Matt
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Everything posted by Matt
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The breeding prospects may have been different had it been born female.... Apparently, there are EU regulations about breeding big game animals and that was what swung the decision.
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Longleat isn't a zoo; it's a safari park. The lions are free to breed as they see fit within their enclosure. Over the last few years their numbers have got much higher, and that has led to some friction within their social structure and a lot of fighting. From what I can gather about the Giraffe, it is too closely related to the other captive ones in Europe and they couldn't allow it to breed. As they are social animals you can't just keep one on it's own for thirty years to stop it from shagging and if you castrated it the other males would've kicked the crap out of it. Some folks
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Young and old were just the same.... Neophobic in the extreme. I think that's a significant point TC. One of the beauties of pest control is that no two jobs are the same. What works in one area may fail miserably elsewhere.
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lol aggressive lions apart from the sick tw@ts that hunt them there top of the food chain for a reason!! could you see a sealife centre shooting a shark because it gave them evils lol I think the problem at Longleat was that the Lions had started killing each other... I'm not sure if I'd label anyone who's ever done any big game hunting a 'sick twat' either. While I'm as disgusted as the next man about the 'canned hunting' we've all seen, that doesn't mean that all big game hunting is the same. Each to his or her own. I don't like judging others based on what the newspapers say.
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A dose of reality for those kids, who, I'm sure, probably thought it was all very interesting. Where do kids think you get Lion Food? Do they think there are extra large cans of Kity Cat in the shops? Around here, all the local horses etc go to Longleat for Lion Feed.
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They fed it to the other animals... as I just said on Twitter; gives a whole new meaning to 'best end of neck' doesn't it? It seems that Longleat are in trouble today as well. They recently shot 6 aggressive lions.
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My personal opinion is that some social groups are more neophobic than others. The farm I mentioned earlier in the thread is relatively new, and was built on a green field site in the middle of an old airfield. Rats on the surrounding farms were nowhere near as bad. It's not at all unusual to have seasonal migration of rats. These days, the harvesting of wholecrop maize seems to signal the start of an influx of rats. I think food or lack of it, causes more migration than the weather. When we had the bad snow a couple of years ago I didn't notice any massive increase in calls, al
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Now this is getting interesting..... While my natural instinct is to avoid baits that I don't believe a rat would be familiar with, it's obvious that they do sometimes work well.... The one thing I would temper that with is that what I was originally speculating about was genuinely rural rats; that is rats living nowhere near any cities, towns, villages or even cottages. Also, that's an interesting point about neophobia. As Tiercel says, some rats seem much more neophobic than others. I did some fieldwork for a university trial on rodenticides a few years ago on a farm where the
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Caught One With My Bare Hands.
Matt replied to davedavedave's topic in Snaring, Trapping & Pest Control
I've done it a few times.... the most rewarding occasion was when I saw one being attacked by a magpie on the road. I pulled up and grabbed the mole and relocated it to the garden of a customer that owed me £2k. When he rang complaining about the mole on his lawn I refused to go until he paid me the money he already owed me. When he paid, I refused to attend because he was a bad payer... The little buggers sure make some noise, and have very sharp teeth. My little terrier comes with me on the trap rounds and got bitten by one as a youngster. She now grabs any mole (dead or alive) and giv -
For some of us, what we do isn't a 'trip out' it's what we do, day in day out. Speaking for myself, on the rare occasion I remember to take my phone, I can't be arsed to take my gloves off, and remember which is the right button to press. I do take pictures from time to time and sometimes post them on here and elsewhere. Last week I put a photo of a fair haul of moles off one job on Twitter, and got endless shit from animal rights loonies as a result. Anyway, back to the topic in hand.... Like Froudy, I always try and target rats with a bait that is either something they are use
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Taken to PM Mr Tea Pot...
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Here ye go: Click this link for full instructions and pictures
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The door hinge bar shouldn't be too tight. When fitted, the door should be about 45 degrees past where the door stops should be. You then push the door down to the 'open' position and fit the door stops. There is only one way the springs can fit; slide them on and the natural position of the door (without the doorstops) should be 45 degrees past their 'closed' position. Sorry, I know that doesn't make sense.
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I don't think I've got any pictures; but basically, you fit the doors and the door springs before you put the ply that acts as a door stop over the top. The doors then sit higher than the top of the trap until you screw (you need to use good woodscrews rather than nails) the strips of ply down. Does that make sense?
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An interesting point, but I would suggest that lard is just animal fat, and rats use carrion as one of the many natural food sources that they utilise in the countryside. I'm not saying that I'm right, nor am I saying that I'm wrong. What I'm suggesting is that I have a theory, based on years of trying to catch rats in traps and bait them with rodenticide; that certain foods are new to them, and not normal run of the mill foodstuffs that they'd find in the countryside. We know that rats are cautious, and that they are neophobic, so why would chocolate or peanut butter be a good choice
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What folks think of me, good or bad, is not something I've ever worried about, nor will it be in the future. I've posted plenty of pictures in the past, but I'm not one of those people who carries a camera and takes pictures of all my catches to post and brag about. Not at all. What I am telling you, and anyone else that wants to come on here and do nothing but bitch and troll, is that we have a warning system in place, and the moderators can and will use it if they deem it necessary. Make of that what you will. Just to clarify; I've not said that nothing else is
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It's an interesting thought for discussion (without the hidden agendas and insults). Overall, my experience has been that rats favour the food they are used to. With rodenticides, for example, I've always found them unwilling to take pasta and block type baits in rural areas, yet the whole wheat formulations seem to go down well?? Why would a rat recognise chocolate or peanuts as being something 'nice' to eat in the countryside? They are naturally cautious and neophobic, so surely a foodstuff they recognise as being natural and normal would get better results than something foreign t
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Of course I do Teapot. 'Shit' based on over 25 years as a professional pest controller. What's your opinion based on? A couple of years of following other people around trying to work out why they are doing what they are doing? Perhaps, instead of just coming on here to try and cause trouble and insult people, you could explain why it's shit, and what you base your opinion on? This has always been a friendly and informative part of the forum. If individuals are going to come on here with hidden agendas and try and spark off trouble then they will get short shrift from me and they m
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Thanks for that. Just the kind of information I wanted. I'm feeling a bit of a dick really. I've blindly allowed the policy to renew year after year and not bothered looking at the price. It looks like I've been shafted. Price isn't really an issue; I've got dozens of quotes on CtM most of which are less than £25 per month. What concerns me is that some of these companies are rubbish and I would rather pay a bit more and know I was dealing with a good one.
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I'm just taking out a new insurance policy on the van. I've been with Dial Direct for a few years, and the renewal was £60 per month which seemed a bit too steep. I've gone to Compare the Market, and got some quotes including Dial Direct who are offering to do it for less than £20 on there... Any recommendations, or companies to watch?
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Location? Pictures and information (milage, colour etc) might help too
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I've never been a fan of bags. I use buckets, and get 18 traps in each one. In the bucket they are protected from damage and scent and I can quickly and easily see how many traps I've used. Best of all, they cost nowt....
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They asked him straight if he was going to resign and he refused. He still thinks he's done a good job Heartbreaking watching the news tonight. One resident who was evacuated last night got a phone call while she was being interviewed to tell her that her house was now under water. She cheered up a bit later when she was reunited with her horse which she thought had drowned.
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Saw one on the news before Christmas where the ground floor of the house was converted into an area for the water to run through and another floor was added on top. That was when they had the 'once in a hundred year' flood last year. This time they've been under water for two months, and the water level went up by 3 feet last night. Looking at the weather now it's only going to get worse. It's one thing building houses next to rivers, but some of these places haven't flooded in living memory and have only flooded now because the rivers haven't been dredged for years. The local f
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It's been quite moving over the last few days seeing folks suffering on the Somerset Levels. I've gone from being moved to see folks pulling together while animals and families are evacuated, to sheer anger seeing Lord 'Toady' Smith refusing to apologise for not keeping the promises he made to dredge the rivers when this happened last year. Are there any members from that area who have been flooded or involved?