherwise you'll be attracting birds
[00:03:50.260]to this type of set.
[00:03:51.810]The type of trap system that I'm more comfortable with,
[00:03:54.277]and that is using a bait station, rat-sized bait station
[00:03:58.120]and using rat traps.
[00:04:00.150]Now in this situation, it's quite simple
[00:04:03.880]to simply open it up.
[00:04:05.190]These devices are often designed
[00:04:07.420]with a specific trap type in mind.
[00:04:09.850]You would set your rat trap, bait it.
[00:04:12.330]I would smear some peanut butter, probably put some seeds
[00:04:14.820]on there, place it inside, close it off, place it nearby,
[00:04:25.030]be patient, check it every day and you're good to go
[00:04:28.630]in terms of catching your ground squirrels.
[00:04:30.920]Set enough of them to capture the ones that you have
[00:04:33.680]in the area.
[00:04:35.140]You can also pre-bait, get them accustomed to going in there
[00:04:38.050]and then simply baiting it straightaway
[00:04:40.880]and catching them that way.
[00:04:42.490]If you're gonna be using rat traps,
[00:04:44.850]I'm a big fan of expanded trigger rat traps
[00:04:47.030]rather than the thin narrow version,
[00:04:49.110]and I do recommend that in terms of your wood,
[00:04:52.240]you wanna try to put some metal underneath these tines
[00:04:55.350]so that way they don't embed into the wood
[00:04:58.370]and so it makes for a stronger hit,
[00:05:00.170]and then you can just simply bait your trap.
[00:05:03.120]Some bait stations will fit these, others won't,
[00:05:06.420]but you can simply make your own box,
[00:05:08.440]just make sure your hole is about two inches wide,
[00:05:12.380]and so that the ground squirrel get access to it that way.
[00:05:16.590]And again, these are pretty straightforward.
[00:05:19.050]Just be careful of the snap side.
[00:05:22.489]The last way to control thirteen-lined ground squirrels,
[00:05:25.330]of course, is with toxicants.
[00:05:27.300]Certainly, if you're dealing with larger areas,
[00:05:30.190]toxicants are definitely the way to go.
[00:05:32.240]You have essentially two choices with your toxicants.
[00:05:35.050]The first one is with grain bait, and this is all
[00:05:39.040]you're gonna be using, basically a teaspoon.
[00:05:42.000]So this is a device that you can build on your own,
[00:05:44.740]just uses a copper end cap, cut, I think
[00:05:48.470]that's 3/4 of an inch,
[00:05:50.190]but you can certainly measure it with water,
[00:05:52.140]find out how much is gonna be a teaspoon, cut a hole in it,
[00:05:56.210]rivet it in place, take a piece of 1/4 inch rod,
[00:05:59.860]bend it in and you're good to go and this will be a dipper.
[00:06:02.730]Now what you have to do is it's a two-step process
[00:06:05.420]with zinc phosphide-based baits.
[00:06:07.260]The first step is simply to scoop up some rolled oats,
[00:06:10.830]sprinkle it around the hole, make sure
[00:06:12.840]that it's not on bare soil, you wanna make sure it gets
[00:06:15.410]into the grass, don't let it pile,
[00:06:17.860]let them pre-feed on that, follow-up a couple days later,
[00:06:22.030]and you hit him with the treated
[00:06:25.640]rolled oats with zinc phosphide, and that will be it.
[00:06:29.170]If you're in a more rural, if you're in an area
[00:06:31.240]closer to buildings, you would simply put the bait
[00:06:34.400]inside of the bait station such as this,
[00:06:36.910]and there are other models of bait stations
[00:06:38.880]that you can create for them as well.
[00:06:40.710]But again, you'd wanna do the pre-bait
[00:06:42.960]then follow up with zinc phosphide.
[00:06:44.780]Failure to pre-bait with your zinc phosphide
[00:06:46.980]is not only against the label, but it also won't work.
[00:06:49.870]Zinc phosphide is a bitter taste and you don't want
[00:06:52.460]the animal to be nibbling on it and realize it's bitter.
[00:06:55.250]So the pre-bait actually conditions them to eat the food,
[00:06:59.060]that way, when they see it again with the treated bait,
[00:07:01.640]they're just gonna gobble it down
[00:07:03.180]in sufficient quantity to kill them.
[00:07:06.120]The last method to thirteen-lined ground squirrels
[00:07:11.080]is to use Phostoxin.
[00:07:14.150]Now, I'm gonna put on my gloves here.
[00:07:17.200]Phostoxin is a fumigant, aluminum phosphide,
[00:07:20.190]you have to fill out a fumigation management plan.
[00:07:24.360]So I'm gonna put on the clock gloves, 'cause you wanna try
[00:07:27.470]to avoid moisture from getting onto the Phostoxin pellets.
[00:07:33.680]Now these are dummy pellets, these aren't real,
[00:07:35.810]but we would have a written fumigation management plan.
[00:07:38.510]There's a template on the Nebraska Department
[00:07:40.910]of Agriculture website, you could download that,
[00:07:44.130]fill it out, it has to be done prior to your use,
[00:07:46.970]so you'd have your...
[00:07:49.080]Put your gloves on, notice I have my long sleeved shirts on.
[00:07:53.950]So you have two different types of Phostoxin.
[00:07:57.030]One of them is pellets,
[00:07:59.978](pellets jingling)
[00:08:03.850]which is that size.
[00:08:11.290]And the other one, notice how I'm opening this
[00:08:13.710]away from my face, just using good practice,
[00:08:16.160]even though these are fake.
[00:08:17.610]The wind is coming from my back, blowing any gas away.
[00:08:21.070]You'd always wanna open these up slowly away from your face,
[00:08:25.220]because there's gonna be gas that's gonna be released
[00:08:27.510]off on the top part here, and you don't want
[00:08:29.750]to be exposing yourself to that.
[00:08:32.320]And here are the tablets.
[00:08:36.180]Tablets are five times the size of pellets.
[00:08:40.210]You're also supposed to have a testing device
[00:08:42.550]to test the ambient air while you're using this,
[00:08:45.920]but in our case, we're just gonna show you quickly
[00:08:47.970]how we would use this.
[00:08:50.890]We would take two out, so we put our funnel in
[00:08:54.700]'cause we want the pellets to be deep
[00:08:56.490]into the burrow system.
[00:08:58.070]Drop the tablets in, I recommend using two tablets
[00:09:01.710]or that would be 10 pellets per hole.
[00:09:06.480]Pull it out, take a piece of paper, could be new,
[00:09:10.080]something as simple as a newspaper,
[00:09:13.720]cork the hole, then backfill it with a shovel and dirt.
[00:09:17.470]And the reason for that is you don't wanna smother
[00:09:20.920]your tablets or pellets with soil.
[00:09:23.790]So that's what the piece of paper is for.
[00:09:25.840]Bury that off, move the next one and just treat them all.
[00:09:29.080]Fumigants work better when it's wet.
[00:09:32.630]We just had a recent rain here, so this would be
[00:09:34.400]a perfect time to be using fumigants,
[00:09:36.780]not a great time for using toxicants like zinc phosphide
[00:09:40.030]'cause zinc phosphide needs dry soil, dry conditions
[00:09:44.740]because once water hits your zinc phosphide,
[00:09:47.150]it begins to degrade your toxicant.
[00:09:48.760]So always keep that in mind.
[00:09:50.610]So wet for fumigants and dry for your toxicants.
[00:09:56.632](bright music)
[00:10:10.928]We're on a property that's having some mole damage.
[00:10:14.510]So I wanted to describe the process
[00:10:16.600]for how you would identify mole activity,
[00:10:18.960]as well as how to trap and set toxicants
[00:10:21.950]for the control of ground moles.
[00:10:24.270]But one of the first things we wanna point out
[00:10:25.950]is how to identify mole damage properly.
[00:10:28.630]And what we have here is actually a travel run
[00:10:32.360]that's used by moles and travel runs are really
[00:10:35.230]one of the most important features that you wanna look for
[00:10:38.290]if you're trying to trap or poison moles.
[00:10:41.280]So let's take a look at this particular spot here.
[00:10:45.960]This is a rather old one, because you can tell
[00:10:48.250]because the grass has died above it.
[00:10:51.030]Now, moles create two types of damage,
[00:10:53.530]they create runs like this one, it's where they're digging
[00:10:56.790]just below the surface and they're able to push the soil
[00:11:00.520]directly above them because there's no resistance to them.
[00:11:04.559]And off the runs, they have two different kinds of runs,
[00:11:08.030]travel runs, which is what you see here,
[00:11:10.430]it's relatively long, straight,
[00:11:12.940]I mean, it has a little bend to it,
[00:11:14.530]but this is definitely a travel run,
[00:11:17.410]and feeding runs, which tend to be short and curvy,
[00:11:22.610]it's sort of like if you're walking in your yard
[00:11:24.600]and every time you step, something collapses,
[00:11:28.400]you're in a feeding run area.
[00:11:30.520]We're gonna avoid the feeding run area
[00:11:32.720]as much as it may be annoying, because the fact
[00:11:34.900]of the matter is, is a mole may only visit that area once,
[00:11:38.470]'cause once he's finished feeding,
[00:11:40.570]there's no reason to go back there again.
[00:11:42.810]But the travel runs however, those are the highways
[00:11:45.820]of our ground mole.
[00:11:47.600]So the other type of damage is actually a mound.
[00:11:50.630]This is where a mole is pushing up a mound of soil,
[00:11:54.590]it can be something like the size of a saucer cup
[00:11:58.930]to maybe even as big as a pie plate,
[00:12:01.383]but typically, they tend to be much smaller,
[00:12:03.870]about the width of my hand, about eight inches wide,
[00:12:06.440]and that's where a mole is digging a deep tunnel
[00:12:08.930]and they actually have to carry the soil to the surface,
[00:12:12.460]so that what we're seeing here,
[00:12:14.080]this is known as a travel run
[00:12:15.880]and it's very close to the surface,
[00:12:17.670]and we're gonna be identifying this here.
[00:12:20.040]But let me point out how far it goes.
[00:12:22.810]We're following it here, you can see the brown
[00:12:25.700]coming through here, goes all the way down to the sidewalk.
[00:12:34.190]So on this particular set, I would like to set
[00:12:37.670]at least two traps, I recommend
[00:12:39.550]for most homeowner situations that you always wanna set
[00:12:42.870]at least three traps for your ground mole.
[00:12:45.540]Now the other rule of thumb
[00:12:46.970]is you always wanna set fresh damage.
[00:12:50.630]Now, it can be a little confusing with mole runs
[00:12:53.000]because this, even though it is old because the grass
[00:12:55.700]has died above it, the grass has died not because the mole
[00:12:58.910]is eating the grass, the grass has died because the mole
[00:13:01.950]has separated the roots of the grass
[00:13:04.230]away from the soil below it.
[00:13:06.300]So this, even though it looks old,
[00:13:09.430]it's probably still active because mole runs
[00:13:12.230]are gonna be used more commonly than the areas
[00:13:15.510]where they're doing their feeding.
[00:13:17.000]But anyway, this provides us an excellent opportunity
[00:13:19.830]for me to demonstrate some proper trapping techniques,
[00:13:23.100]as well as how you would want to put some poison
[00:13:25.850]in for the mall.
[00:13:26.720]So why don't we get started?
[00:13:28.726](bright music)
[00:13:39.280]When you're called to a site to inspect for mole activity,
[00:13:42.140]you don't wanna spend all your time looking
[00:13:44.630]at this large field, you wanna try to focus your attention
[00:13:47.450]so you save time and get on with the job
[00:13:49.820]as quickly as possible.
[00:13:51.320]One of the things you wanna do
[00:13:52.360]is you always wanna be thinking about checking
[00:13:54.130]the edges of the field, 'cause a mole
[00:13:56.460]isn't just gonna start in the middle of the field,
[00:13:57.980]it's gonna start at the edge, and you can find an edge
[00:14:00.620]that has trees, all the better
[00:14:02.740]because that's where you wanna start your effort first.
[00:14:05.030]Moles are woodland creatures, they like to have
[00:14:07.400]rich, moist soil, not wet soil.
[00:14:10.110]They wanna have loose, rich soil 'cause they're coming
[00:14:12.450]from the woods and they're often invading into fields
[00:14:14.960]because they're leaving a wooded area.
[00:14:16.810]So this is the place you'd wanna check first.
[00:14:19.330]So one of the things when you're looking
[00:14:21.078]for where to put your traps, you wanna be looking
[00:14:24.330]at fresh damage.
[00:14:25.960]Whenever you're thinking about doing mole control,
[00:14:27.790]always wanna looking at fresh damage.
[00:14:29.950]So we're looking at mounds right now,
[00:14:31.437]and so we see some old mole mounds,
[00:14:34.160]these are all flat, grayed out, so they're beaten down,
[00:14:38.900]we know those are old but as we move closer,
[00:14:42.320]we see some that are fresher, they're taller,
[00:14:45.970]they have a little bit more chunky, but they still could be
[00:14:48.480]a little fresher but if you had a choice,
[00:14:50.480]you'd wanna trap here as opposed
[00:14:52.440]to the flat ones back there.
[00:14:54.170]But if we go even further, we can notice
[00:14:56.780]even some fresher mounds.
[00:14:58.510]You can tell that by the height, often by the color
[00:15:01.190]and the granulation of the soil.
[00:15:03.260]And in this situation, we actually have one where the plug
[00:15:06.570]is still showing, which is highly unusual,
[00:15:08.860]'cause remember how a mole is creating its mound,
[00:15:12.780]it's actually bringing the soil directly,
[00:15:14.890]perpendicular to the surface and pushing it up
[00:15:17.260]so it creates this round bubble,
[00:15:21.120]whereas a pocket gopher's throwing it off at an angle.
[00:15:23.890]So that's why the mole mound has a cylindrical shape to it
[00:15:27.580]rather than a kidney shape
[00:15:29.000]that's characteristic of a pocket gopher.
[00:15:31.830]So you recall that mole mounds are created
[00:15:35.120]when the mole tunnel is too deep for the mole
[00:15:37.890]to simply push the soil up above, so they literally have
[00:15:40.530]to excavate the soil, push it up to the surface,
[00:15:43.690]and that's what creates the mound.
[00:15:45.670]So that creates a problem for us
[00:15:47.360]when we're gonna be trapping,
[00:15:48.720]or putting in even toxicants down here,
[00:15:50.650]'cause we have to get down to that main tunnel,
[00:15:53.590]which means we have to dig for it.
[00:15:55.250]So this is one of the reasons why I'm not a big fan
[00:15:58.200]of digging out mole mounds because it's a lot of work,
[00:16:00.720]and sometimes you have difficulty
[00:16:02.670]finding that horizontal run, but we're gonna give it
[00:16:05.330]a go here and kinda show you the effort we're gonna take.
[00:16:08.050]But remember, the tunnel is here in the middle,
[00:16:11.330]I'm assuming it's gonna be connecting these two things,
[00:16:13.970]but we're hoping, that's where I'm gonna assume
[00:16:15.740]it's gonna be we're gonna find out how deep this goes.
[00:16:18.780]Probably at least four inches.
[00:16:20.830]So we're gonna see how it goes here.
[00:16:22.600]Maybe we'll get lucky.
[00:16:29.250]Aha, look at that.
[00:16:31.730]I found it.
[00:16:35.640]Now, the reason why you have to find the main tunnel
[00:16:37.430]is because this is where you're gonna be setting,
[00:16:39.450]you're gonna have to excavate this out more.
[00:16:43.590]So again, the principle for setting the scissor trap
[00:16:45.627]and the normal trap are identical,
[00:16:47.720]you're not gonna be able to use a harpoon trap here,
[00:16:50.060]harpoon traps are only for surface runs.
[00:16:52.360]You're gonna have to use another trap
[00:16:54.140]in order to do the mounds.
[00:16:56.479](bright music)
[00:17:07.760]We wanna talk about another control technique for moles,
[00:17:10.420]and that is using toxicants for their management.
[00:17:13.270]So the first step, of course, whenever you're doing
[00:17:16.110]mole damage is make sure it's actually moles.
[00:17:18.850]In this case, we're dealing with a mole mound,
[00:17:21.190]but the second step is to make sure
[00:17:22.880]that when you're gonna be treating for the mole
[00:17:25.450]is that you're identifying the active runs.
[00:17:27.830]Now we've talked earlier about identifying
[00:17:30.890]those straight runs, but here we're gonna be dealing
[00:17:34.160]with the mounds where it's a little bit harder
[00:17:36.620]to use toxicants on mounds
[00:17:38.100]because you've gotta be probing deeper for that main tunnel,
[00:17:41.130]which is not near the surface.
[00:17:43.120]So we're looking here at a mound, it looks fresh,
[00:17:46.010]we've had rain today, but you'll see it's pretty large,
[00:17:49.400]the soil is pretty grainy, and of course, it's brown,
[00:17:51.587]but it's already been rained on,
[00:17:53.510]but we know this is relatively fresh 'cause we've talked
[00:17:55.690]to the landowner here and we know
[00:17:57.320]that this is relatively recent.
[00:17:59.350]So the first step according to the toxicant,
[00:18:03.200]according to the label from this manufacturer,
[00:18:06.080]and they tend to be similar among manufacturers,
[00:18:09.070]is we have to identify that this is gonna be
[00:18:11.050]an active mound system.
[00:18:12.640]So we believe that it is but the label says
[00:18:14.820]we have to confirm that it is,
[00:18:17.090]and so we have to probe to find the main run
[00:18:22.250]and then market to see if the mole re-closes it again.
[00:18:27.160]So let's talk about how we're gonna try to identify
[00:18:29.300]where that main run is.
[00:18:31.010]We don't wanna tear up all the grass,
[00:18:33.120]so I'm gonna use this gopher probe,
[00:18:34.940]you can use something like a simple metal rod,
[00:18:37.470]but you wanna have something with a little bit
[00:18:39.130]of width to it, perhaps 1/4 to 1/2 inch in width,
[00:18:42.320]but a simple metal rod, and we're gonna probe
[00:18:44.770]to find this main run.
[00:18:46.190]Now to save ourselves some time, we're gonna look
[00:18:49.330]at where the mounds are.
[00:18:50.480]We have a mound here and we have another mound
[00:18:53.360]all about 20 feet away, and I think they're connected.
[00:18:57.080]So I think when we're gonna probe, we're gonna probe
[00:18:59.430]around this area here to see if we can find that main run.
[00:19:03.740]So let's take a look.
[00:19:16.260]See the drop.
[00:19:17.970]So I know that there's a mole run right here.
[00:19:20.920]So when you lose the resistance,
[00:19:22.690]you know that you're in the main run.
[00:19:24.370]So now I'm gonna take a flag and I'm gonna flag that spot.
[00:19:32.520]Pull that out and then I'm gonna come back here
[00:19:34.570]in a couple days to see if the mole
[00:19:37.190]has closed up that opening.
[00:19:39.910]Now when you're dealing with a surface run, it's much easier
[00:19:43.540]because all you have to do is take your finger,
[00:19:46.460]poke a hole through it.
[00:19:48.000]You could also crush it to see if the mall reopens it again,
[00:19:52.650]but in this case we don't have that option
[00:19:54.760]so we have to probe for it to see if the mall re-closes it.
[00:19:57.770]If the mall re-closes it we know that this is an active run,
[00:20:00.800]and then we would basically put a worm in, put gloves on,
[00:20:04.950]put the worm in every five to 10 feet,
[00:20:08.040]and then make sure we close off that opening
[00:20:10.331]to make sure that nothing from the surface
[00:20:13.000]can get to that mole.
[00:20:14.570]And that's it.
[00:20:16.943](bright music)
[00:20:30.140]We're here in alfalfa field in Northeastern Nebraska
[00:20:33.197]and this is prime pocket gopher country
[00:20:35.840]'cause pocket gophers love alfalfa fields.
[00:20:38.700]We're gonna be beginning with talking
[00:20:40.110]about how to identify a pocket gopher mound,
[00:20:42.830]where to find that plug because the plug
[00:20:44.770]is critical to get into that main burrow system,
[00:20:48.030]where you need to be setting your traps
[00:20:49.530]or putting your toxicant, depending on which method
[00:20:51.810]you wanna use.
[00:20:52.700]So why don't we begin looking at a pocket gopher mound.
[00:20:55.623](bright music)
[00:21:04.703]Before we can begin talking
[00:21:06.090]about controlling pocket gophers, we have to identify
[00:21:09.080]the mounds correctly so that we're not confusing
[00:21:11.590]a mole mound with the pocket gopher mound.
[00:21:14.710]We have a representative pocket gopher mound right here,
[00:21:17.690]and you'll notice something distinctive about the shape,
[00:21:20.750]and that is it's an oblong shape, or have what's called
[00:21:24.050]a fan or kidney shape.
[00:21:26.300]Notice the sort of teardrop design here,
[00:21:29.530]and if you look carefully, you'll notice the plug.
[00:21:32.539]You cannot be able to see this on all of the mounds,
[00:21:35.310]but what happens is the pocket gopher is coming
[00:21:37.360]out of the ground at a 45 degree angle,
[00:21:40.360]and he's throwing the dirt.
[00:21:41.720]This is why I've positioned myself on the fan side
[00:21:45.440]of the mounds, that way when I take my probe,
[00:21:48.520]I can probe down to find where I get less resistance,
[00:21:53.120]and that's where the pocket gopher's tunnel is,
[00:21:56.240]and you can see how my screwdriver here slides very quickly.
[00:22:00.520]If you don't have a screwdriver such as this,
[00:22:02.400]this is probably a 12-inch screwdriver,
[00:22:05.000]you can buy other probes like this and simply probe around
[00:22:08.750]to find where you get down to that main tunnel.
[00:22:12.280]But I want you to be sure that you understand
[00:22:14.170]how a pocket gopher mound works, is that one side
[00:22:17.180]of the mound is gonna have a lot more soil than the other,
[00:22:20.810]and the reason is the pocket gopher
[00:22:22.320]doesn't throw dirt behind himself,
[00:22:24.570]he only pushes it out this particular way.
[00:22:28.080]So when we're trying to identify
[00:22:29.440]where that lateral tunnel is, we'd wanna make sure
[00:22:32.940]we position ourselves on the larger side
[00:22:36.190]and then probe this way to find that spot
[00:22:38.460]where we get less resistance.
[00:22:40.761]And you just keep probing to find where that hole is.
[00:22:47.910]There it is.
[00:22:53.300]There's our hole.
[00:22:57.240]This is called the lateral tunnel and we dig that out
[00:23:02.750]till we get down to the main tunnel and that may be down
[00:23:07.280]12 to 14 inches depending on the soil conditions
[00:23:13.210]in your area and you keep digging
[00:23:17.480]until you find the main tunnel.
[00:23:24.049]And the main tunnel is gonna branch off in two directions
[00:23:27.450]because the other mounds here, I'm expecting the main run
[00:23:31.130]to be somewhere in here.
[00:23:35.000]Now that we had the lateral tunnel opened
[00:23:36.920]down to the main tunnel which is located here,
[00:23:40.080]we have two options to control these pocket gophers,
[00:23:42.610]one of them is with traps of course,
[00:23:44.580]or we have the option of using toxicants.
[00:23:47.680]And here we have zinc phosphide bait
[00:23:49.697]and as well as PhosTek phosphine tablets that can be placed.
[00:23:56.120]This is for a fumigation.
[00:23:57.350]Remember you need a fumigation management plan
[00:23:59.700]when you're using this particular product,
[00:24:01.640]but I wanna focus here on the toxic baits.
[00:24:05.330]Again, you'd wanna dig out that lateral tunnel
[00:24:07.950]down to the main tunnel, and then you'd put a teaspoon
[00:24:11.890]of oats, treated oats onto your spoon,
[00:24:15.550]you would take that down into the main tunnel,
[00:24:20.290]pour it over, and then you would close the burrow,
[00:24:24.530]making sure that you don't cover the oats.
[00:24:27.460]That's critical because if you bury the bait,
[00:24:31.090]the pocket gopher won't be able to find it.
[00:24:33.370]You would also wanna make sure you're doing this
[00:24:35.010]during a time when the soil is dry,
[00:24:37.120]and you're not anticipating any rain
[00:24:39.310]in the next several days.
[00:24:40.850]Zinc phosphide is moisture-sensitive,
[00:24:43.580]and so if you're worried about moisture in your cropland,
[00:24:46.220]you'd wanna go to one of the anticoagulant baits
[00:24:49.270]that's available, I believe it's Diphacinone
[00:24:52.620]is available for controlling pocket gophers
[00:24:54.710]or it might be Chlorophacinone, but you'd wanna go
[00:24:57.140]with a waxed bait for the pocket gopher
[00:25:02.210]rather than using zinc phosphide if moisture
[00:25:04.240]is a concern in your area.
[00:25:05.630](bright music)
[00:25:14.470]We talked about putting traps and bait
[00:25:16.500]down the lateral tunnel to the main tunnel,
[00:25:18.490]now we're gonna show you a different process
[00:25:21.350]of what's called hand baiting,
[00:25:22.900]going to the main tunnel directly.
[00:25:25.260]Now, the key to finding the main tunnel
[00:25:26.900]is to recognize how pocket gophers build the tunnel systems.
[00:25:29.970]As we said before, the lateral tunnel comes off
[00:25:32.110]at a 45 degree angle from the main tunnel,
[00:25:34.660]so you'll notice a mound here and a mound here.
[00:25:37.750]These are crushed by tire tracks
[00:25:39.300]'cause they recently mowed today but we know
[00:25:41.410]that the main tunnels gotta be in between these,
[00:25:44.050]so if we probe down with our narrow end,
[00:25:47.430]this has a narrow end and a fatter end,
[00:25:48.950]we're going on the narrow end.
[00:25:51.770]See how it dropped?
[00:25:53.070]That shows you we've found the main tunnel.
[00:25:56.370]Then we'd flip it over, widen it out
[00:26:00.130]and then we take our spoon with toxicant, pour it down
[00:26:03.830]to the hole, then kick it shut.
[00:26:06.830]That's basically all you do.
[00:26:08.110]You just keep doing that according to the label
[00:26:10.480]and you'd put that fresh.
[00:26:11.490]Make sure you watch when you're using zinc phosphide,
[00:26:13.460]make sure the soil is dry, that you're not expecting
[00:26:15.860]rain anytime soon.
[00:26:17.200]You'll notice I'm wearing the nitrile gloves this time.
[00:26:19.830]The reason is because I'll be in closer proximity
[00:26:22.130]to the poison using this particular technique
[00:26:24.930]than I was using the lateral tunnels,
[00:26:27.600]but the label did not require me to have nitrile gloves
[00:26:30.640]when I was using a spoon, but I'm wearing them now
[00:26:32.790]just to sort of remind you that some of your labels
[00:26:34.680]will require you to wear nitrile gloves
[00:26:37.150]when using that particular toxicant.
[00:26:39.151]To save the step from using the spoon,
[00:26:41.510]there's another device that uses the same principle,
[00:26:44.500]but the toxic end is inside the storage chamber,
[00:26:47.220]and when you press the button, it comes out the bottom.
[00:26:49.920]So again, we push down, push down, find that spot
[00:26:53.790]where you get down into the main tunnel
[00:26:55.200]'cause we noticed we have a mound here,
[00:26:56.890]we have a mound here,
[00:26:57.723]so we find it, lift it up slightly, push the button,
[00:27:01.450]make sure enough toxicant comes out, pull it out,
[00:27:04.460]kick it closed, voila, we have now baited
[00:27:07.530]this particular spot for pocket gophers.
[00:27:10.630]So let's summarize what we have for pocket gopher control.
[00:27:13.900]Number one, we want to identify the mounds correctly,
[00:27:16.420]it should be oblong, kidney-shaped or fan-shaped.
[00:27:19.660]We wanna find the plug which will be on the opposite end
[00:27:24.420]of the large pile of soil.
[00:27:26.820]Secondly, we wanna find the main runs,
[00:27:28.940]which will be in between the rows of pocket gopher mounds.
[00:27:34.060]Secondly, we wanna be sure that we are using
[00:27:36.600]the toxicants appropriately or the traps appropriately.
[00:27:39.740]If we're using zinc phosphide, it needs to be done
[00:27:41.640]during dry conditions, and if we're using an anticoagulant,
[00:27:44.490]we can use it in moisture conditions.
[00:27:47.150]There's also if we're using fumigants such as Phostoxin,
[00:27:51.870]we wanna make sure we're using our have
[00:27:53.810]our fumigation management plan
[00:27:55.760]established prior to our using the particular poison,
[00:27:58.500]and make sure if using traps you properly stick your traps
[00:28:02.710]with a surveyor's flag securely against with a metal wire.
[00:28:07.060]Check your traps regularly and you'll find
[00:28:09.100]you'll have trapping success or poisoning success
[00:28:12.500]as long as you're determined and find those fresh mounds.
[00:28:15.154](bright music)
[00:28:28.474]I'm here in Nebraska and prairie dog field,
[00:28:31.159]because we're gonna talk about prairie dog control.
[00:28:34.030]Although prairie dogs,
[00:28:35.000]their range has dramatically decreased
[00:28:38.360]in the past 100 years, there's still situations
[00:28:41.410]where prairie dogs become a conflict with ranchers
[00:28:45.010]and producers that have them on their property.
[00:28:49.290]One of the first things you have to do
[00:28:50.590]when you're dealing with Prairie dogs
[00:28:51.990]is you have to investigate your field
[00:28:54.397]and do some observation.
[00:28:56.020]Some pesticide labels require
[00:28:58.650]much more investigation than others, but you should
[00:29:01.240]at least be getting an idea of what types of species
[00:29:03.897]and animals may be residents in your property,
[00:29:06.951]and you want to identify burrows that are active
[00:29:10.140]versus inactive, like we have over here.
[00:29:14.360]So we're gonna be talking about those types of situations
[00:29:16.810]and how to identify active burrows versus inactive burrows,
[00:29:20.350]but one of the first things you have to do
[00:29:21.880]is determine what is the overall size
[00:29:24.157]of your prairie dog field?
[00:29:26.150]In which case, this place we have over 100 acres
[00:29:29.970]of prairie dogs, and so that creates
[00:29:31.750]a little bit of a challenge when it comes to pesticide use,
[00:29:34.490]because you have to get special permission
[00:29:36.690]from the US Fish and Wildlife Service to ensure
[00:29:39.294]that we're not dealing with any black-footed ferrets
[00:29:42.620]in this particular location.
[00:29:44.270]So you would need to make that phone call
[00:29:45.970]but I would recommend making that phone call regardless.
[00:29:49.100]You should also be getting an endangered species
[00:29:51.300]bullets and list before you do any control.
[00:29:53.810]Even though it's not required when we're doing trapping,
[00:29:56.510]per se or shooting, it's always a good idea
[00:29:59.230]to get an idea what might be present in this particular area
[00:30:02.880]in terms of endangered species.
[00:30:04.700]But as you're inspecting the burrows, you wanna be looking
[00:30:06.840]for the white droppings of the burrowing owl,
[00:30:11.080]any feathers that may be around and you wanna flag
[00:30:13.640]those burrows to make sure that you don't treat those
[00:30:17.130]or trap those if and when you begin
[00:30:20.200]to start doing your control.
[00:30:21.249](bright music)
[00:30:32.583]All right, we're here at an active prairie dog burrow.
[00:30:34.610]You can tell how clean it is, you can even see divots
[00:30:38.460]of their feet as they've been walking around the mound,
[00:30:42.070]we have plenty of droppings around the outside of it,
[00:30:44.900]so we know that this is an active prairie dog mound,
[00:30:47.760]but when we're talking about using
[00:30:49.010]zinc phosphide-treated bait, it's a two-step process.
[00:30:53.810]In fact, it might even be a three-step process
[00:30:55.920]depending on how technical you wanna be
[00:30:58.970]in terms of the application of your bait.
[00:31:02.210]When you're using zinc phosphide, there is a time limit,
[00:31:05.212]July to February is the time that you can only use it,
[00:31:09.450]and so you wanna be sure that you're using
[00:31:11.560]the bait properly.
[00:31:13.120]Zinc phosphide is a bitter-tasting bait.
[00:31:16.050]The last thing you want the prairie dog to do
[00:31:18.310]is to be nibbling on it and realizing that it's bitter
[00:31:21.020]and then avoid it.
[00:31:22.170]So what you have to do is do what's called the pre-bait.
[00:31:24.940]You take untreated oats, or whatever the substrate
[00:31:28.330]is of the treated grain of the Zinc phosphide,
[00:31:30.490]they'll tell you on the label, and then you would pre-bait
[00:31:33.520]the mound so that the prairie dog feeds on the pre-bait,
[00:31:37.510]recognize this is high-energy food,
[00:31:39.800]that way, when you come out
[00:31:40.930]in two days, apply the zinc phosphide,
[00:31:43.530]it's gonna gobble it down, that's the idea.
[00:31:45.623]But one of the first things you can do is to make sure
[00:31:48.542]that the prairie dogs are even feeding on the grain.
[00:31:51.270]So one thing you can do is actually take
[00:31:53.790]20 different mounds that are active in your field
[00:31:57.040]and just do a pretest to see if they're even feeding
[00:31:59.740]on the grain to begin with, 'cause you don't wanna pre-bait
[00:32:02.340]the entire field and recognize that,
[00:32:04.970]oh, you're wasting your time.
[00:32:06.440]So you're gonna take a teaspoon,
[00:32:08.040]this is a homemade device here that uses a copper end cap,
[00:32:12.450]properly measured and then riveted to the bottom.
[00:32:14.900]So I have a teaspoon of oats here,
[00:32:18.340]and we're just gonna spread it out in front
[00:32:20.570]of the prairie dog mound.
[00:32:22.590]There's our pre-bait.
[00:32:24.250]So we're gonna check this in a couple of days
[00:32:27.300]and then find out to make sure that it's gone.
[00:32:29.310]If it is gone, then we can pre-bait the entire field,
[00:32:33.890]wait two days, and then do the same thing
[00:32:36.930]when we're doing with treated grain,
[00:32:39.690]we're gonna apply it the same way,
[00:32:41.610]just spread it out like that.
[00:32:43.370]So a couple of techniques when we're dealing
[00:32:46.010]with zinc phosphide to consider.
[00:32:48.010]Zinc phosphide and water don't mix.
[00:32:51.240]If your zinc phosphide is exposed to moisture,
[00:32:53.680]it degrades the quality of the Zinc phosphide
[00:32:56.750]'cause it was actually liberate the toxic ingredient.
[00:32:59.400]So you wanna make sure you're not putting your bait out
[00:33:02.040]during a time when there's dew, or it's gonna rain
[00:33:04.830]within the next 48 hours.
[00:33:06.580]So if you're gonna apply it, I would be doing it
[00:33:08.600]probably at 9:00, 10 o'clock, whenever the dew
[00:33:11.700]is off your landscape, that's when you can begin
[00:33:14.020]the process, but make sure that the weather
[00:33:16.650]is gonna be clear for at least the next 48 hours.
[00:33:19.610]Now, with your prairie dogs, you are gonna see them
[00:33:22.550]dead and dying within 12 hours or so, and so if you do see
[00:33:26.010]any dead and dying prairie dogs on the surface,
[00:33:28.430]the label suggests you're supposed to be killing
[00:33:31.550]those prairie dogs, finishing them off
[00:33:32.940]and burying them appropriately.
[00:33:34.940]Always make sure you're wearing gloves.
[00:33:36.630]You don't have to wear the nitrile gloves,
[00:33:39.520]at least label that I was reading today,
[00:33:41.450]always make sure you check your label
[00:33:42.970]and you're following proper protocol.
[00:33:45.200]Some labels require long sleeves,
[00:33:47.440]some labels may not require long sleeves.
[00:33:49.630]Make sure you're being safe with yourself.
[00:33:51.900]If you're ever using us a mechanical device,
[00:33:54.960]sometimes you may have to wear a respirator
[00:33:58.260]when you're filling it.
[00:34:00.520]So again, make sure you're protecting yourself
[00:34:03.960]'cause you don't wanna be breathing that zinc phosphide dust
[00:34:06.460]because what kills the prairie dog can harm you as well.
[00:34:14.318]I want to make sure I touch on a couple of more things.
[00:34:16.790]The first one is when you're putting your pre-bait
[00:34:19.880]or your bait, make sure that you're spreading it out
[00:34:25.700]in a large enough area, should be like a six inch diameter,
[00:34:29.240]should be on the soil portion,
[00:34:31.780]not out into the grass when you're baiting.
[00:34:34.560]The other thing is when you're pre-baiting,
[00:34:37.020]I recommend putting a little flag so that you know
[00:34:39.550]you pre-baited that particular hole,
[00:34:41.590]it'll save you some time if you are gonna go back
[00:34:44.830]and then treat that particular site, then when you treat it,
[00:34:47.610]you can just simply pull your flag,
[00:34:49.440]move on to the next hole.
[00:34:52.000]So now we're gonna move on to the anticoagulants
[00:34:54.730]and we're gonna be using something known as Rozol.
[00:34:58.370]We had zinc phosphide-based baits,
[00:35:00.510]now we're gonna go into Rozol.
[00:35:02.450]Now Rozol is an anticoagulant, so it takes more feedings
[00:35:07.410]for a prairie dog to eat in order to get toxic dose.
[00:35:12.070]We noticed with the zinc phosphide, we only needed
[00:35:15.800]a teaspoon, very small amount, but with the anticoagulant,
[00:35:21.950]you need 1/2 cup.
[00:35:25.010]So it's a much smaller significant amount of bait,
[00:35:29.690]but the beauty of this particular product
[00:35:31.630]and the other anticoagulant that's out in the market,
[00:35:33.870]the Kaput, is that you don't have to pre-bait.
[00:35:37.180]So we would identify active burrows
[00:35:39.910]and it can only be applied between October and March 15.
[00:35:44.920]But again, you'd have to do all your pre-survey work,
[00:35:47.640]making sure you're doing the Endangered Species bulletins,
[00:35:50.580]making sure that you're in the proper locations,
[00:35:52.860]you're not gonna be endangering threatened species
[00:35:57.050]and making sure you're not killing non-target species.
[00:35:59.580]So you would use 1/4 cup baiting the burrow,
[00:36:03.670]but unlike the zinc phosphide which is placed on the surface
[00:36:07.330]of the ground, this must be placed at least six inches
[00:36:11.390]down the burrow.
[00:36:12.630]So what I would suggest you use is perhaps
[00:36:15.240]some sort of a funnel to make sure you're getting that bait
[00:36:19.140]far enough down into the burrow, or you can even use
[00:36:23.700]a tube such as this.
[00:36:25.610]So you can set the tube down, place this on top,
[00:36:30.870]I would duct tape it in place 'cause you're using a lot,
[00:36:33.960]and then you would just simply pour this down the hole
[00:36:37.200]and then you bait it, but it has to be sure
[00:36:39.070]that you're six inches down the burrow.
[00:36:41.450]Now, I would recommend you go a little bit
[00:36:43.210]further than that because some burrows
[00:36:45.500]have a very low slope.
[00:36:47.370]This one's a very deep slope but with a low slope,
[00:36:50.320]sometimes birds are still able to get in there
[00:36:52.810]and eat the bait at six inches.
[00:36:54.740]So in those low slopes, you really wanna make sure
[00:36:57.020]you're getting that bait farther in
[00:36:58.560]so that not poisoning seed-eating birds.
[00:37:02.080]Once you bait, on day four or day five,
[00:37:06.530]you have to start doing your surveys off the field,
[00:37:09.810]you have to do seven of these.
[00:37:11.480]Every 200 feet, you have to do a grid search
[00:37:14.730]where you're walking one way, looking to your left,
[00:37:19.160]then you turn right around, walk the same line
[00:37:22.440]and look to your right and check the entire field
[00:37:25.330]for seven visits to make sure that you're picking up
[00:37:28.640]any dead or dying prairie dogs,
[00:37:30.187]and you typically wanna be doing that in the afternoon
[00:37:33.520]before the evening.
[00:37:34.982]Any dead or dying prairie dogs you find,
[00:37:37.250]you dispatch the dying prairie dogs, dead ones
[00:37:40.680]and then place them down into deep burial
[00:37:43.110]into a particular prairie dog hole
[00:37:45.160]that you've treated because we wanna make sure
[00:37:47.600]that non-target species are not feeding
[00:37:49.640]on the prairie dogs that have been poisoned
[00:37:52.260]with Chlorophacinone or Diphacinone
[00:37:54.760]so we're not poisoning other creatures.
[00:37:56.460](bright music)
[00:38:08.190]We talked about baits, now we need to talk about fumigants.
[00:38:12.370]There is a general use fumigant
[00:38:13.980]which is the ignitable cartridge fumigants,
[00:38:16.790]and you've seen them, they're little,
[00:38:17.623]they're about this long, you would stick a wick
[00:38:19.900]inside of them and light them and then insert them
[00:38:21.830]down to burrow.
[00:38:23.780]Unlike with baits, fumigants work better
[00:38:26.140]when the ground is wet and the reason for that
[00:38:28.750]is because the water helps fill the pores in the soil
[00:38:32.420]so that the gas stays better inside the burrow.
[00:38:35.540]When you're using ignitable cartridges,
[00:38:37.520]a wet ground also reduces the risk of causing
[00:38:40.870]a grassland fire.
[00:38:43.660]When you're using fumigants such as the ignitable cartridge,
[00:38:46.870]you wanna be sure it's deep enough into the burrow
[00:38:49.027]and that you cork the burrow baby with a cow patty
[00:38:52.610]or with a side of soil so that you're not smothering
[00:38:56.060]the cartridge when you're backfilling the burrow.
[00:38:58.920]The reason for that is if you smother the cartridge,
[00:39:01.270]you're not gonna get an effective burn rate,
[00:39:03.290]you're not gonna get enough toxic gas to fill that chamber.
[00:39:06.360]We need to recognize that with Prairie dogs,
[00:39:08.590]their chambers can be quite large,
[00:39:10.800]so you need to make sure you have
[00:39:12.140]as much concentrated toxic gas in that chamber as possible
[00:39:16.070]to kill that prairie dog.
[00:39:18.700]We wanna turn to the restricted use pesticide
[00:39:21.970]and that's the aluminum phosphide-based products.
[00:39:25.200]They're highly restricted, there is a lot of reading
[00:39:28.100]that you have to do.
[00:39:29.040]I calculated how much reading time it took
[00:39:31.540]to read both the applicators manual, the pesticide label
[00:39:35.220]and the SDS sheet, the Safety Data Sheet,
[00:39:38.400]you have to read all of it, it took me
[00:39:40.330]almost an hour and 1/2 to read all three documents.
[00:39:43.770]You need to read them thoroughly and understand them
[00:39:45.600]because of the potential risks for human health and injury
[00:39:49.480]with this particular product, but it is an effective product
[00:39:52.800]and you might wanna consider using it in your field.
[00:39:55.800]You have to do more surveys with this product,
[00:39:58.320]you have to do a night survey to make sure
[00:40:00.520]you're not gonna be poisoning black-footed ferrets,
[00:40:02.810]you also have to make sure you make
[00:40:04.480]a fumigation management plan that's written
[00:40:07.670]prior to the application of your use of this product.
[00:40:11.190]There is a template on how to use
[00:40:13.300]that fumigation management plan available
[00:40:15.470]in the Nebraska Game and Parks website,
[00:40:18.700]and as well as the Montana Department of Ag website as well,
[00:40:22.620]that will help you through the process
[00:40:24.210]of filling out that particular plan.
[00:40:27.860]When you're using aluminum phosphide,
[00:40:30.930]you have different options available.
[00:40:33.420]Now, I wanna just talk a little about when you get
[00:40:34.980]a new canister, how you're supposed to open it properly.
[00:40:39.020]I'm watching which way the wind is blowing,
[00:40:41.050]the wind is kinda blowing a little bit across me here,
[00:40:43.950]my face aside, so I wanna make sure
[00:40:46.580]that I open this canister in a manner
[00:40:49.540]that's away from my face, and so the wind will take
[00:40:51.960]any gas off into a different direction.
[00:40:54.680]So we're gonna crack it away from our face,
[00:40:57.800]let that glass bleed off before I open it up.
[00:41:03.510]Now these are dummy cartridges, so I'm not worried
[00:41:06.010]about getting poisoned with aluminum phosphide
[00:41:07.820]because these aren't real, but you always wanna be careful
[00:41:10.830]when you're using this product
[00:41:11.760]so you're not exposing yourself to phosphine gas.
[00:41:14.610]Phosphine gas is the same thing that kills
[00:41:18.140]with the fumigation as the zinc phosphide,
[00:41:20.430]zinc phosphide does the gas internally to the animal,
[00:41:23.740]so it's the same product that's killing in both instances.
[00:41:27.560]These are tablets.
[00:41:29.020]Notice I have cloth gloves on because these are activated
[00:41:32.050]by moisture, and that includes moisture in the atmosphere.
[00:41:36.080]So the idea being is that when you put them down
[00:41:38.260]into the burrow, there's moisture and humidity
[00:41:40.760]within that burrow system, and that activates these tablets.
[00:41:44.420]If it's really dry out, you can actually use
[00:41:47.540]a Spitzer bottle or a water tank pre-wet the burrow
[00:41:53.270]and then put the tablets down into the burrow,
[00:41:55.390]and we'll talk about that in a minute.
[00:41:57.190]But these are tablets, they are five times
[00:41:59.490]the size of pellets, and for prairie dog use,
[00:42:03.010]you would wanna use four per burrow
[00:42:05.960]because they're large burrows.
[00:42:08.710]The other product is pellets.
[00:42:11.480]It's the same active ingredient, it's just a different size.
[00:42:14.830]Again, we wanna make sure we're opening this
[00:42:16.500]away from ourselves.
[00:42:19.690]Notice the difference in size, significantly smaller,
[00:42:23.490]so if you're gonna use pellets, you would need to use 20.
[00:42:26.607]That's gonna be kinda hard to count that in the field
[00:42:29.050]on a regular basis, so most people are gonna go
[00:42:31.313]with the tablets, but this is something
[00:42:34.130]that's also available if you want to use the pellets.
[00:42:40.090]There's a lot of safety requirements
[00:42:41.840]with using phosphine gas.
[00:42:44.350]You're supposed to have a phosphine gas air tester,
[00:42:48.640]so you can test the ambient air to make sure
[00:42:51.580]you're not poisoning yourself and then you would record
[00:42:53.550]that data, there's two different ways to do that,
[00:42:56.170]there's the glass tester where you break the ends
[00:42:58.320]of the glass, there's a chemical inside,
[00:43:01.350]and then you use a plunger to suck the air into the glass,
[00:43:04.930]if there's a reaction, it will tell you
[00:43:06.480]how much phosphine gases in the air
[00:43:08.520]or there's electronic monitoring devices,
[00:43:11.530]the ranges and prices can be anywhere from $250
[00:43:14.730]all the way up to $600 and more depending what type
[00:43:18.340]of bells and whistles you want on your devices.
[00:43:21.440]So when we're applying those, applying the product,
[00:43:24.720]we wanna get it deep into the burrow.
[00:43:30.300]So we wanna use our pipe.
[00:43:41.500]And if we're using pellets in this case,
[00:43:44.400]you're just simply gonna put them inside, such as this.
[00:43:52.670]You wanna get them deep into the burrow,
[00:43:54.630]then you would take a wad of newspaper, cork the hole,
[00:43:58.320]then backfill it with a shovel,
[00:44:00.650]and then you would have treated that particular burrow,
[00:44:02.750]then you move on to the next one.
[00:44:08.400]Now that you finished your fumigation, you have to do
[00:44:11.010]a few more things, one of them is putting up
[00:44:13.780]your fumigation signs around the entrances
[00:44:17.990]to the property that you've applied your fumigant to.
[00:44:21.880]There's also another thing you wanna keep in mind,
[00:44:23.800]and that is how to dispose of your gloves.
[00:44:26.460]You wanna make sure that you don't just simply
[00:44:28.130]take the gloves off and toss them in the cab of your truck,
[00:44:31.940]because there's gonna be microscopic particles
[00:44:35.000]of aluminum phosphide tablets on these gloves,
[00:44:37.820]and they're still gonna be dissipating gas
[00:44:39.617]and you don't want that in the cab of your truck.
[00:44:41.860]So you'd wanna put this in the back of your truck
[00:44:44.260]where you're not gonna be breathing that particular air.
[00:44:46.620]You can also do something called a wet rinse,
[00:44:49.840]where you simply dunk them in water
[00:44:51.310]to sort of deactivate the aluminum phosphide
[00:44:53.880]or you can do a dry rinse where you simply hang them up
[00:44:57.240]to the air for several days so that they dissipate.
[00:45:00.160]We always wanna only use these gloves
[00:45:02.979]for aluminum phosphide.
[00:45:04.670]These are small enough, we're just gonna dispose
[00:45:06.870]of them after we deactivate them.
[00:45:09.560]Let's talk about shooting
[00:45:11.680]in terms of shooting for prairie dogs
[00:45:13.240]a lot of people like to shoot prairie dogs
[00:45:15.140]as recreational activity, but the fact
[00:45:17.550]is that even under great conditions,
[00:45:19.430]you're probably only gonna control 65% of the colony,
[00:45:23.360]and that is with aggressive, aggressive shooting.
[00:45:26.290]If you want to improve your shooting success,
[00:45:28.800]it's always better to condition the prairie dogs
[00:45:31.210]with noises like a propane cannon for several days
[00:45:34.330]prior to shooting so they don't get reacting
[00:45:36.610]to the to the gun sound, or if you have permission
[00:45:39.510]to use silencers, that would also help reduce
[00:45:42.380]the amount of sound that the prairie dogs
[00:45:44.210]are gonna be reacting to.
[00:45:46.600]If you are gonna be using shooting,
[00:45:48.220]you want people to be using non-frangible bullets
[00:45:51.770]so that we're not putting lead into the carcass
[00:45:54.020]that when predators and scavengers are coming
[00:45:56.380]along and feeding them, they'll be less likely
[00:45:58.060]to be poisoned by lead.
[00:46:01.050]But we'll be remiss if we don't talk
[00:46:02.870]about the final element here,
[00:46:04.290]and that is monitoring and follow-up.
[00:46:07.620]Don't just think that any of the techniques
[00:46:09.540]that we've talked about here today are gonna resolve
[00:46:12.450]all of your prairie dog problems instantly.
[00:46:15.070]Even under the best conditions, it often takes two years
[00:46:18.280]of active treatment in order to get 90% or more control
[00:46:22.390]of the prairie dog town.
[00:46:24.230]So you're gonna have to make sure you think
[00:46:26.270]about doing a follow-up trade techniques.
[00:46:29.000]So one strategy to use is a zinc phosphide treatment
[00:46:33.210]then followed-up maybe with a anticoagulant treatment.
[00:46:37.100]Some labels will allow a second application
[00:46:41.069]of zinc phosphide If you're getting reinvasion
[00:46:44.270]from a neighboring colony.
[00:46:45.900]The problem with zinc phosphide is that the animals
[00:46:48.290]that don't die from it are not gonna eat it again,
[00:46:50.700]and that's why you have to wait another year.
[00:46:53.300]But if you use zinc phosphide and then to go
[00:46:55.430]to an anticoagulant, you can get a very strong control,
[00:46:58.710]maybe throw in some shooting as well or some trapping
[00:47:02.040]as follow-up or even some fumigants, the idea being
[00:47:05.250]there's no one tool that's gonna resolve everything,
[00:47:08.550]that's why you wanna be thinking
[00:47:09.780]about integrated pest management,
[00:47:12.190]putting all of your tools together to reach
[00:47:14.870]the control goals that you have for your particular field.
[00:47:18.637](bright music)
[00:47:33.730]All right, now we're gonna move into pest birds.
[00:47:36.130]Not a big fan of the title,
[00:47:37.410]I'd rather call it unprotected birds
[00:47:39.630]because when we're dealing with protected birds,
[00:47:41.390]we have to get a permit, but there are only a few species
[00:47:44.940]in Nebraska that are aren't protected,
[00:47:47.200]which means you don't have to have any permits
[00:47:50.410]to control them, at least as far as the state
[00:47:52.860]or federal level are concerned.
[00:47:55.060]Here are three of those species that are available,
[00:47:57.720]that is the pigeon or the common rock dove,
[00:48:02.560]is another name for it, the European starling
[00:48:06.740]and of course, the house sparrow.
[00:48:08.130]Now I just wanna describe the house sparrow here for you.
[00:48:10.440]This is the male and I want you to notice here that the bib,
[00:48:13.700]the throat bib that's on its neck, that shows you
[00:48:17.260]that this is a male house sparrow,
[00:48:19.620]and the female usually isn't too far behind,
[00:48:22.050]but that's gonna be a very classic clue
[00:48:24.720]to help you identify the sparrow because sparrows
[00:48:27.100]can be a bit tricky in terms of their identification.
[00:48:30.240]But these three species are not native to the United States,
[00:48:34.070]therefore, they are not
[00:48:35.370]part of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act
[00:48:38.650]that I mentioned in the previous chapter.
[00:48:41.450]This is why you're able to control these particular species
[00:48:45.380]without having a permit
[00:48:47.210]from either the US Fish and Wildlife Service
[00:48:50.460]or from Nebraska Game and Parks.
[00:48:53.220]So there's also other species that are also not protected.
[00:48:57.410]The European collared dove would be another one
[00:48:59.590]that's not part of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act,
[00:49:02.740]but that's also another introduced species,
[00:49:04.680]but we wanna concentrate our efforts here
[00:49:07.628]on these particular these three species
[00:49:08.990]because these are the long-term common ones
[00:49:12.300]that don't have any protections in terms of Nebraska Law,
[00:49:16.240]or in terms of federal law.
[00:49:18.700]So here's the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
[00:49:21.010]We mentioned it a little bit in chapter one
[00:49:24.170]in our previous presentation, but here's some of the wording
[00:49:27.080]of it and it says, "The federal prohibition to pursue,
[00:49:30.410]hunt, take, capture, kill, possess, offer for sale,
[00:49:35.770]sell or offer to purchase, purchase, deliver for shipment,
[00:49:39.410]ship, cause to be shipped at any time
[00:49:41.660]any migratory bird, nest or egg of any such bird."
[00:49:45.240]In other words, you can't even have in your possession
[00:49:48.740]a bird feather like from a bluejay or from a robin,
[00:49:52.250]even if it fell off the bird, the mere possession of that
[00:49:55.620]is a violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act,
[00:49:58.140]as you read it here.
[00:49:59.390]So the reason why, again, just to repeat it,
[00:50:02.150]why those three species aren't protected,
[00:50:04.520]is they're not native and considered
[00:50:07.270]part of the migratory bird species
[00:50:08.960]here in the United States, 'cause they weren't here
[00:50:11.010]to begin with, they were actually introduced,
[00:50:13.360]some of them in the 1800s.
[00:50:15.880]So we have basically two legal categories of birds,
[00:50:19.910]unprotected birds, pigeons, house sparrows, starlings
[00:50:24.290]and protected birds.
[00:50:25.610]So the universe of birds always breaks down
[00:50:28.010]into two different parts,
[00:50:29.870]and the ones we're gonna be focusing here on
[00:50:32.120]are the unprotected birds.
[00:50:34.740]Now, you may say, why am I talking about limited protection
[00:50:37.050]for black birds?
[00:50:37.883]Well, there is a carve out
[00:50:39.760]within the Migratory Bird Treaty Act
[00:50:42.320]for farmers to be managing black birds
[00:50:46.010]that are deprecating on their crops,
[00:50:47.880]and it's damaging their crops in the process
[00:50:50.220]or about to, where they don't need to get a permit
[00:50:52.920]to control them.
[00:50:54.020]However, if the farmer chooses to do this,
[00:50:57.730]chooses to use lethal control on these on these black birds
[00:51:01.537]with like the red-winged blackbird,
[00:51:03.810]the yellow-headed black bird, that sort of thing,
[00:51:06.580]if they're using control, lethal control
[00:51:08.630]on those particular species, they automatically grant
[00:51:11.680]the federal government permission to come
[00:51:14.780]on to their property and interview them
[00:51:16.990]and evaluate their control methods at anytime.
[00:51:19.470]They're also supposed to submit a written report
[00:51:22.440]of their lethal activities on these birds
[00:51:24.980]every year to the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
[00:51:27.130]So there is a carve out there, but a lot of farmers
[00:51:29.720]I don't think are completely aware of the full ramifications
[00:51:32.590]of using that loophole within the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
[00:51:36.725]Now let's talk a little bit about pigeons.
[00:51:38.598]They're very extraordinarily common,
[00:51:40.790]they have thrived in urban conditions,
[00:51:42.880]because they're ledge dweller, but they have
[00:51:45.140]one to two eggs per clutch and up to five clutches a year.
[00:51:48.130]A clutch is just the time when they're laying eggs
[00:51:50.670]at one setting.
[00:51:53.920]They're monogamous so they made basically for life
[00:51:56.520]until one of the pair dies, and then of course,
[00:51:59.884]the eggs hatch in about 18 days, and they're a fairly
[00:52:03.040]long-lived bird, all things considered,
[00:52:05.050]they can live three years or more,
[00:52:07.530]but they do need free water in order to survive
[00:52:10.680]and they can get that from snow.
[00:52:12.560]So snow would constitute free water as well.
[00:52:15.020]This is why that's an important element or try
[00:52:17.246]to reduce their numbers as you wanna be controlling
[00:52:19.720]the amount of water that they have access to,
[00:52:21.940]and we'll talk a little bit more about that
[00:52:23.500]when we get into some bird control.
[00:52:25.050]Notice how little they eat every day.
[00:52:27.040]They don't need a whole lot, and they thrive of course,
[00:52:30.050]in urban environments.
[00:52:30.910]Here's an example of them living in a ledge.
[00:52:33.810]They like to live on ledges that are certainly protected
[00:52:36.170]from surface rain, but their nests
[00:52:37.780]are extraordinarily simple things.
[00:52:39.990]Here's just some straw sort of strung together,
[00:52:45.070]some sticks and that's on a pile of feces,
[00:52:48.110]here's an example of other pigeons on the girders
[00:52:50.920]of a bridge.
[00:52:51.760]Notice we have our owl effigy that's really doing
[00:52:54.140]a great job, and I'm being sarcastic there, of course,
[00:52:56.990]where the pigeons are then roosting on top of their feces,
[00:52:59.680]and that's where they have their nest.
[00:53:00.920]So they're kind of a dirty bird in that regard,
[00:53:04.230]but they're very simple nests that they create.
[00:53:07.970]Starlings breed only twice a year, and I have a picture
[00:53:11.420]showing where the starling nest is
[00:53:13.040]on this particular girder.
[00:53:15.070]They made in late May and also late July,
[00:53:19.590]and they have two clutches per year,
[00:53:21.930]four to seven eggs a clutch, they don't migrate,
[00:53:25.640]but they can form very large flocks or roosts,
[00:53:28.460]particularly in the wintertime and this can become quite
[00:53:31.120]a nuisance for people when the starlings
[00:53:34.240]come and merge together, and they come together
[00:53:36.100]in the wintertime because they're trying to save heat.
[00:53:38.560]And so it allows them to sort of save food energy
[00:53:41.720]by coming together, so the bird in the middle
[00:53:43.810]is really getting the best deal because he's gonna have
[00:53:46.770]the heat of all those other birds helping reducing
[00:53:49.240]his caloric intake.
[00:53:50.760]Again, they don't eat a whole lot
[00:53:52.910]but they can cause tremendous damage,
[00:53:55.010]both in the feces that's coming out
[00:53:56.700]and also the noise damage that people suffer
[00:53:59.270]when they have large flocks of starlings around.
[00:54:02.600]People in cattle production areas really suffer
[00:54:05.380]a lot from starlings because the amount of food
[00:54:08.460]that they can consume and contaminate is enormous
[00:54:12.240]and they are involved in the spread
[00:54:13.940]of salmonella among cattle as well.
[00:54:18.190]Starlings are cavity dwellers, that means they like to go
[00:54:20.840]into a hole and then build their nest
[00:54:23.750]inside of the hole where pigeons are ledge dwellers,
[00:54:26.450]so they like...
[00:54:27.580]This is an example of a starling where someone
[00:54:29.580]puts some netting up in the starlings
[00:54:31.590]were able to weasel their way in and he filled
[00:54:33.670]this entire area with grass.
[00:54:37.000]Notice, here's an attic.
[00:54:38.570]For some reason, they like to fill the entire void.
[00:54:42.320]So they just keep bringing back grass and straw,
[00:54:46.570]trying to fill up this whole attic.
[00:54:48.360]That took about a 30-gallon trash bag
[00:54:50.920]to get that out of the attic.
[00:54:52.640]And then of course, they have their droppings
[00:54:54.330]before a particular event that they're exploiting
[00:54:57.490]on this structure that often forms a fan-like look to it.
[00:55:02.630]House sparrows are also cavity dwellers.
[00:55:05.210]Notice, I'm just gonna emphasize again the black bib
[00:55:07.830]that shows you that it's a male.
[00:55:09.550]They breed three times a year and they average
[00:55:12.950]four to seven eggs per clutch and they hatch
[00:55:15.390]in about two weeks.
[00:55:16.950]There's no migration with this bird, it can stay
[00:55:19.100]in the city area or wherever it's resting for a year round,
[00:55:22.270]but they tend not to form the kinds of roosts,
[00:55:25.610]large flocks that the starlings do,
[00:55:27.617]but they can sort of gather a little bit,
[00:55:29.500]but nowhere near the extent that starlings can.
[00:55:33.370]This is important because again,
[00:55:35.000]that Migratory Bird Treaty Act, you need to make sure
[00:55:38.020]you've identified the birds and identified them properly.
[00:55:42.280]Here we have an example of a house finch on the left,
[00:55:45.480]notice how similar it looks to the female house sparrow
[00:55:49.740]that I have pictured here on the right.
[00:55:51.950]Now, picture of the house sparrow here on the right,
[00:55:55.100]he's fluffed up a little bit because he's probably cold,
[00:55:57.730]or he's trying to just get some fleas off of him,
[00:56:00.200]but notice how from this picture, how similar he looks
[00:56:03.220]to the house finch.
[00:56:04.270]The house finch is a protected bird,
[00:56:06.980]the house Sparrow is not a protected bird.
[00:56:09.877]And you wanna make sure when you're doing
[00:56:11.720]your control efforts, you don't confuse the two species.
[00:56:14.980]So it's very important to be doing your pre-survey work,
[00:56:18.610]monitoring and that you make sure
[00:56:20.360]that you're dealing with the right bird.
[00:56:21.720]By the way these two species can reside
[00:56:24.460]very close to one another.
[00:56:25.680]In fact, at this particular, the structural complex
[00:56:28.640]that I was at, both species we're right next to each other.
[00:56:33.260]So make sure you're following the rules
[00:56:36.350]when we get to controlling these particular birds.
[00:56:39.570]House sparrows, like starlings are crevasse dwellers,
[00:56:42.460]they will also fill a void completely with grass,
[00:56:45.590]and of course, you'll see the spray of droppings
[00:56:48.370]when they're coming up into this particular building.
[00:56:51.990]Canada geese are a protected species,
[00:56:54.520]but you can get permits to control them,
[00:56:57.490]and we just wanna cover them briefly
[00:56:59.120]because they are becoming more common in Nebraska.
[00:57:02.140]Officially, my understanding is that last I knew,
[00:57:05.640]the Nebraska Game and Parks has not given up
[00:57:08.070]control of Canada geese yet, nuisance Canada geese,
[00:57:11.990]but that could change, and I do wanna mention this
[00:57:14.740]because the Nebraska Game and Parks may down the road
[00:57:17.770]allow vertebrate pest specialists
[00:57:19.900]to be dealing with Canada geese,
[00:57:21.780]but there also is a repellent that's available
[00:57:23.820]for Canada geese that you wouldn't be allowed to spray,
[00:57:26.350]and the reason is, is because you are not taking the bird.
[00:57:30.120]So when you're dealing with protected species,
[00:57:32.100]it's not that you can't do any control, you can,
[00:57:34.750]you just can't do any control that's gonna harm, injure
[00:57:38.100]or take possession of the bird or injure the bird
[00:57:42.860]that's nesting, for instance.
[00:57:44.060]So you can exclude a bird from going into an area
[00:57:47.900]you don't want it to go, that's fine, but you can't do
[00:57:50.460]anything that would harm that bird physically.
[00:57:52.990]So even though this is a protected species,
[00:57:55.590]you are allowed to use repellents to keep that bird
[00:57:58.410]off of certain surfaces, and there are products
[00:58:01.280]in the market that you can use to do that.
[00:58:03.630]But of course, defecation is a big problem with Canada,
[00:58:06.500]excuse me, with Canada geese,
[00:58:08.210]and you also have safety issues
[00:58:10.220]because ganders, they are very defensive of their nests
[00:58:13.370]and Ganders have attacked people who have been injured
[00:58:16.410]by Canada geese because of falling or slipping on droppings,
[00:58:20.487]and some of these issues can be quite serious.
[00:58:24.460]So how do we control these particular species?
[00:58:26.620]Well, like all species that we're dealing with
[00:58:29.210]and whether you're dealing with bugs
[00:58:30.530]or whether you're dealing with vertebrates,
[00:58:31.740]the fact the matter is that the principles are all the same.
[00:58:34.920]When we get down to the abstract level,
[00:58:37.070]we wanna manage the animal's habitat,
[00:58:39.600]we wanna be thinking about when is the appropriate time
[00:58:44.010]to institute control in terms of its lifecycle and behavior?
[00:58:48.240]And what types of control measures
[00:58:50.620]are we going to institute?
[00:58:52.680]But we have to be thinking about all three elements,
[00:58:55.720]and too often, we focus on the control methods
[00:58:58.530]without thinking about the habitat modification,
[00:59:01.300]the conditions that allow those animals to be here.
[00:59:04.210]But let's repeat again, if you build it, they will come,
[00:59:07.870]if you remove it, they will go.
[00:59:09.900]So the animals are there for a reason,
[00:59:12.660]because we've allowed the conditions
[00:59:15.024]that make it favorable for them to be there,
[00:59:18.020]and that's why they're there.
[00:59:19.510]We can remove the conditions that allow them to be there,
[00:59:22.297]and the problem will resolve itself.
[00:59:25.110]And we don't wanna just really avoid thinking
[00:59:27.520]about that and talking about that with our clients,
[00:59:29.910]because it will often save a world of trouble
[00:59:32.460]in terms of pesticide use in terms of other control methods,
[00:59:35.610]and in the long-term, it can be a cheaper solution
[00:59:38.500]if it's applicable in your particular situation.
[00:59:41.740]We also need to be timing things.
[00:59:43.460]Sometimes we have a right control method
[00:59:45.710]but used at the wrong time.
[00:59:47.650]For example, frightening devices should never be used
[00:59:51.100]when animals are nesting because it's cruel,
[00:59:54.320]because the the bird is not gonna be leaving it's young.
[00:59:57.200]So using a frightened device when a bird is nesting
[01:00:00.320]with young it's silly and it's also cruel,
[01:00:03.600]because it's not appropriate use
[01:00:05.610]of that particular control method
[01:00:07.690]when you have young available.
[01:00:09.560]So we have to be thinking about the all three areas
[01:00:12.677]and our goal is to reduce the damage to tolerable levels.
[01:00:16.810]That means what will make the client happy,
[01:00:19.940]and the client is probably gonna say,
[01:00:21.137]"Well, I want them all gone."
[01:00:22.660]That's really not gonna be practical a lot of times
[01:00:24.950]when we're dealing with birds unless you're dealing
[01:00:26.550]with the full exclusion, but the reality of the situation
[01:00:29.600]is, what do they really need to achieve
[01:00:32.800]to solve the problem that they're suffering
[01:00:35.630]in this particular case?
[01:00:37.200]So let's talk about bird pressure,
[01:00:39.460]and when we're dealing with control of birds.
[01:00:42.080]Bird pressure is how attached birds are
[01:00:45.250]to a particular location.
[01:00:47.210]Low pressure, they're easy to move, high pressure,
[01:00:50.460]they're very hard to move.
[01:00:52.210]So generally speaking, in my experience in the field,
[01:00:55.440]clients never call you when there's low pressure.
[01:00:59.590]So we're gonna kind of avoid that, because for now
[01:01:03.030]and we're gonna be dealing with medium and hard pressure,
[01:01:05.590]but I'll let you read the subheadings there on your own
[01:01:08.900]in terms of understanding what low pressure is.
[01:01:10.960]But with medium pressure is the birds have
[01:01:13.070]an established roosting spot where they are doing this
[01:01:16.950]on a regular basis, but there are no nests.
[01:01:20.520]Often there is food or water available or both.
[01:01:24.670]So this is off the location where birds will send themselves
[01:01:28.410]after they fed in the morning,
[01:01:30.050]they will feed in the morning, then go
[01:01:31.380]to this roosting spot, kinda hang out,
[01:01:33.570]or they're roosting there in the hopes
[01:01:35.360]that someone will drop food for them,
[01:01:37.190]or there'll be a feeding area that they can then exploit.
[01:01:39.850]And of course, high pressure is often defined
[01:01:42.200]by the fact that there's nesting.
[01:01:44.010]Whenever you see an issue of nesting with birds,
[01:01:47.920]you automatically know that it's a high pressure site.
[01:01:50.360]Those birds are wedded to that location,
[01:01:52.930]they've chosen that location, because in their mind,
[01:01:55.260]it's the best place for them to be.
[01:01:57.310]So it's gonna take a jackhammer to kinda get them
[01:01:59.860]to move along.
[01:02:00.850]So you need to make sure you understand and evaluate,
[01:02:04.380]why are the birds here?
[01:02:05.792]And how attached are they to this particular location?
[01:02:09.780]Because the more attached they are,
[01:02:11.680]the stronger control methods you need to apply
[01:02:14.730]to get them to move on or to be eliminated.
[01:02:17.590]So habitat modification should always be started
[01:02:21.120]whenever you're doing wildlife control.
[01:02:22.940]You have to be thinking along these lines,
[01:02:25.170]and don't let your client try to poo-poo this aside,
[01:02:28.770]anything helps that you can do to reduce the amount of food
[01:02:32.360]and resources available to that particular bird.
[01:02:35.060]You wanna be stopping active feeding and passive feeding
[01:02:38.460]when you're dealing with birds.
[01:02:39.380]Passive feeding is down here, where that plastic lid
[01:02:43.740]of that dumpster was just too heavy to close again,
[01:02:46.670]or you have active feeding where people
[01:02:48.330]at the McDonald's restaurant are just tossing out
[01:02:50.490]french fries to the animals.
[01:02:51.960]Active and passive feeding, you wanna try to eliminate
[01:02:54.330]or reduce those as much as possible.
[01:02:57.470]You also need to be removing access points
[01:03:00.773]by closing off vents that are gonna be used by birds
[01:03:04.200]or potentially used by birds.
[01:03:06.140]Here's an example where you have birds using these trees.
[01:03:09.290]Starlings, for instance, love these tightly leafed trees
[01:03:14.050]where they can flock in abundance,
[01:03:16.280]and so the way to resolve this is to open up the canopy
[01:03:19.320]by removing up to a third of the branches
[01:03:22.110]so that it's less tight and less condense,
[01:03:24.530]forcing the birds to move to a different location.
[01:03:29.330]In plain English, more food and shelter means more animals.
[01:03:34.020]If you want to reduce this, you have to reduce
[01:03:37.070]the conditions that allow that to occur,
[01:03:40.430]and a lot of people think that it's just too big
[01:03:43.200]of a project, I wanna encourage you, every little bit helps,
[01:03:48.180]whether you think it does or not
[01:03:49.610]because it can be a magnifier for other techniques
[01:03:52.870]that you're applying later.
[01:03:54.000]If are were looking for a one-trick pony show
[01:03:57.490]to resolve bird problems, you are thinking
[01:03:59.480]about it all wrong.
[01:04:00.960]You need to be thinking of a multi-pronged approach
[01:04:04.010]to managing the bird problems in a particular area,
[01:04:07.097]and failure to do that will result
[01:04:09.240]in more cost to your client
[01:04:10.730]and more frustration for yourself.
[01:04:13.230]So here's the importance of habitat modification.
[01:04:15.810]Here's some research that was done that pointed out
[01:04:18.690]that you can reduce the number of pigeons
[01:04:20.740]in a particular area by 23% simply by removing
[01:04:25.400]places where they're living and roosting,
[01:04:28.760]just not even doing any lethal control whatsoever,
[01:04:31.800]you're just simply screening off areas to prevent them
[01:04:34.830]from roosting and nesting,
[01:04:35.940]and you can reduce the population by 23%.
[01:04:38.750]That's in a more macro area.
[01:04:40.200]So the fact of the matter is, it can work and it can work
[01:04:43.020]in a substantial way.
[01:04:44.360]Why?
[01:04:45.193]It increases the stress on these birds,
[01:04:47.490]they have to find less favorable areas to live.
[01:04:51.310]And so therefore, when you're using lethal control,
[01:04:54.120]you can imagine how that 23% will be magnified
[01:04:57.320]by lethal control or other activities
[01:04:59.270]that you're going to apply.
[01:05:00.540]So again, make sure you do it even though it seems
[01:05:04.140]too small to matter, trust me, it does matter.
[01:05:07.880]So, habitat modification, now we move into exclusion,
[01:05:12.410]we wanna prevent birds from entering areas
[01:05:15.110]where they are not wanted.
[01:05:16.810]And so there can be something as simple as plastic strips
[01:05:19.500]over a door where people need to move in or out,
[01:05:22.150]or netting an area that are used on top of a roof
[01:05:26.150]to prevent birds from getting
[01:05:27.370]into where the cooling exchanges are
[01:05:30.330]for an air conditioner system.
[01:05:33.110]Those are permanent, this is the gold standard.
[01:05:35.670]The gold standard for bird control is exclusion and netting,
[01:05:39.130]that solves that all, but it's also
[01:05:41.640]one of the more pricey options,
[01:05:43.340]and it's not always applicable in every situation,
[01:05:46.220]but when you can use it, you want to definitely use it.
[01:05:49.460]You can also stop them from living on ledges,
[01:05:52.160]you have non-electric products, which would be the spikes,
[01:05:55.070]coils and wires, or you can use something
[01:05:58.681]that has been really getting
[01:05:59.514]hot on the market recently,
[01:06:00.960]and that is electrical shock tracks.
[01:06:03.443]And now the electrical shock tracks,
[01:06:05.370]here's the interesting thing, they are more expensive
[01:06:08.190]as a product, but they are easier and less time-consuming
[01:06:12.170]to install, so in fact, you can have a lower overall price
[01:06:18.210]using electric shock because the total cost,
[01:06:22.250]labor and materials is ultimately less
[01:06:24.950]than the labor and materials used for spikes,
[01:06:27.520]wires or coils.
[01:06:29.020]So you can either pass it on to your client
[01:06:31.410]or you can keep the profit for yourself,
[01:06:33.630]but ultimately, there's a big movement afoot
[01:06:35.610]to start using these electric shock tracks
[01:06:39.170]because of how simple they are to install,
[01:06:41.580]it's something you definitely wanna be looking at.
[01:06:44.170]You can also ask producers to change
[01:06:46.460]how they're growing their crops by changing
[01:06:50.770]the timing of when they're planting.
[01:06:52.320]Sometimes if they plant a little earlier,
[01:06:54.510]they can miss, they can avoid,
[01:06:56.723]they can have the plants mature faster
[01:06:59.380]before the birds start coming through,
[01:07:00.970]or they can vice versa, plant later
[01:07:03.230]so that the birds fly through at a later period
[01:07:06.080]or an earlier period before the crop ripens.
[01:07:08.940]There are different of things, you can change the crop,
[01:07:11.390]change the location of the crop, controlling insects
[01:07:14.410]that often attract birds as well.
[01:07:16.160]So there's a variety of things that can help
[01:07:18.204]reduce the kind of damage to crops
[01:07:20.410]that birds can cause by changing how that crop is grown.
[01:07:23.950]Frightening devices, these are non-chemical tools
[01:07:27.110]used to scare birds away, and we categorize them
[01:07:30.300]into four different ways, auditory, visual,
[01:07:34.110]audio visual and biological.
[01:07:36.120]So auditory, of course, is sound, one of the benefits
[01:07:39.570]of sounds is it can cover a wide area,
[01:07:41.327]one of the problems with sound is it bothers the neighbors.
[01:07:44.400]And now birds do habituate, you have a visual
[01:07:47.080]which is here, the effigy,
[01:07:48.330]the (indistinct) effigy that's pernicious.
[01:07:50.900]Effigies do work but they often only work
[01:07:53.250]for a short period of time because the animals
[01:07:55.170]figure out they don't move.
[01:07:56.610]To make them work better, you wanna move it around
[01:07:59.090]at least every three days, or have something
[01:08:01.257]that's with as much motion as possible.
[01:08:03.950]Audio visual, sort of like pyrotechnics,
[01:08:06.310]things that explode and sound,
[01:08:08.560]so they have they have light and sound.
[01:08:10.900]Very effective, but again, not applicable everywhere,
[01:08:13.540]and there's also a potential fire risk with those.
[01:08:16.320]And then biological is our hawk there,
[01:08:18.580]or that can be used to sometimes haze birds,
[01:08:21.860]would be a biological form of control.
[01:08:25.180]These are often short-term use, they're best used
[01:08:28.290]when under light pressure, but of course,
[01:08:30.560]as I said, no one calls you when it's light pressure,
[01:08:32.890]but it's something for you to use.
[01:08:34.990]If you're gonna be using frightened devices,
[01:08:37.200]use as many different tools as possible.
[01:08:39.910]You wanna totally explode on the animal senses
[01:08:43.400]and be persistent when you're using that.
[01:08:46.300]What's ineffective?
[01:08:47.320]Lasers except for Canada geese.
[01:08:49.680]Ultrasound, of course birds can't hear
[01:08:51.770]in the ultrasound area
[01:08:53.280]and plus the wave dissipates.
[01:08:54.950]So you want to avoid those techniques.
[01:08:57.160]Repellents are chemicals used to deter animals
[01:09:00.730]from particular sites.
[01:09:02.260]You have tactile ones, these are the polybutenes
[01:09:04.900]that are used.
[01:09:05.830]You have to be careful the polybutenes
[01:09:07.530]'cause sometimes animals get stuck in that,
[01:09:10.150]so you make sure you follow the label carefully.
[01:09:12.210]I'm not a big fan of the tactile repellents.
[01:09:14.620]They're often only short-term at best
[01:09:16.730]and they do raise some humane issues.
[01:09:19.270]There is methyl anthranilate that you can spray.
[01:09:22.060]This is how it's distributed, it burns the nostrils
[01:09:25.000]of the birds, it's highly effective on Canada geese,
[01:09:27.650]but will move other birds that happen to be exposed to it.
[01:09:31.550]So it's a way of moving them along.
[01:09:33.560]It's a little pricey, about $100 A gallon for that,
[01:09:36.630]and then of course, you have aversive conditioning,
[01:09:38.730]which is anthraquinones.
[01:09:40.690]The Canada geese will eat this product
[01:09:42.880]and it makes their stomach sick and they know to avoid
[01:09:45.320]that particular treated soil.
[01:09:47.290]It actually has a UV product inside of it
[01:09:52.340]so that when the sun hits it,
[01:09:53.590]the birds can see in the ultraviolet range
[01:09:55.500]and they realize not to go on that grass
[01:09:57.230]because it's been treated.
[01:09:58.280]They can still walk on it
[01:09:59.430]but they just won't eat it anymore.
[01:10:01.220]And so that can be very effective as a way of control.
[01:10:04.220]There is fertility control for birds, the pill, so to speak,
[01:10:08.190]but it's only for pigeons.
[01:10:09.890]It is not a restricted use pesticide, it is a bit pricey,
[01:10:13.500]but for your clients that wanna have pigeon control
[01:10:16.110]without any direct lethal, this is the way to go.
[01:10:19.740]You can control 100 birds for basically $7 a day,
[01:10:23.030]There are automatic feeders.
[01:10:25.090]This product has been on the market for decades
[01:10:27.530]because it's been used in the chicken hatching industry
[01:10:30.750]to prevent fertilization of chicken eggs.
[01:10:34.295]And so it's been in our food food system forever,
[01:10:36.830]and it's reversible, so even if a non-target bird
[01:10:39.720]eats it, once the bird stops eating,
[01:10:42.080]it's back to being fertile again,
[01:10:44.070]and there's no secondary poisoning with it either,
[01:10:46.480]so it's something for you to consider
[01:10:48.860]in terms of your operations.
[01:10:50.630]Lethal control, of course, is always gonna be
[01:10:52.810]part of wildlife damage management.
[01:10:54.870]You wanna be thinking about nest destruction
[01:10:56.550]with Canada geese.
[01:10:57.530]You can get a permit very easily to do this.
[01:11:00.690]Nest destruction doesn't work very quickly over the...
[01:11:03.790]If you keep doing it repeatedly over the long-term,
[01:11:07.010]about 15 years, you will start seeing results
[01:11:09.290]according to some research out of New York State.
[01:11:11.450]Trapping, you can generally remove up to 90% of the birds
[01:11:15.530]in an area using trapping, particularly with pigeons,
[01:11:18.500]other birds less so, but with pigeons,
[01:11:21.060]you wanna be telling your clients you can remove about 90%.
[01:11:24.200]And then of course, with shooting,
[01:11:25.560]shooting is also very effective,
[01:11:27.800]it can also be used to incorporate with frightening devices
[01:11:31.080]so you have some lethal action with the frightening
[01:11:33.610]and that can make it even more effective.
[01:11:35.810]But again, you have safety issues and legal restrictions
[01:11:38.860]and it's never gonna eliminate your bird population
[01:11:41.340]'cause they'll get wise to you pretty quickly.
[01:11:44.330]There are some pesticides in the market
[01:11:46.270]known as avicides, you have Avitrol,
[01:11:48.940]which is not truly an avicide 'cause it's not designed
[01:11:51.860]to kill the birds, it's designed to cause them
[01:11:54.060]to get into a fright response.
[01:11:56.130]Those birds that get a sufficient dose of it though
[01:11:58.650]will die, but the goal is to actually only have
[01:12:02.870]a small percentage of the flock killed,
[01:12:05.750]if any killed it all.
[01:12:07.000]I spoke with the manufacturer and he says
[01:12:09.100]that some people are using it at such a low dose,
[01:12:11.870]they're not having any mortality at all,
[01:12:14.160]but when the birds eat it, they get into a fright response,
[01:12:17.170]it spooks the flock and they never really come back
[01:12:19.620]to that area again.
[01:12:21.060]Now other birds may came in down the line,
[01:12:23.340]but for short term, maybe up to a year,
[01:12:25.700]you can have some birds eliminated
[01:12:27.530]from that using this particular product.
[01:12:30.070]It's often been abused and misused,
[01:12:32.370]so be sure to follow the label.
[01:12:33.945]Starlicide Complete is DRC-1339,
[01:12:38.100]and it is a product used at feedlots.
[01:12:40.370]It is a true avicide, it is designed to kill starlings
[01:12:44.200]by shutting down the kidneys so they will feed on this
[01:12:47.160]and then they'll usually be dead within 72 hours.
[01:12:49.950]There are numerous
[01:12:51.160]personal protection equipment requirements
[01:12:53.220]with this particular product.
[01:12:54.960]So how do we bait birds properly?
[01:12:57.080]Well, first thing you need to do is evaluate the site.
[01:12:59.840]You wanna make sure
[01:13:00.673]that there's no non-target birds around.
[01:13:03.770]If they're around, how are you gonna make sure
[01:13:05.700]that you're not feeding them these particular poisons?
[01:13:08.620]You wanna pre-feed, you gotta get the birds accustomed
[01:13:11.210]to feeding in that particular area,
[01:13:13.420]you need to choose the right formulation,
[01:13:15.163]because different birds will eat
[01:13:17.060]different types of substrates, whether like pigeons
[01:13:19.730]will eat whole corn, other birds need cracked corn.
[01:13:23.350]You wanna be able to treat the flock
[01:13:25.410]and then monitor, 'cause you'll often have to be remain
[01:13:28.130]on site, remove any dead or dying birds
[01:13:30.580]and then ultimately remove any remaining bait
[01:13:33.310]and you have to be on site to make sure
[01:13:34.970]that non-target birds are not feeding
[01:13:37.010]on your toxicant as well.
[01:13:38.820]But if you follow those steps in do this appropriately,
[01:13:43.020]you can have great success
[01:13:44.310]with some of these particular products.
[01:13:45.737]DRC-1339, the pure form is only used by Wildlife Services.
[01:13:50.830]You can contract Wildlife Services to do some control work,
[01:13:54.500]and they have broad permission
[01:13:56.410]to use this particular product for species
[01:13:58.560]where the Starlicide Complete is only for starlings,
[01:14:01.610]but they have the ability to use that product
[01:14:03.240]for other things as well.
[01:14:04.900]And again, it works best on days when it is cold
[01:14:07.600]and the USDA Wildlife Services technician
[01:14:10.730]will walk you through what they need
[01:14:13.530]and they'll do a site evaluation with you
[01:14:15.330]to determine its suitability.
[01:14:17.740]There's also a wetting agent, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate,
[01:14:20.799]not legal in Nebraska at this time,
[01:14:23.760]but I just wanna make you aware of it
[01:14:25.040]'cause you're gonna be googling things
[01:14:26.510]if you're having trouble.
[01:14:28.400]This actually sprays treated water on the birds
[01:14:31.860]that are flat, that are roosting in this particular tree.
[01:14:34.620]It wets them and it prevents them from being able
[01:14:37.030]to warm themselves because it removes
[01:14:40.030]the warming factor of their feathers,
[01:14:42.350]and then ultimately, it kills them,
[01:14:45.130]they freeze to death and drop to the ground below.
[01:14:47.850]Highly effective when and where it's legal to be used.
[01:14:52.600]I wanna just sort of caution you in terms
[01:14:54.290]of the politics of bird control.
[01:14:56.040]A lot of people get pretty upset when you're killing birds.
[01:14:59.110]You wanna make sure you think about discretion,
[01:15:02.110]the location, should you warn neighbors?
[01:15:04.900]Are you gonna keep a low enough protein profile?
[01:15:07.570]If you're using the avicides, people really get irritated
[01:15:11.100]when birds are dropping from the sky onto their cars
[01:15:14.500]and vehicles or into their lawns.
[01:15:16.250]Where do those birds die?
[01:15:18.250]If you're trapping, are you gonna be out of public view?
[01:15:20.940]Are people gonna see you rigging that bird's neck?
[01:15:23.220]You never wanna kill an animal in public view.
[01:15:25.760]So you wanna learn how to be discreet,
[01:15:28.000]and make sure you're working
[01:15:30.450]among the highest ethical standards available
[01:15:33.400]when you're doing this 'cause you never know
[01:15:35.160]who's videotaping you with their cell phone.
[01:15:37.710]So you wanna make sure you don't avoid
[01:15:39.670]making people angry for silly reasons.
[01:15:44.000]Don't do anything in private that you're ashamed
[01:15:46.400]to do in public.
[01:15:48.730]Always wanna be thinking about cleaning up of droppings
[01:15:51.160]or protecting yourself if you're in contaminated areas.
[01:15:54.300]Bird droppings have a variety of problems associated
[01:15:57.230]with them, particularly diseases.
[01:15:58.980]If you're gonna be shoveling these things or going
[01:16:01.805]into feces-contaminated areas,
[01:16:03.590]make sure you protect yourself.
[01:16:04.880]I recommend a full-faced PPE mask,
[01:16:07.650]make sure you're properly tested.
[01:16:09.590]It should be a Niosh filter 100,
[01:16:11.930]don't do anything below 100.
[01:16:13.787]And you wanna avoid disturbing the feces
[01:16:15.910]'cause that's just gonna stir up all of that stuff
[01:16:18.010]for you to breathe in.
[01:16:19.240]You may have to be thinking about Tyvek suits,
[01:16:22.340]but this is a whole nother field, I just don't want you
[01:16:25.060]to be going into buildings with lots of droppings around
[01:16:28.100]and not thinking about how you would need
[01:16:29.810]to protect yourself.
[01:16:31.050]Where can you learn more?
[01:16:32.500]Well, this is the publication you wanna be reading.
[01:16:35.030]It's available for download.
[01:16:39.398]It's free, not that it didn't cost us anything,
[01:16:41.510]but our tax dollars paid for this,
[01:16:43.810]so you don't have to pay for it again.
[01:16:45.960]So it's available for download, it's produced
[01:16:47.870]by the government with our tax money,
[01:16:49.960]I would strongly recommend that you download it,
[01:16:51.900]it's about 30 pages or so, very well written, written
[01:16:55.150]in a way that's understandable to the general public,
[01:16:58.930]and it will give you tips about understanding histoplasmosis
[01:17:02.150]because if you can protect yourself against histoplasmosis,
[01:17:05.200]you can pretty much protect yourself
[01:17:06.640]against everything else that the birds disease-wise
[01:17:09.590]are gonna be carrying, and you wanna make sure
[01:17:11.510]you're doing that.
[01:17:12.940]Thank you for your attention.
[01:17:15.098](bright music)
[01:17:27.900]Today, we have heard a lot of great information
[01:17:30.040]about the different animals that you will encounter
[01:17:32.130]when working in the wildlife damage category.
[01:17:34.950]We hope this information will help you
[01:17:36.740]in dealing with situations that you may encounter.
[01:17:39.890]Remember, as always, follow the label instructions
[01:17:43.130]and stay safe when making applications.
[01:17:46.147](bright music)

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Wildlife Damage - Recert

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