Your Poultry
Poultry and their eggs make a perfect dinner for NZ’s deadliest pest predators. Here's how to start fighting back.
What’s eating your flock: tips for catching rats and other nasties
The first time a lot of block owners discover they have a pest problem is when they lose a chicken – or worse, chickens – in the middle of the night. When you can’t see your enemy, it’s hard to know how to fight it, or the best way to do it.
Here are strategies from pest control experts so you can fight and win.
1
Know your enemy
THE MUSTELIDS
The mustelid family – stoats, ferrets, weasels – are the most deadly and difficult-to-catch predators. The most common is the stoat; the rarest is the much smaller weasel.
Stoats
Weight: 200-325g
Length: 25-40cm (adult, nose to tip of tail)
Main features: brown fur with a white chin and undersides. Long tail with a black, bushy end. Hunts day and night, good swimmer.
Droppings: 4-8cm long, black, thin, hard, with a twist at each end. Droppings remain separate even if they overlap. Often left in prominent positions to mark territory.
Kill signs: bite to the back of the neck, prey usually taken away to a hiding spot.
Ferrets
Weight: 500-1300g
Length: 50-60cm (adult, nose to tip of tail)
Main features: larger and stockier than stoats and weasels (about the size of a small cat). Have a ‘mask' around the eyes and across the nose. Legs and tail are darker than the rest of the body. Strong green ‘eye shine' at night.
Droppings: 7cm long, 1cm wide, black with twisted tapering ends, usually full of fur, feathers, and bone fragments. Often left in prominent positions to mark territory.
Kill signs: bite to the back of the neck, puncture holes from canine teeth in prey.
Weasels
Weight: 60-130g
Length: 20-25cm (adult, nose to tip of tail) Main features: much rarer than ferrets and stoats. Roughly half the size of a stoat, short brown, tapering tail (about half the length of a stoat's), no black or bushy tip. Droppings: small (5mm), black, thin, twisted at the end. Kill signs: bite to the back of the head or neck.