Skunks and raccoons

[MaryTreasa]

As I mentioned in my intro post, I love gardening. I have a lot of flowers and leafy plants in the garden. There is a garden pond in the midst of the garden with a lot of golden fishes. Now I notice that the fishes are being eaten up by some animals. But not sure whether it is skunks or not. My question is that whether the raccoons and skunks eat up the fishes from the pond??? Day by day, the number of fishes are decreasing from the garden pond. Although most of the fishes are very small, they are very costly. All of them are very beautiful too. The only wild creatures that roam around in my garden is skunks.....which makes me doubtful. So this time.....should I go for skunk removal services???? What do you think is the best way to protect the fishes in the pond? Share your ideas.

 

[dickiebird]

The best way to protect your fish is to make some sort of a feature they can get under for protection. Make it large enough that a coon can't get to them when they go under the protection.
I don't know if skunks will "go fishin" but I know raccoons will/

THANX RICH

 

[baymule]

Raccoons will definitely go after your fish! They are sneaky too, so unless you set up a game cam, you might not know that you even have them! If you set a live trap, be advised that lots of states have laws against relocating trapped animals, so disposing of it could be a problem.

 

[Nyboy]

Raccoons love fish dinner. I had a Heron eat all my large goldfish,I had workers building a patio they would chase him away and a hour he would be back till all fish are gone

 

[Ridgerunner]

Mary your link implies you are in Ontario, I have no idea what your laws are up there as far as removal of animals. That company would know the laws and hopefully would give a free consultation.

A lot of things will eat fish. Herons and raccoons get most of the press but the world is just full of things that eat fish. We saw a snake eating a catfish when we took the boy scouts to the swamp. There is a long list of possibilities. Skunks are on that list according to a quick internet search. A silly question, do you have a fish in there big enough to eat the little ones?

Are you seeing any evidence? Raccoons may take the animal a short distance away but in general they eat in the immediate vicinity. Skunks are probably the same, eating on the spot instead of carrying them away, though I don't know that. Are you seeing any remains or is it likely something that is swallowing them whole? It's getting a bit cold up there for some of these if you are in Ontario but snakes, frogs, turtles, and birds top my immediate list but I'm sure there are plenty of four-legged critters that would eat them whole also. I wonder if a domestic cat would carry them away before it ate them? Would a mink swallow the whole?

It's hard to know how to protect them if you don't know what is getting them. A game camera could really help with that. One trick is to create a place where they leave footprints, maybe scatter flour on a bare patch of ground where they are likely to step or put that flour on a piece of plywood or such. Scat is also fairly distinct. There are internet sites that can help you determine what is visiting. The flaw with this is that even if they are in the area how do you know they are actually the ones eating the fish? I once shot 16 rabbits out of my garden before I finally got the last one that was eating the beans as they sprouted. There may have been more than one eating the beans as they sprouted but most of them were not.

I believe in removing critters that are hunting your property, that certainly reduces the predator pressure but its not a final solution. There are more being born and weaned all the time. I like barriers as much as possible. But which barriers depends in which critter it is, plus you probably want that area looking nice. I like electric fencing for ground-based predators but that would only work for certain critters.

Good luck, this is a challenge.

 

[Nyboy]

What size is your pond ? Is it natural or man made ? Most ponder's with expensive koi put a net over pond to keep fish safe.

 

[catjac1975]

As I mentioned in my intro post, I love gardening. I have a lot of flowers and leafy plants in the garden. There is a garden pond in the midst of the garden with a lot of golden fishes. Now I notice that the fishes are being eaten up by some animals. But not sure whether it is skunks or not. My question is that whether the raccoons and skunks eat up the fishes from the pond??? Day by day, the number of fishes are decreasing from the garden pond. Although most of the fishes are very small, they are very costly. All of them are very beautiful too. The only wild creatures that roam around in my garden is skunks.....which makes me doubtful. So this time.....should I go for skunk removal services???? What do you think is the best way to protect the fishes in the pond? Share your ideas.

Raccoons love fish.

 

[aftermidnight]

This is what we had to do with ours....

Our pool isn't that big so we took some of our aluminum bean poles covered them with that stiff garden netting, soft fish net dropped over and around the rock along the edges. If were to build another it would have steep sides, not ledges ( Koi eat all the plants so why bother). This pool is four x ten, four feet deep.

Annette

 

[ninnymary]

I suspect it's racoons. You could put some type of grid over your pond. We have lots of coons here. A friend of mine had his pond dug 4.5 feet and apparently that's deep enough for the fish to be safe.

Mary

 

[Nyboy]

I thought my chicken coop was built like fort knox . When i saw a raccoon hanging around I did not worry. I came out one morning to find all my hens ripped a part. The raccoon manged to pull a corner of the hardware cloth up and squeeze in. If he killed and ate 1 hen I would have understand, but he killed them all for sport. I hired a pest company to trap him did not want to know what they did with him. They are powerfull animals that do enjoy killing not only for food.