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Hello, I’m William Thorncraft one of the biosecurity officers with Local Land Services here in Coonabarabran. In this three-part video series I’m going to demonstrate what it takes to be able to make your trapping operation successful and allow you to get a decrease in your overall pig population.
Now generally with trapping DPI studies have shown you're going to get about that 40 or less control of the individual populations. Whereas with baiting you get that 90 and above.
Now in the first part of this video series we're going to show you some hints and tips and tricks and show you what it takes to get that good result and in the second and third part we're going to show you this in a real life situation.
So generally when you're managing pigs you want to see that 75 control of the individual population and above to see any significant reduction in the overall population. So let's jump right into it and we'll see how we go. So the first part of the process is identifying that you've got pigs.
So you've seen tracks, you've seen them with your own eyes, you've seen they've been wallowing in the dams or you've seen them where they've been ripping up the crops.
How you can tell they’re pigs is there's a significant gap between the two toes. Now if they were sheep or goats or whatever that gap would be a lot closer. So you can clearly see that they're pigs and not goats. So the next tip and trick is identifying the right baiting location. So you want to think about water sources and feed sources - where these pigs are at most the time this is where you're going to see the sign of the pigs anyway.
So these pigs are already spending in a significant amount of time in this area so this is going to allow them to get quickly familiar with the trap and allow the pigs to come onto the grain a lot quicker.
So you want to make sure this area is quiet and it doesn't get interfered with or disturbed as this will cause the pigs to move on from there.
Once you've got them started and feeding on a bit of grain you got to start training. You got to think you know, what's going to cause them to move on, what's going to cause them to stay.
And you've got to train them to go in around the trap get safe and comfortable with the trap being there. [Music] So you want to be putting your grain around the trap inside the trap.
You know, keep giving them good amounts of grain on the outside of the trap and slowly they're going to work their way inside the trap and they'll slowly begin to feel comfortable. The other thing they'll start doing too is they'll start realising where the door is, how to get in and out of the trap. This will come into play when you finally do set the trap and that trap door does shut. You know they'll know that that's the entrance and they'll hopefully push their way in. You've been free feeding for a week now. You've been feeding in and around your trap.
You've set cameras up, you're having a look at what pop pigs are coming in, what times they're coming in, how long they're spending in there, are they all going inside the trap.
These are all things to consider when you move on to your next process. So you might think it's a bit silly to feed for seven days.
But I’m actually going to advise to feed for up to 21 days. DPI has done studies on this and you're going to get a way better result. You want to get these pigs very, very comfortable, very familiar with the situation because when that trap gets set you don't want the pigs to be scared and spooked and scattered.
You want them to keep pushing their way in so by feeding him for a consecutive time and feeding him inside a trap and getting him that comfortable being inside you're going to get that better result. So you might think of the time, the money spent on grain to do this.
But if we do this right we're going to get 100 control of this population. Now if you don't get that 100 control or you do it, if you only feed for a few days and you catch three or four and you trap again and you catch four or five, but there's 20 odd pigs coming to that trap these pigs are going to get trained and retrained on what a trap is. And they're going to become more and more difficult to manage. So I highly advise, you know, spend the extra money, spend the extra time now, rather than spending the next 5, 10 years trying to control that same population. Because that population is going to Build, separating more individual Populations, who are going to keep expanding and causing more and more dramas. Make sure you feed them enough grain.
You want to keep increasing the grain until there's some left over the next day.
And that way you know your amount. We're hoping in this situation we can show you that the more you feed, you know, it's going to actually bring more pigs in. So you want to make sure you're feeding them enough to keep them in the area. You don't want them walking off and going and moving on into other areas.
So you want to see these pigs staying around these traps for two or three hours a night, you know going to them back and forth, from water and then going back to bed.
So a key consideration for you is make sure you use good quality grain.
You know, you want it to be high in energy, high in protein, because some pigs are naturally going to be trapped. Some pigs are going to have a history and know what traps are so they're going to be very reluctant to walk inside that trap but if you've provided a high protein energy food source for them and all they're going to do is walk inside and get out, they're going to be more reluctant to walk inside that trap. Now generally wheat and barley is a good option. You don't want to go use stuff that's been sitting in the bottom of your silo and that's weeviled and all the energy and protein has been sapped out of it. And you don't want to be using stuff that's gone wet and become mouldy so you want to make sure you use nice fresh, good quality grain. So now that you finally got them used to being inside the trap - you know you've been feeding for two, maybe three weeks, it's time to start to think about training them to push their way in. So as you can see in this video um this pig that's quite comfortable being inside this trap as he's rubbing up against the door. But it's time now to start training them to be able to push their way in.
So how to do that is you half shut the door of the trap. Opening all traps are different and we'll run through that in a moment, but you want to get them used to pushing their way in pushing against that door having that door move so when it finally does shut, they're gonna know that that door moves and they can push their way in. So this is the basic um foldable trap that will fit on the back of your ute. You can move it anywhere, takes two minutes to set up. It's pretty sturdy, the wiring, that's big enough that smaller pigs won't get out.
Also just wire it down make sure it doesn't lift up because pigs can actually get in underneath and lift up and you want a good height too you know. There's videos out there of pigs jumping meter and a half high fence so you want to make sure you've got a good high gate now this one's a flip up trap. But the idea is you set that and it drops and the pigs Ideally, when trained properly, will keep pushing their way in. Now to get them trained to do that you want to make sure that after you get them comfortably feeding inside the trap, now once they're comfortably feeding inside the trap, wire it up to about there. So the pigs get used to their backs touching this and then after three or four days, lower it even more. So because they'll still get their snout on there and push that back up and come out.
But you want to make sure it's a good solid secure that doesn't actually drop down on them. So that's a little tip there um because at the end of it once it shuts you want pigs to come in and keep pushing their way in now setting the trap.
When you finally get to the stage there's a few different ways you can do it, you can you can have a stick up against it, and that way when the pigs go in there as soon as a big enough pig comes in and pops that up the stick will drop and then that will shut the other way.
You can do it is you can have a trip wire so you can wire the corner of that around the back and have a trip wires as soon as that's bumped that'll release that tripwire and that gate will drop. So another little key attachment we don't have it on this. But actually have an extension on the bottom of the trap so it only shuts to about there.
So they can still get used to pushing underneath that and getting inside it, and having these side guards is very important as well because when pigs push their way in smaller pigs can get out so really good idea to make sure you know what your trap does and have cameras on it because the cameras will show you what's going wrong or what you did wrong and that way you can learn from it for next time.
Right oh so here's some general hits and tips and tricks for when you finally do set that trap. Now you want to try and get as many of the pigs in the trap as possible before that trap does set. So there's different ways people set traps.
They can set them with a door, you know probably shut this far with the stick across the top and the idea is once that does get, it does fall, now it is going to happen on this one, so that's why we've got a nice wide opening for it so hopefully it doesn't. Now the idea is nice wide big gate so they shouldn't bump it now. I have got a bit of grain scattered across the bottom here. All right so the idea is the pigs will come in. I'll pick a bit over there for them, the pigs will come in, come around the top here and then they'll slowly, give them time for the other ones to walk in now. Once they get to this bit here there's a little trigger wire so once they bump that it's gonna push and shut it now. The idea of this is making like a fall and then one that's swung out of the road.
So it's giving pigs more time to push their way in if that's what they're going to do.
At least we've got a couple of options rather than just relying on one option and we're giving plenty of space and plenty of room for the pigs to finally come in, and all get in here before it trying to get set.
So as I said previously generally with trapping you're only going to get a 40 or less control of individual population. But using a few of these hint tips and tricks and taking your time and putting the effort into it you're going to get a better result. It's not always going to work but majority of the time it will work. Using cameras is fantastic because you can actually see what sort of result you get. Now if you want to jump on and have a look at scenario one and scenario two of the videos we made we got a 75 percent control in one population and we got a 100 control in situation two. So it did take two months so it's important to you know make sure you put the time and effort into doing it properly as you will get a better result so if pigs are causing you a lot of grief and they're costing you a lot of money you know if you'll take your traveling to the next level.
There are traps available today that are all automatic so we have cameras available that can send live feed videos live photos straight to your phone. We've also got traps that can be remotely activated by your phone. So you can be trapping pigs in your living room instead of spending two months trying to control an individual population, you're doing with it two or three days. So these traps are quite popular in the US and their studies have shown that they get 88 control of the individual population.
So these type of traps are becoming popular in Australia and can cost anywhere from three thousand dollars to ten thousand dollars. But when you consider the time and effort it takes to manage an individual population of pigs, you know these can become a pretty cost effective bit of gear.
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