Help! Possum in Hay

[Paige777]

Today I discovered that a possum has made my hay storage area its daytime bed. I only learned this when I disturbed it while moving hay. I also found possum poop. :mad: Short of fencing the entire hay storage area, are there any ways I can get this thing out? (The first pony that I adored died of EPM. I’m having serious issues with this possum’s presence.)

A little background: The barn is a one-story four-stall barn. The hay is in one half of the barn, and is on pallets. Part of the area is fenced with a 2" x 4" wire mesh, so fencing the other half isn’t entirely out of the question. I do worry about the possum still finding its way in. Currently I have a little over 100 bales in there.

Caveat: I do have three barn cats. Apparently they’re all just fine with the possum, since they sleep on the hay, too. So anything I do must be cat-safe. If I try to trap the possum, I’m very likely to end up trapping barn cats instead.

Animal control will be no help; I left three messages when I found a sick/dying possum in my mare’s stall a month ago. They never called back, and the possum was there all day long.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Thank you!

[downen]

First of all make sure he’s not getting ANY food. If you are leaving food out for your cats you need to put it up after each feeding.

Secondly, you can try bright lights and a blaring radio for a few nights.

If that doesn’t work, you can try a humane trap and relocation. This is illegal in most areas, but I won’t tell if you won’t. Of course, you may end up catching your barn kitties more times than not. Ask me how I know!

[cloudyandcallie]

Trap possum in hav-a-hart trap. Relocated in woods far away from your barn. Miles away.

[hosspuller]

A bad experience for the cat in a live trap will teach the cat to avoid it… even with cat food bait. After catching our cat, I rolled the trap a bit while making loud noises. Cat was very eager to get out. :winkgrin: Never caught our cat in it again.

[Mosey_2003]

Lock cats up and set a live trap baited with wet cat food.

[gumtree]

@cloudyandcallie

Trap possum in hav-a-hart trap. Relocated in woods far away from your barn. Miles away.

Second this. They are pretty easy to trap, I just put some cat food in a dish or some table scrapes.

[Paige777]

Thank you for the advice! No cat food is left out, but the possum seems to think this is a pretty great place to be anyway. I will explore some of the options here - thank you!

[BUSY]

Bait trap with something your cats don’t like
? Bread or just a wisp/ wipe of peanut butter.

Trap and kill it .

[Minuet]

We had a possum in our barn, complete with the poop on the hay as well. I have two fat barn cats who stayed and ate in the little stall where we kept our hay, and they didn’t seem to scare him off. The only thing I’ve done is kept the overhead light plugged in all night. I think it’s worked, haven’t seen them anymore, no more poop, but maybe the raccoon army we have around here scared him off.
It’s an old cow barn that we are using till our new barn is built, so it’s not really a closed in space; lots of places for critters to crawl in. I like the idea of the trap and release, let us know if you try it, and how it works. I may have to resort to that one day too.

[candyappy]

@Mosey_2003

Lock cats up and set a live trap baited with wet cat food.

Or let your dog have a go. Mine won’t tolerate a opossum anywhere. Not the most compassionate thing, but when they get in my barn or by my house , the time for compassion is over. They are a disease carrier and a nuisance.

[tazycat]

Use a trap and if you can lock cats up so you get the possum. Then kill it, my dogs kill feral cats would kill a possum also.
Killed a musk rat here the other day if it doesn’t belong here it gets killed by dogs.

Kill the darn thing nothing but disease infested beast.

[tucktaway]

My cats have never repeated that mistake! I could put the most enticing bait in a trap and they will NEVER go near it again! Humiliation beats out tuna fish :winkgrin:

[SusanO]

You need to have it gone. I had a horse contract EPM probably from the same situation. Floyd and Floydette moved in to eat cat food and poop all over the hay in the hayloft. And not the old hay we didn’t use. Just the good hay. I didn’t own the barn - just co-oping and the cat lived across the street where her owners didn’t feed her. So my friend fed her. Which was good but she needed to quit leaving the food out. Eventually we found Floyd face-down in the fly bait we put out but the damage was done to the horse.

Anyway I have trapped some here and they are easy to trap. Yes I catch my cats some times but it doesn’t hurt them and eventually they learn. You can always bait the trap with fruit or peanut butter if you don’t want to catch them. I can’t bring myself to shoot them so they go off down the road next to a creek.

[Paige777]

Thank you all! Possum problem has been solved! (Peanut butter attracted the possum but not the cats.)