Perches Encourage Hawks To Control Rodents In Crops

Perches Encourage Hawks To Control Rodents In Crops BIRD CONTROL Bird Control 26-4-13 Like most committed no-tillers, farmer and consultant Jim Kinsella has been scratching his head for years over critter problems. Rodents - mostly voles and field mice, but also ground squirrels and other little seed-stealing varmints - are quick to find seed in a freshly planted field. Kinsella tried gassing ground squirrels by blowing carbon monoxide or anhydrous ammonia into their burrows. When that didn't work, he tried poisons, but even those weren't all that successful. Then one day, he was watching a hawk sitting in a tree in his backyard. When the hawk swooped down and came up with a ground squirrel in its talons, Kinsella realized that the answer to his rodent problem had been there all along. "I figured if I could encourage predators to roost along the field edges, they'd take care of the rodents for me," he says. To encourage hawks, he constructed perches and placed them along fields about every quarter mile, except where there are power poles or trees where hawks can sit. Kinsella makes his hawk perches by setting a 2-ft. length of 2 1/2-in. PVC pipe in the ground. Then he drops a 10-ft. length of 2-in. PVC pipe inside the larger ground pipe, with a 3-ft. long wood perch at the top of it. "We made the first perches out of some old 1-1/2 in. round closet poles we had on hand," he says. He now buys the rod in 10-ft. lengths and cuts each piece into three equal lengths. He's also installed some perches on wooden corner posts. He makes these from pieces of treated 2 by 2's. "You could use PVC pipe for the cross pieces if you cover them with something like duct tape so it provides a surface the hawk can hold onto," he says. "So far, the hawk stands are the most effective and economic rodent control we've found," he says. However, this year there are fewer hawks using the stands than in previous years. He says since there are cycles in nature and hawks tend to go where the hunting is best, there may still be times when the perches won't solve your rodent problems. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Jim Kinsella, Kinsella Farms, Inc., 20984 Clarksville Rd., Lexington, Ill. 61753-9802 (ph 309 365-8041; E-mail: kfi@dtn speed.net).

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