Ravens and crows

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
I have seen the odd buzzard take a lamb but it could have been born dead? The great black backed gulls will hold a TexX ewe down and eat her there and then! And they’ll pick up any slow lambs. The beauty with the gulls is you can usually hear them calling from a mile away if they are onto something. The gulls and ravens will usually go for the same ewe so the ewe doesn’t stand a chance. Towards the end of lambing their all worse (April) as they are teaching their young to hunt aswell!
Could be that the buzzards here just havent figured out how to do it yet. Seen them eat already dead ones and carry them off even but not live ones. Yet.
Im glad we dont have any of those gulls but at least i think you can legally shoot the black back ones?
It definetly gets worse as time goes on. They all learn off each other and get bolder and braver every day. And bring more friends with them every day :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:
 
Had a few ravens a few years back, in a field I don't normally lamb in. This year I changed scanner man, hes not excelled himself in splitting ewes in stages of 10 days, second stage that are not due for a few days, have caught me out as not ready to bring in, would have lost 30 lambs, evil barsteward things, go out in morning, go back to get trailer and been nailed, had one yesterday missing half its head yet alive, can someone remind me why they are protected? Obviously on another point, if you want to get rid of squirrels, apparently put freshly killed poisoned rats on top of shed roofs nearly lambing sheep and helps clear them out
 

ajcc

Member
Livestock Farmer
Few years back I watched a cow calving while ploughing I next field. Two ravens alighted close by and bounced about close by for ten minutes. Twenty mins later I went over to check calf and they had pecked /removed the front third of emerging calfs tongue!! Much worse than a fox in lambing paddock.imo. Zero tolerance.
 
I was told if you can shoot one of a pair (you need a licence) the other will go into mourning and leave .
i was lambing on a estate in Scotland they had a licence you make sure you shoot the pair cos they don't leave and mourn as you were told the one left gos on a killing spree to seek revenge !! Have taken pictures of them working a lambing park so we could get a licence when you find live lambs with tounges missing you have a hunting pair
 

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
I know someone who got a lisence to shoot ravens last year after sending in lots of pictures of the hundreds of ravens and lambs that had been attacked. They gave him a lisence to shoot 4 :banghead::banghead::banghead:
He was appealing to be allowed to shoot more (100+) when i spoke to him last but i havent seen him since. He had to show that shooting 4 hadnt made any difference and take more pictures of the massive flocks of the barsteward things and more picures of dead lambs. It sounded hopeful that he would get the lisence though (y)
 

Dry Rot

Member
Livestock Farmer
I know someone who got a lisence to shoot ravens last year after sending in lots of pictures of the hundreds of ravens and lambs that had been attacked. They gave him a lisence to shoot 4 :banghead::banghead::banghead:
He was appealing to be allowed to shoot more (100+) when i spoke to him last but i havent seen him since. He had to show that shooting 4 hadnt made any difference and take more pictures of the massive flocks of the barsteward things and more picures of dead lambs. It sounded hopeful that he would get the lisence though (y)

As a falconer, I applied for licences over the years and often got them. It is a matter of beating them at their own game and producing the evidence to back up a logical argument. The tree huggers think they have all the answers, but very often they don't.

Yes, they will make unreasonable demands for proof but you really only need produce evidence that would be acceptable to a court of law (eye witnesses?). What the bureaucrats often forget (or rather choose to forget!) is that they are also answerable to the law and if Parliament didn't intend for licences to be issued, it wouldn't have put provisions in the legislation allowing the public to apply for licences! Civil servants have a duty to apply the law as Parliament intended and if they are unreasoable, I would not hesitate to take it to a member of parliament. We pay them, make them work for their money!
 

Cowcalf

Member
at the end you are in charge of the sheep and it is your duty to protect their welfare, so that surely would be the start of a good case ( to reasonably minded folk , not too common in bureaucrats )
 
I know someone who got a lisence to shoot ravens last year after sending in lots of pictures of the hundreds of ravens and lambs that had been attacked. They gave him a lisence to shoot 4 :banghead::banghead::banghead:
He was appealing to be allowed to shoot more (100+) when i spoke to him last but i havent seen him since. He had to show that shooting 4 hadnt made any difference and take more pictures of the massive flocks of the barsteward things and more picures of dead lambs. It sounded hopeful that he would get the lisence though (y)
Depends how many 4s you shoot make sure you shoot your quota because if you don't the next time they won't allow you as many
 

Dry Rot

Member
Livestock Farmer
at the end you are in charge of the sheep and it is your duty to protect their welfare, so that surely would be the start of a good case ( to reasonably minded folk , not too common in bureaucrats )

That would be a defence but I can hear them now, "But ravens are wild birds and he could easily have frightened them off. No need to kil them". We know the nonsense of that, but will they listen?

Just an aside, I used to keep free range poultry and had goshawks tethered on my lawn. Inevitably, one of the hawks killed a hen (most of the time, the hens had the sense to keep clear!). One of my old books suggested sprinkling pepper on the hen the hawk had just killed and leaving them to feed. That did work and there were no more hens killed. Hawks won't eat stuff that tastes horrible!

On the other hand, some bright spark in Canada had the idea of chucking bite sized pieces of mutton laced with lithium chloride (the antabuse drug they use to sicken alcoholics off drink) out of a helicopter to convince coyotes that predating sheep was not a good idea. That worked brilliantly -- until the coyotes twigged that if they killed their own sheep, the meat was unadulterated. That's when they stopped scavenging dead sheep and started killing in earnest so the experiment back fired in a big way! So I don't know whether pepper on dead lambs would work.....
 

exmoor dave

Member
Location
exmoor, uk
Sorry for the thread hi-jack, but can anyone tell me the dimensions for a ground entry funnel that I'd like to retro fit to a trap for crows?

So the entrance size, exit hole and length of the funnel.

Going to make it from chicken wire
 

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