Prairie dogs

[idontno]

Who's got them besides me? I just love the little PEST.Got 80 or so acres of them.Been feeding them wheat.Starting to look better already.Been almost 2 weeks and getting good results.My neighbors have 1200 acres across the fence from me..So all i do is get mine gone so my neighbors can move into my now empty holes.It's a never ending battle.Got to get it done (here in kansas ) before march 15.Can disturb them march thru july.Don't want them babies to go without there mothers.Anyone love them as much as I do.

[DW]

love them with a 22. Our current new problem...new puppy thinks they are her new friend. Caught her tossing one in the air and then would go grab it & toss again. Couple days ago prairie dog was in the middle of the drive and puppy doing wild laps around it. We are going to try dumping old cat litter in the holes on the back of the property to see if that moves them.

[idontno]

Dv.. If you just got a few holes.Just fill them .Make it look like there was never a hole.Then they can't find it...worked for me in small place with a few holes.

[ksfarmer]

Oh yeah,,,lovely little critters. Few years ago a guy from audubon society had a few acres in our county and decided to reintroduce the little pests. Seems the hawks(? or maybe 22-250) got them all and county banned bringing any more in. He just couldn't understand why all the dumb farmers and ranchers didn't love dogs like he did.

[Tracy Rimmer]

Stupid things are EVERYWHERE! Here, what we have is what is actually a "Richardson's ground squirrel" -- but they're a pest!

The dog likes playing with them, though. She does as a previous poster said their dog does -- tosses them up in the air and watches as they chatter at her on the way back down. It's a game that she never tires of. All you need to do is say "get it!" and she's looking for one, even in the middle of winter!

[ErinP]

Prairie dogs are nearly endangered, ya know...






Honestly, this ranch isn't nearly so bad. We only have about a quarter section of them that we fight on a regular basis. The boss's place in SD, when we lived up there five years ago, had one single town that was nearly a section in size!

[sewtlm]

Ours all wear little bullseye targets.

Locals never seem to mind what season, it is ALWAYS prairie dog season here.

[littlejoe]

Originally Posted by idontno

Dv.. If you just got a few holes.Just fill them .Make it look like there was never a hole.Then they can't find it...worked for me in small place with a few holes.

Try burying a quart canning jar at the mouth of the hole... leave the bottom where they can see out.
Reminds me of the present administration.

[Windy in Kansas]

Nope, I don't love them in the least. Our family fought them for too many decades before finally getting them eradicated.

I'll never own another property on which they are allowed to run rampant.

Hm, isn't there the sport of prairie dog fishing?

[Ed Norman]

I once had to sell a 220 Swift rifle that I had bought brand new because of them. The throat was burned out of it in just a few years.

[Jerngen]

I suppose this is not the thread where I should mention my mothers coworker, who LOVES prairie dogs because they are so CUTE (the gal is very urban and I doubt she's ever really been out of the city) and had to get one as a pet.
My mom stopped by her apartment to pick her up one day, the gal insisted she come in and pet her new pride and joy........ and the prairie dog bit her. Nearly down to the bone. The gal was horrified and said that's never happened before. My mother was nice and told her "Don't worry about it, but keep a close eye on that critter".
I believe the praire dog ended up biting either 3 or 4 more people (not counting the gal herself who was bit a few times) before someone finally complained and the gal had to surrender it to the humane society to be put down. She was heart broken.

I had forgotten about that until I read this thread.

[BeagleMommy]

I'd love to see one sometime, but sounds like, I don't want to see it anywhere near my land- not that that would be a problem in Kentucky!

[shelljo]

There's a huge prairie dog town here in Dodge--inside the city limits. And there's one on the college campus. There's a walking trail that goes through it. I walk it daily. I get barked at all the time. But, since so many urban folks think the darn "doodle dogs" are so cute, you really have to be careful with eradicating them.

I know in NW KS, in Logan Co, they were having a huge fight with some landowners who didn't want to treat them. Of course their neighbors had trouble with that! I think they finally re-introduced ferrets as a control.

Me, I don't mind taking care of some with a 22. I've seen too many horses and cattle with broken legs.

Oh, one of my earliest memories is going with Dad out to poison P. Dogs. I think he used cynaid at that time. He scared the crap out of us because he lectured us over and over and over to not even touch the poison cause it would kill us "Just like that" and he'd snap his fingers.

[Macybaby]

Can I come visit? I love prairie dogs (and so does my husband). We'll bring all the needed equipment with us too. We can't find enough places to view them (through a scope) as we'd like here in SD.

With a .223, you can be far enough away that the silly critters don't know where you are, so when you send one cartwheeling, the others just sit there and wonder "what happened to Kenny?" and you can get several more. With the .22, you have to get closer and then they figure it out and run for home.

Cathy

[Windy in Kansas]

There is one or more prairie dog towns inside of Hutchinson city limits. Feel free to visit anytime. The most noticeable towns are just south of the Home Depot store and on the west side of Lowes.

Perhaps 10 years ago it was decided to get rid of them on a certain property. Activists proceeded to get involved and it was decided to use soapy water and flood them out of their burrows. Problem was they were so slippery from the soap they were extremely hard to catch and hang onto until they could be put into a truck. They may have eventually also used a vacuum truck to suck the critters from their holes.

A state park had agreed to let the captured prairie dogs be relocated there to be re-introduced into the wild. They got along well for about two weeks until natural predators figured out that there was a new free abundant food supply that wasn't savvy to ways of the wild--almost like meals on wheels.

Hutchinson made the cover of a National magazine about the effort. Perhaps it was National Geographic, perhaps another, I just don't remember now.

Come to Hutch to visit our well known museums and have a look at the doggies while in town as well. As far as I'm concerned feel free to take a hundred back home with you when you go.

Understand that they are huge hits as pets in Japan. Other than poison I think the vacuum trucks work about as well as any other means of disposing of them in a humane manner.

I might add---in my opinion it is rather rare to find an old pasture prairie dog town that doesn't have great quantities of rattlesnakes living in the old burrows. I don't mind the little owls in them but no thanks on the rattlesnakes. That alone is enough for me to want them gone post haste.

[shelljo]

Originally Posted by Windy in Kansas

I might add---in my opinion it is rather rare to find an old pasture prairie dog town that doesn't have great quantities of rattlesnakes living in the old burrows. I don't mind the little owls in them but no thanks on the rattlesnakes. That alone is enough for me to want them gone post haste.

That's the worst part! I've been told that during the summer months, you really need to be careful when walking along the trail on the DCCC campus, because you just might be sharing it with a rattler. and, I've been told the snakes like to come up and sun on the sidewalks too. Haven't seen one yet tho.

Last fall, I walked from campus over to the Walmart. I cut across and through part of the prairie dog town by Hobby Lobby. Was just about through when I saw a snake. Scared me half to death. It was a diamondback, but fortunately for me, someone had beheaded him already.

I think that town has been eridicated, as the holes have been filled in some and I haven't seen any critters there all winter. It might mean that I won't have to see any more snakes if I have to run to the store!

[idontno]

All the dogs west of walmart have been doped.They stared getting on the golf greens ..That made several mad so.I have fought them for 35 yrs.But went out today and I got to say.My pasture wasn't crawling with them anymore.Looks like i got a 90-95 % kill.Now if i can get my grass to grow before the next wavy comes from the neighbors.Got some gas for them next to finish cleaning them up.Last year i killed 34 rattlers in the first morning doping them.I would guess that i have killed 70-80 each summer.When they come up on my porch..It time to do something.12Gauge.Thanks for all the response.....

[lasergrl]

Originally Posted by Jerngen

I suppose this is not the thread where I should mention my mothers coworker, who LOVES prairie dogs because they are so CUTE (the gal is very urban and I doubt she's ever really been out of the city) and had to get one as a pet.
My mom stopped by her apartment to pick her up one day, the gal insisted she come in and pet her new pride and joy........ and the prairie dog bit her. Nearly down to the bone. The gal was horrified and said that's never happened before. My mother was nice and told her "Don't worry about it, but keep a close eye on that critter".
I believe the praire dog ended up biting either 3 or 4 more people (not counting the gal herself who was bit a few times) before someone finally complained and the gal had to surrender it to the humane society to be put down. She was heart broken.

I had forgotten about that until I read this thread.

A solution may be to capture the babies for pets! They are legal now, and legal to catch and sell them with a permit. They bite if they arent fixed, they go into RUT and get meann because of hormones. Fix the sucker and bottle feed it as a baby and you have a NICE pet. Lots of people make good money doing this every year! They sell for $100 each easily. May get more this year because they have been banned for the last several years and they just lifted the ban. Lots of people out there looking to replace deseased pets.

[gobug]

I have had to exterminate thousands of prairie dogs. They carry the plague and have one of the few fleas in colorado. So when they live near people, pets can carry the plague home to their owners. I have checked out the vacuum approach where some guy uses a powerful vacuum to get them out of the hole then relocates them. This approach sounds good, but it does not work. Nobody wants the transplants. Not all survive. They alone represent a small fraction of the ecosystem in which they are part. To remove and relocate them and not the other 75 different critters (bugs included) which are all part of the same ecosystem, does no good for any.

Prairie dogs not only carry the plague, but the do significant damage to landscape plants, and irrigation. I love them in Kansas. I love them in any wild prairie land. I just don't love them everywhere, especially not on school grounds, or my property.

[doglover]

I had never even heard of the prairie dogs until we took a long trip and I saw them in S.Dakota. I fell in love with those little things. Its probably a good thing they aren't near me because I would let them do what they wanted to. lol