Video series on feral pig management and feral pig case studies

One of the great tools that we get to use in any sort of pest animal management is trail cameras or sometimes referred to as camera traps.

So I thought I'd just show you a little bit about some of the cameras and how they work.

So one of the suggestions is to use rechargeable batteries you can purchase these and a charging kit.

The other thing that you'll need is an SD card recommend at least eight gigabytes so that your storage is enough and with this particular camera you'll notice it tells us which way the card must go in.

It's important because if that card goes in the wrong way much like a battery going in the wrong way camera won't work.

Each camera brand will have a different off and on switch some will have a code and that's up to you to work out how you want to manage that camera.

Some of the things that we'd recommend you have a black light what they call a black flash camera which doesn't signify a flash to an animal of a nighttime.

You'll notice that most animals will react to when a camera goes off and that's mainly due to the noise of the camera operating.

But on a trail or on a track that you might put this on they get used to that very quickly, and in fact some of the times will give you some of the great facial looks that an animal can do as it turns towards that camera.

An infrared camera is recommended which will allow photos to be taken without the animal being aware that the camera has flashed.

The noise of the camera might well alert the animal to it but they soon get used to that.

These cameras will have a menu that will allow you to set how often you want these photos to be taken and how many per second.

A lot of this setting up your camera depends on the animal that you're chasing but do you think that you want to get a good look at so obviously if it's a smaller animal you're going to go a bit a bit lower but for something like feral gear you need to come a little bit higher.

Importantly it's the angle that you set that camera up at and the direction that you point it the last thing you want to do is set it towards a Setting Sun because as those animals start to move the sun will take that glare and you won't get a good photo.

So set it away from a Setting Sun.

As you can see here with the sun directly behind me silhouetted over the sky it's extremely difficult to see exactly what you're taking a photo of.

Whereas with the background behind me here you can see me much clearer no different with an animal moving past so have a think about that where your where your trail camera is set.

…runs this way.

If I set my camera at 90 degrees on this track I have a very short time when that animal activates and is gone.

So if it's moving at PACE I'm going to miss it.

So if I come about half that again I've got a little bit more but if I come to about this angle so we've been at 90.

We've been at 45.

And about 22 and a half is about the optimum angle to capture now for deer.

As I said before I'm going to have it a little bit higher so I'm going to set my strap at about that angle.

So I'm pretty happy with that setup, I'll switch this camera on, very important to make sure that you've switched the camera on because lots of people set cameras up spend a lot of time getting it right and then forget to turn it on.

So check that last, make sure it's switched on.

[Music]

Sometimes you'll find that the tree isn't quite right so what you can do.

simply use a stick to change the angle of the camera up or down.

So if I wanted that to bend down a little bit because I was a bit concerned that it might be pointing too far up in the air.

So if you look through here and the angle of the camera was up a little bit like that then I could simply slip a little stick in behind it and that'll push the angle of that camera down [Music] So now as you can see with our track running down this way the camera is set up at the optimum angle for the heat signature of the animal moving past to activate the camera.

Some cameras come with a walk test which you can use to make sure that it's initiating when you've walked past and I would recommend that you use that.

But if the key if your camera doesn't make sure that you check your camera after a few days that way you're going to be able to see how it's activating and how efficient it is at picking up that movement.

Once you've got your camera set up be prepared to leave it there for an extended period of time.

You want about a month before you even decide that nothing's happening there.

Lots of times you'll set a camera up people go and check them every day because they think that oh well I'll have something tonight.

Give yourself a bit of time.

Pest animals aren't going to turn up every night.

Everyone whoever uses a trail camera will always tell you they get thousands of photos of grass waving at them.

So if you can pick an area where the grass is not going to be long and waving at the camera you'll save on lots of false activations.

Sometimes that can be a challenge but one of the things that we try to do is put them in an area that that the

trail is wide enough that it's not activated by grass a lot of the time.

Good.

You need to think clearly about where you want to set your cameras up if you do happen to have an area where animals are funneled in, whether by vegetation or by the land form, that's an excellent spot to put a camera.

Tracks roads are a great spot to put Cameras.

If it's easy for humans to walk it's easy for animals to walk.

In the case of feral deer the other way that you could save your photo is to upload them to Dear skin so the information about the photo is kept in a secure spot which includes the positioning and the date and time.

It is important to remember that if you're if you've got a camera on this particular Trail that's not telling you about your whole holding so you might need to move that camera around to check out what's happening on the other side.

It'll tell you what's happening on this particular track but not necessarily what's happening on that particular track.

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Introduction

Free feeding is the procedure of placing free feed, usually grain on the ground to attract pigs to come into your baiting location or your trapping location.

Free feeding is probably the most important factor when considering baiting or trapping.

Free feeding

There is a legal requirement that you have to free feed at least three times.

So you want them pigs coming in eating your grain, going back and telling their mates to come out and eat the free feed.

So when you do put poison feed out with 1080, you know how much grain to put out and also how much 1080 to put out.

The longer you go, the better the results are going to be.

Pigs will keep drawing other pigs into that free feed site, and over time you'll continue to get more and more pigs coming onto your feed site.

Grains

When it comes to free feeding pigs, most grains are suitable.

Most popular usually wheat, barley, corn.

But other things can be used as well, such as sorghum and mung beans.

They're also pretty popular as well.

Attractant

If you are feeding out grain, it's always best to try and soak the grain beforehand so you can soak it up to a month in buckets with lids on it because you really want to get that smell out of that grain to attract the pigs to free feed.

It's always good to try and put some sort of attractant onto the grain we will use something like molasses, which has a nice strong, sweet smell.

But anything sweet will really help to attract those pigs in.

How much

So if I was starting a program, I would actually put out about ten kilos or 20 kilos.

It all depends how much pig activity there is around.

And then if that feed is all been taken the next day, increase that quantity by 50% again.

Keep increasing until you find just a little bit left over on the ground.

That will give you a much better understanding of how much grain that you need to poison when it comes to baiting.

Free feed, free feed, free feed.

It's the most important part of a baiting or trapping program. 

So we have selected our free feeding site.

We've got lots of known pig activity here.

We're pretty close to a forage sorghum crop where we know they've got plenty of cover and not too far from the river when we know that they've got plenty of water.

What we're going to do is put some free feed out here.

We'll tip a little bit out to start with, and we're going to put a few little piles out.

Really important to do more than one pile and to spread them out a little bit so that all the feral pigs can all come in there and get access to that grain rather than just one big dominant boar, for example, coming in and just gorging himself on it.

So spread your free feed sites out, maybe in little piles.

Some people like to do concentric circles just with a bit of space in there, so there's plenty of room.

So it's worth considering using different types of grain.

We've got wheat here, but it's worth considering when you put your first free feed out to try other types of grain just to see what the preference is for the pigs that you've got in your situation.

It's also worth remembering to make sure you've got plenty of it.

Pigs really want a good feed.

They want a reliable source of free feed, so they keep coming back every single time.

If you're finding it a little bit difficult for pigs to come into hard, fresh grain, it's worth considering also that you can soak your grain.

So overnight is sometimes enough.

Some people like to soak it a little bit longer and get that real nice fermented smelly grain out too.

And that's good enough to bring your pigs right in and get stuck into the grain that you've got for their free feeding site.

Free feed, free feed, free feed.

It's the most important part of a baiting or trapping program. 

These are some of the substrates you can use in 1080 bait control of your pigs.

You can also use them in your traps.

Wheat is obviously one of the highly used ones.

It's very effective with pigs.

Barley, it's a little bit softer grain the pigs tend to like to eat that Cracked corn, very good.

You just have to be aware that sometimes your pigs may not have seen corn before.

So they do have to actually know what it is and decide to eat it.

You might have to persevere a little bit with the corn.

Oats, I have had a few people say that oats are a little bit hard to get pigs onto for a start, but if they're in an area where they've been eating oat crops for a while, oats can be very, very effective.

So chickpeas, quite a lot of people use chickpeas.

Pigs do love them, they come into the crops and they'll dig along the furrows and pretty much pick up every every seed.

The last one here is some very weevily grain, and you'll see that it's quite dusty.

Sometimes that weevily grain has a bit of a smell to it as well, and can attract your pigs in.

But you do need to change that across to a to a good grain if you're going to be doing a baiting program, phasing the good grain and bringing that same grain in to be baited.

Don't change your bait from what they've been free feeding.

That quite often turn your pigs off and they won't come back to eat your baited product. 

So the types of toxins available in New South Wales for feral pigs is sodium nitrite and also 1080.

1080 bait is basically your grain that you bring into your Local Land Services and we add a 1080 liquid to that.

It just coats the outside of the grain.

By using your substrate, whatever you’ve been free feeding we can make sure that your pigs continue to eat the same type of grain just coated with a 1080 liquid.

1080 is a great poison.

It doesn't have a taste, it doesn't have a smell.

So the pigs don't actually know it's there.

It can be easily mixed on the grain, it’s cheap, it's available and it's effective.

Also, you've got to consider the distance restrictions and excluding livestock from your baited area.

1080 grain in New South Wales is only available through your Local Land Services.

You also have to have a chemical user card to be able to get your 1080 grain so, talk to your local biosecurity officer and they'll be able to help you with your program.

One of the other alternate toxins that is a relatively newer one is sodium nitrite or it's known by its brand name Hoggone which is sort of like a peanut paste.

We will have a Hoggone box, which is basically just a bait station, and you will still free feed your grain out beforehand, encouraging the pigs to come in.

And then we basically switch the substrate to the Hoggone or placebo bait first, which is a free feed bait, and you put that in the box.

The nature of feeding it through this bait station or this bait box means that we can limit access from other animals or any non-targets.

What we're actually trying to do with this particular one is train the pigs to lift the lid on the box and access that bait.

So we will actually prop the door open initially and then gradually we will lower that down when we actually put the poison in there.

Sodium nitrite products can be purchased from your local rural merchant.

We can use it in in places where we can't use 1080.

So if you want to get close to build up areas, if you need to get closer to your own home, for instance, it may be an option.

The other advantage with sodium nitrite is that it doesn't have any secondary poisoning problem.

Sodium nitrite can be a little pricier, but when it's used in a more high risk situation, it's obviously the better alternative. 

Obviously, FMD (foot-and-mouth disease) can have wide ranging impacts for livestock industry in Australia, trying to take out some of those pest animals that can really potentially spread it and build those issues we want to try and address.

Trapping would be a a faster way to control pigs than ground shooting or thermal shooting.

And you can get vast mobs of pigs from different areas coming in.

So obviously there's a variety of different types of pig traps that are out there.

All all work slightly differently.

Certain ones have different advantages.

The main ones, we have a drop door trap and then we have a side swing door trap and then we have a guillotine trap.

So they all have their benefits.

The best thing about the swing door trap is they're easy to get in and out of and they're easy to bring your pigs out of them and they can flat pack on a ute so you can fit, you know, five or six traps on a ute, saves your day.

The guillotine traps, very bulky, hard to maneuver, but you will get, you know, you might catch 40 pigs in a night pending how many pigs are there.

Drop door traps, very easy, very simple to use.

Most people can use them.

We've got a net trap called a pig's brigs, and that one has particular advantages in that it's it's a bit lighter.

You can you can fit a number of them on on the back of the ute and move them round.

They don't have a particular door mechanism.

So that's obviously quite different from a number of the other or most other traps that you may come across.

So the pigs will actually move in underneath the mesh and, and then sort of basically the net keeps them in.

You can have a chat to your local biosecurity officers and see what traps they might have available, what might be best for your particular situation. 

When you're actually selecting your trap site, one of the key things that you want to do is, is try and have somewhere that is relatively flat.

Look, it can still be on a bit of a slope, but you just don't want the ground to be too uneven.

So if there's a bit of a hole or a gap underneath part of the panels, they will try and work that and leverage it up to try and get out effectively.

So if you're going to put a trap out on your property, I'll be monitoring the areas first to see where the most of the pigs are coming in.

I'm looking at pig diggings, tracks, scats, and also watercourses.

Although we're talking about ferals, animal welfare once again is a is a key aspect of this.

So we've got a nice shady spot where we can put this trap.

And one of the key things with this is that you need to check it every 24 hours.

There’s several different traps you can use.

Panel trap works very well drop down door four steel posts and then we run another steel post through there just to stop the pigs from lifting it.

And when you free feeding you want to free feed out the front get the pigs used to it while the trap door is open Open this right up so the pigs get used to it and then slowly bring it down with a bit of wire being able to touch their back as they going in and out.

And then after a while, once you're happy with all the pigs feeding in there, that's when you set it.

So in this case, I would still be feeding out my grain sort of around the round, the edge of the trap, and my trip line is coming, coming just straight down here.

So this is where I actually want a big pile of grain.

And I've only got a relatively small pile at the moment, but I'd be putting a nice, reasonable sized pile directly underneath the string or the trip line that I've got here.

We're now aiming to get the pigs to come in round our trail around the side of the trap and to where we've got our bigger pile here.

So when the pigs will come along, they'll be snuffling on the ground and their noses will be cleaning up all of the grain that we've got here.

And when they hit this trip line, it'll basically pull it, pull the door out and drop the door down Righto, different trap, same pretty much same sort of design.

Free feed out the front.

Your pigs are rolling around.

So setting the pig trap, once your pigs are comfortable with going in after a couple of nights.

So this shuts the trap.

So your pigs will be feeding in.

You arc your bait around this way.

Put a big pile of of your corn or whatever you're baiting with here.

Pigs will come in, catch your pigs.

Our third trap.

It's off a phone.

So you've got your box here.

You set the camera out the front which watches the whole trap.

So once you've free fed for a while, you'll see your pigs coming in and out.

And they might bring a whole mob back.

They might get a lot of pigs.

They'll bring them back.

You are watching it on your phone.

Hit the button.

Door drops.

So this is a pigs brigs trap.

The way that this particular one works, it's got no actual door on it.

And the pigs will come along and they'll just simply go straight in underneath.

It's a one way system, so they can't come back out.

If they're running around and charging through here, they'll basically be bouncing off the net as well.

It has got a little bit of a lid on the top so that if if the pigs are running along and trying to charge and get out at the top, that will help alleviate that sort of issue as well.

This is just another alternative trap which which will be out there.

They're relatively new.

So we're all sort of trying to learn a little bit with this.

But if you'd like to know more, get in touch with Local Land Services.

[Music]

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.

[Music] 

Yeah so the feral pig lifecycle is very much dependent on weather conditions and seasonal conditions.

So, in the winter time they'll be chasing protein in the feed. So sometimes it's a really good time to bait depending on what location you are in.

Pigs that are in a good season can start breeding at 25 kilos. So that's really, really early. In a really good year, there's a chance a pig could possibly have two litters and your numbers are going to breed up really quickly.

So you need to be working on that and be ready to try and take advantage of any, any environmental factors that will help you get a good control on your pigs.

During the winter the frosts will tend to knock a lot of the protein out of those feed supplies and the pigs can be traveling around a little bit more because they’re not so much tied to the water. But if you can find the right pophole where they're walking through, get some grain out there, they're going to get to it really quickly and easily.

And control can be sometimes the best during the winter months. And on the other side of that, in the summertime, they're chasing the water, so they're really after somewhere to wallow, keep cool. And so that's a really good time to bait or to trap as well and catch them in their seasonal cycles.

With water, cover and feed, that's a great opportunity to carry out your pig control work or at least the monitoring and stuff around water points to say if the pigs are coming in there. Keep working during the summer around your water points and your pigs will come to you. If we can bait and use that control techniques within seasonal conditions, we can take advantage of what pigs need, at what time of year.

We can talk about some strategies to help you to control your pigs at the appropriate time of the year. 

Nic Job from Royalla Shorthorns.

We run a shorthorn operation in conjunction with my parents.

I moved out here from another property in 2000.

For the first few years, we didn't see any pigs at all.

And it probably 12, 12, 15 years ago, we started to see a couple of pigs, and then the numbers have just gradually increased, and now we're seeing big numbers.

Initially it was a bit of a novelty because we’d not seen them.

But that that lasted for bit two days.

Then I went straight in trying to control them.

We're starting to see a lot of poachers trying to come in on the property without permission.

And that's becoming a nearly as bigger issue as the pigs, in terms of we'll find gates not only opened, but gates pulled away and taken back.

You know, some of the bulls on this place worth over $60,000.

And if you get if you get two bulls that the gates are open, they get in joining each other.

You can have broken legs and worse.

My name's James Moses.

I'm a Biosecurity Officer at Molong, which is part of the Local Land Services of the Central Tablelands.

So we first working with Nic with supplying traps, cameras and grain, just to get him started.

He was having trouble with pigs in one of these back paddocks.

And just worked in with him with a few different techniques that he hadn't tried before with his previous trapping.

just to help him really get that good result when he did set the traps.

You know, we've used LLS traps and LLS, we've tried baiting stations from the LLS.

We were in contact with James fairly often and to try and see different methods and, and keep on top of the problem.

The guys I work with a great.

So yeah, we've had really good communication with them.

Prior to that, it was just, you know, on our own, trying to do what we could, you know, casually take a dog out and try and catch some or shoot them and things like that, but that, that wasn't getting on top of the problem.

we've got to kill 70-73% every year just for the numbers to be stable.

One of the most important tools the LLS has given us is the Feral Scan app.

So we're able to report every time we see a pig.

So they touch base, you know, if I put any numbers in, if I've seen a big group.

I'll get a call okay, you know, to see more.

Are they the same group running around? Yeah.

If they're different pigs? So yeah, we we get constant feedback.

I think what should be celebrated out here is a is that they've tried a few different techniques.

It's not just been the one solution.

fixes the problem.

We've trapped, we've looked at bait stations, opportunistic ground shooting.

And it's all these combinations that have really helped get a handle on the pig numbers out here.

And also the data from from Nic putting in FeralScan has helped us plan our aerial shoots and where we target areas.

Through the Feral Fighters program, we have been supplying free grain, free trap hire, free camera hire and free bait stations.

And that's really helped farmers and landholders just take that next step of doing control.

Because, you know, it's it's not easy and it's time consuming and they've got a lot of jobs on.

So if we can give them that little bit of a helping hand, that just gets the ball rolling.

And once it’s started, it's much easier to maintain that and get a hold of pig numbers.

I love getting out and talking to landholders and helping them.

We've got things now.

We've got tools.

We've got knowledge that we can pass on that can help landholders, help them, which helps their business, which helps everyone. 

When you see a pig running around and she’s a sow she could have up to ten or fifteen suckers and in no time at all that fifteen are breeding and it just multiplies very, very quickly.

When you get wet summers pigs just explode.

It happened in the seventies, and eighties it’s happening again now The last three years we’ve had a really terrific season and so the numbers have bred up now it’s turned a little bit dry they’ve moved into our paddocks and they’re starting to attack out lambs and we want to control that  before we start lambing again so we get a better percentage.

It’s important to me because of the damage they’ll do we’re breeding goats, and they’ll just eat the kids I’ve seen it where they’ve just eaten everything the ewes and the lambs.

Feral pigs aren’t just impacting landholders’ enterprises the parasites, a number of different diseases that are out there Leptospirosis Brucellosis Japanese Encephalitis.

If we get FMD come into the country we know that these animals are going to be a key part in distributing it around into livestock and stuff like that so we want to make sure that we’ve done everything within our power working with landholders that in the worst case scenario where FMD comes to our shores there’s going to be a minimal impact on our enterprises.

Yeah, pigs carry a lot of diseases Foot and Mouth is a bad one if it got into Australia it’d just wipe our industry completely out so we’ve got to do something about them and destroy everyone we possibly can.

There’s a range of different options to control feral pigs.

You’ve got 1080 grain baiting, 1080 meat baiting, trapping, shooting probably the best is to have the range of options all utilised because not one will be the be all, and end all so a range of options is your best option to control feral pigs.

The 1080 is the best way I’ve found to get them down to a controllable number then try your traps dogs, shooting.

I don’t think it’s just a one-off thing a bit like when you do your wild dog baiting you’ve got to keep on top of it it’s not hard work but it pays of in the long run because you don’t have a lot of feral pigs.

That’s the key in all of this is to reduce numbers keep them to a minimum level and keep on going it won’t just stop after one lot of baiting you know, we need to do it again to make sure that we’re controlling them.

So that’s the importance of these biosecurity measures.

It would be nice to see a lot of the numbers of the feral pig population drop because we’ve had the three years of good seasons they’ve just bred and rapidly bred everywhere so it would be awesome if we could get some more people around the area to start doing this the free-feeding and the pig baiting.

Yeah, I’d encourage everyone to have a crack at it the 1080 have a crack at it and get into it you’ll get results real good results if you do the work.

This pig problem is it's everyone's problem.

It's all landholders.

It's a serious threat to not only the cropping and the financial loss.

And the pigs are doing a lot of damage to the environment as well.

We really need a coordinated effort that all landholders are involved in.

Hello, Chris Maunder Farmer and agronomist from Moree.

We farm 6,000 hectares within 30 km of Moree.

Craig Thomas, my role in LLS is senior biosecurity officer for Local Land Services.

In my role, I undertake programs, coordinating landholders to do broader programs to control feral pigs in the broader landscape.

Chris, can you tell me about some of the damage that the feral pigs are doing here? Last winter Craig they caused a lot of damage to our canola.

Came in from the from the west in huge numbers overnight and pretty much destroyed 30 hectares just up here on our western boundary.

Yep.

So by not undertaking control to lose 30 hectares, that's going to have a fair impact on that cropping program.

Financially, that was a big hit for us.

and we thought we're doing a pretty good job locally controlling the pigs.

Chris, can you tell me a bit about how a coordinated program within the area definitely helps in your local area? And if we did it further afield, it would help other farmers as well? Absolutely.

We need area wide management of this pest, it needs to be coordinated between a large group of growers and the key is monitoring.

And at a local level, when you're starting to see signs such as tracks, pads, wallows in your wet areas here like we're at today, that's obviously giving you enough signs to undertake control.

But when you're starting to see damage in crop, you're almost looking at it too late.

The horse has bolted, absolutely.

And it's like any pest management, you know, whether it's insect or vertebrate pests, you've got to, you got to know the numbers and you got to pounce on those numbers when they are low.

When we're talking about coordinated approach, not one control method would be working.

So you utilise many control methods? Absolutely.

It’s got to be an integrated approach where we're monitoring and then we’re utilising all control methods such as trapping, baiting and aerial control.

And across a broader area that's definitely make an impact on the pig numbers? That's the key to get all the landholders in together.

It's everyone's problem.

At the moment, the property’s fallow, we don't have any crop in and the numbers are down.

We're not seeing many pigs on this property at the moment.

They've all just moved on to the neighbours and the neighbours' neighbours.

There's a lot of damage in sorghum crops in the district at the moment and irrigated cotton.

They've just moved into those crops over the last 3 weeks while it was hot and just living in underneath that canopy and causing a lot of damage.

And utilising your Local Land Services office to coordinate and get those baiting groups or pest control groups to undertake control.

That’s definitely a trigger for local landholders to take part and increase the effect? That's the key.

It needs to be a coordinated approach and we need that one person sort of coordinating it.

And the LLS is a great vehicle to support that.

So if you're facing a feral pig problem, make sure you talk to your Local Land Services staff members in the local region.

Don't tackle the problem on your own.

Coordinate effort, talk to local landholders and widen the effect of control options in that area, and you'll find that the problem isn't so big trying to face it on your own.

We came here in 2018, the pigs here were absolutely out of control.

For us it was a huge impact A for the sheep, but B for the cropping.

And when money's tight you need to keep every cent in your pocket.

Hi, I'm Kym and I'm at Kahmoo in our Northern Tablelands property.

Been pretty much a grazier all my life with sheep and cattle.

And so this is the pasture we're in at the moment.

The support from LLS was amazing.

One, we didn't have really a pig trap, so we got a pig trap.

Two, we didn't have an idea of the countryside and what, what to do, how to do it in here.

You've got to learn about your land.

This is what happens and this is how we can do it.

So that information was fantastic.

Because you're busy, you know, you're flat out and if you've got someone else that can support you with your needs and help and ideas, yeah, it's, it's imperative.

So back early days we worked out this was probably early 2000s.

We'd lost 25% of our income.

Hi, I'm Elli Keyte, senior biosecurity officer with Local Land Services.

There's been consecutive few good seasons in the Inverell area which has made the feral pig numbers really explode.

So yeah, I've worked closely with Kym who was seeing huge impacts from feral pigs in her pastures, predating on lambs and also causing damage to infrastructure such as fences and coming into her sheep feeders.

When she was starting to see those impacts, Local Land Services came out on site, worked with Kym, assessed the damage and made up a plan of how we could best attack the situation.

You know, now Kym's not seeing the impacts with the pigs coming into her feeders, less tracks and her next step moving forward is to, with the exclusion fencing and just continue with that ground control, whether it be baiting, trapping or shooting.

I think it impacts everyone.

So from that point of view, from a neighbour point of view or anyone’s point of view, pigs are an impact.

But the better you fence, the better control and the less pigs you've got, and therefore your dollar’s in the back pocket and you can do something with it.

So has Paul been or going to be trapping back over here? Yes.

I expect now that we've got a lot out of this area that I think the majority will come over from that way.

And that area and that area over there will be the two areas that are going to be where we're going to have to concentrate in the future.

Feral pigs reproduce so rapidly, so no one control technique is going to get the population down low enough to eradicate them.

We really encourage you to reach out to your local biosecurity officer.

We can assist you with aerial control programs, ground control programs such as baiting and trapping.

And we can also loan out pig traps and provide subsidised bait products.

Without all of the support and all of everybody's input, we wouldn't have learnt what we've learnt and we wouldn't be in the situation we're in now with less pigs and the degradation, so much less.

Very lucky to have the support of all the community around us and the LLS.

Introduction

Our biggest concern with the pigs is probably disease carrying.

We do have a lot of damage.

Twelve months ago, the pigs in this area were in plague proportion.

You’d go out on a single day mustering you’d see 5 to 6 mobs of pigs while mustering.

After 12 months of this LLS controlled baiting program, we're down to barely seeing pigs at all.

Hi I'm Liam.

My occupation is I work on a family farm.

It’s my in-laws’ farm, near Barraba, New South Wales.

Seven thousand acres, mainly cattle, a little killing mob of sheep.

Background

About 12 or 18 months ago, I was approached at a field day by a couple of landowners and farm managers here in this area.

They knew that they had a feral pig problem.

They knew that, the feral pig problem was getting worse and it was just getting too hard to manage with the existing controls that they had.

And they wanted to know how best LLS could help them.

I'm Karen, I'm a senior biosecurity officer with Local Land Services.

One of the biggest concerns for this pest animal group is the disease risk of feral pigs.

Leptospirosis, brucellosis and now even Japanese encephalitis has been found in pigs across New South Wales.

And so vaccinating your livestock for leptospirosis is an added cost is an added cost that these guys are having to wear now.

To mitigate the risk of disease transfer is high on the list of priorities here for this group.

Disease risk

This paddock here, we put cows in these hills and we've actually seen cows grooming pigs in the paddock.

They’ll lick them.

We have feeders on the farm now too, we pellet feed.

The pigs love the feeders obviously so they are in the feeders with them feeding.

Disease can spread that quickly, let alone water sharing and licking each other in the paddock.

So the threat is huge.

Neighbours

So we've got a bit over 20 So we've got a bit over 20 neighbours in an area here that are doing excellent control.

They are coordinating their control a couple of times a year all together and there's still a lot of those landowners doing ad hoc controls all throughout the year as well.

Control

If we didn't have our neighbours in a group with us, with the LLS helping, those pig numbers would be still be what they were 12 months ago.

You just can’t get on top of them without everyone being in a control group and helping.

Baiting

So we are baiting better, knowing how the pig performs out with all their studies they've done.

A big help as been these traps, you see behind us.

They've given us grain, They've given us grain, which is quite expensive when you're doing these baiting programs.

We had one site where we were feeding out nearly 500 kilos of barley a night.

So if also we had to pay for it ourselves, it's another burden on the farm.

Part of our group they’ve got us on feral pig scan app, which is a very handy tool.

We know where our neighbours are baiting their pigs, so we make sure we're not in the same vicinity.

So therefore, if they’re on the other side of the hill, we can go on the other side of our property.

And we're getting much better numbers and results.

Conclusion

Having a pest control group is a great way to build your confidence and your skills to be able to manage the feral pigs, not only for your own farm economics and your farm business, but also in the event of an outbreak of an exotic or notifiable disease.

I think New South Wales or Australia wide, if they could get more of these programs going across the country, we could definitely get a dint in the feral pig population.

Some of the positive outcomes after working with this group for 12 or 18 months is that they're just not seeing the pig numbers that they had 12 months ago.

I drove out here on our very first meeting and nearly hit a mob of pigs on the road and we just don't see that here anymore.

Get in touch with your local biosecurity officer who can help assist getting a coordinated group together so that your pig control efforts are much more efficient.