Pest Control ..does It Pay The Bills ?

[bryn27 89]

I wouldn't do it if it was my sole income and I was dependant upon it.

more eggs in the basket is the way for me bit of landscape gardening and hard groundwork interwoven works.

Never will get rich and have no intention to,wife works nightshifts also to help spread the bills.

nice steady lifestyle means more to me than living the rat race of everything had to be done yesterday.

[perthshire keeper 1,237]

Good luck to you fellah...

 

You are now in the perfect position to succeed.. .

 

When I first started,...my needs were small (still are)....

I did all types of Pest Control,..literally, from 'Fleas to Foxes'...

 

As the years passed by,...I started to specialise....

 

Stick in there, and take every penny you can,.and always keep in mind when it comes to contracts,..that 'Small is Beautiful'....

If you lose a large earner,.it can be a heartbreaker,..but a wee job is soon forgotten....

 

Keep on the move....

 

All the best , Phil.

thanks for the kind words phil,would you mind if i dropped you a pm regarding a few things..foxes and contracts mainly haha

[Phil Lloyd 10,736]

Hi,..yeah,.pm away...

Edited July 2, 2015 by Phil Lloyd

[Waz 4,212]

Its worth going to work for a big firm so you can learn a lot more than what the courses/certificates will teach you. Jobs are won and lost within minutes of a telephone enquiry, youve got to talk the talk to get the job. Working for a big firm will pay dividends. I done this for 18 months which seemed like a lifetime. But time well spent.

[earth-thrower 490]

Well, theres no doubt ,that theres a serious amount of competition to contend with, nowadays.For whatever type of 'pest control', you wish to undertake,commercially,....So its certainly not going to get any easier, to try and 'make a living', from it . In fact, anyone who is making a 'proper living', from the game, should count themselves lucky, i think,..lol

Edited July 1, 2015 by earth-thrower

[tilimangro 1,013]

I can't make a living moling so it's a lucrative side line

I've also heard it said fox pelts might be a nice little earner pretty soon

[Dirksdonuts 79]

I posted a job on here months ago working for me in North Oxfordshire. Sadly the only people interested lived too far away.

 

Any seriously interested people living within a sensible distance of Woodstock/Chipping Norton PM me

 

Please no time wasters

[perthshire keeper 1,237]

come on gents do tell me about the wet pelt trade??

[neil cooney 10,415]

The money's been back in pelts a couple of years now. A Scandinavian fur company even sent someone over here to show lads how they wanted them skinned. 25 euro a fox and 20 a mink.

Personally, I hope it doesn't take off. There's enough cowboys setting wires as it is.

No problem with selling pelts, I did it years ago for £7 a pelt, but sudden bounties seem to bring the cowboys out of the woodwork.

[perthshire keeper 1,237]

i agree but when i was keepering i used to pay for my annual 2 weeks at home and chrismas with mony from pelts and wings eveyrthing from jackdaw scalps to hare masks...infact our game dealer used to ask why i would body shoot so many hares with a big rifle untill i said about selling masks..i used to get 700 cock pheasant tail feathers some weeks at 5p each

a month back i snared 13 foxes in 9 days and their all just a pile of bones in a cumbrian wood wouldent it be nice if they were put to use?

[neil cooney 10,415]

Except that a month ago the pelts were worthless.

Reminds me of years ago when a friend killed a massive dog fox (aren't all dog foxes massive, LOL.) and he just threw it into his freezer on top of everything without wrapping it.

In the middle of the Summer he asked me would I skin it. I said I would but as I was taking it out of the freezer the skin ripped badly, his fault not mine.

Anyway, as he was dropping me home I threw the dog fox out the side door of his van on to the side of the road that ran between our two villages.

For the next week everyone was asking me did I see the size of the fox killed on the bog road ?

After all it's not often you see a monster dog fox in full Winter pelt on the side of a road in July.

[taz2010 1,297]

i do a bit now vin and can make decent money but decided to do the level 2 modular course this september and been offered a few commercial jobs once finished course and insurances set up,and i think the moneys there if ya work for it mate

[Guest vin]

thanks lads.. some very informative reading.

 

top site is the THL.

 

Looks like I'm going to have to go abroad and earn some money instead.

[J Darcy 5,871]

You really need to start part time mate IMO. Build it up, it might take four or five years before you can make enough to survive.I was speaking to a guy today who has been doing pest control for a couple of years now and he just doesn't make any money. He paid out alot of cash doing lots of courses thinking that will bring him the jobs in magically. It doesn;t work like that. IMO there's only two things that matter;

#1 You're good at talking to people, gift of the gab.

#2 You're good at catching pests fast and effectively.

 

That's all you need, but both are essential for without them you will not make much money. That's JMHO.

[ratattack 111]

too many idiots out there willing to work for peanuts to make it worthwhile. If pesties charged proper money instead of trying to be the cheapest then yeah there's good money to be made but only if you are prepared to graft bloody long hours for it! It ain't all mole trapping and shooting, 95% is just boring old popping open bait boxes! Work for a big firm first, get your tickets and experience then decide if you can go it alone. Many try and many fail!!