You charge a fair price for the work that you do-don't gouge to get rich-fair pay for work performed and you will get all the work you can handle.Dont expect people to pay you for driving around if you arnt having any success in removing the problem.

Thats the problem. I dont really know what a fair price is.

Yes, it's a problem for everyone. If I told you to charge $150 for a house call and $50 per animal, half would say "too much and the other half "too little". You have to find what works for you and your area.

Have to find what works for you. Something that you are happy with and the customer agrees to.

Most of the people that might chime in and give you an answer are businesses. They have capital invested upon which they expect to earn a profit as well as their time. They have liability insurance and probably a hefty advertising budget. They might send an employee out to do the job upon which they have workmans comp and other benefits. They might spend hundreds or thousands going to conferences to learn more about their industry. Their jobs need to pay for that as well. We also don't work for a lot of farmers, as mentioned previously.

I just trap trouble beaver.......75.00 set up and 75.00 per head. Yah don't like the prices...get someone else...I don't care.

Gary:
If you use Nessmuck advice be sure and put a time limit on how long you will be at the job site.
It may take two days or two weeks. Who knows. JMO

If it takes you 2 weeks to remove beaver you are incompetent.You shouldn't charge someone else for your incompetence.

Boco:
This was just met to be an example.

But if the 2 other people were there before you were incompetent the price goes up.

This is always a hot topic for everyone it seems.... I did some training with a top knotch guy in PA a year ago and he opened my eyes to alot I was missing. If this is going to be your source of income you need to be paid for your time. For instance, he wouldnt go just look at jobs and hope to get them with his great people skills, he made a deal on the phone so every stop was money, nothing wasted. Charged for inspections etc... I used to be a per animal guy but after seeing someone elses buisiness (that is booming)it made more sense to me to look at every situation as a job thats gonna cost x dollars instead of getting caught up in chasing that beaver that the land owner failed to tell you they have shot at for the last 2 weeks for 75 bucks.Some folks are good at the setups plus per animal, not me. I do coyote control for several places and I charge per week. Most everything else is setup and 2-3 visits.So it would be like ...225 set up 115 per visit x 2-3 visits. You can put what ever numbers in set up and per visits that would be suitable for your area.

It depends. What needs to be trapped isn't as important as what damage, exactly, is being caused by animals, how hard will it be to stop this problem, and how many need to be trapped.

Anything that only deals with singles or doubles (for the most part) are going to cost more than animals that could be a high number. Example is a fox eating chickens is going to be much more pricey each than a whole gang of coons raiding a chicken house. Also, otters vs mink. If a fish farm is having trouble with mink, you could be talking about catching PILES of mink. If they're having otter problems, maybe you're looking at trapping 3-4 or so (maybe more, but you know what I'm saying). That being said, mink might cost $10-30 each vs $50-80 per otter. Does that make sense?


Beavers are a lot of work, and the damage they can cause can go into thousands of dollars. They can become spooked and harder to catch, so they're going to be expensive.

I'm not a highly experienced trapper,but I am about to launch my ADC business.
My thoughts on this:
I'm going to offer coyote control to cattle ranchers, primarily (ideally) and trap various other predators such as coon, possum etc for people with chickens, etc.
I will first have a conversation to determine how serious they are (are they willing to pay) and try to juxtapose a dead calf (loss of income) to the cost of killing a coyote. Same applies to poultry and whatever else is being damaged or destroyed.
Since this is a launch, I am leaning towards charging enough to cover costs but not necessarily making a profit at first.
As my success builds, so should my reputation and my ability to charge more for my services. BUT, a problem I see is, while my (hopefully increasing) ability to kill coyotes will spread by word of mouth, I expect that if I change a low price just to get clients, that price may also spread by word of mouth and I may get resistance when I decide to charge more.
I am planning to limit my travel distance to 30 miles from my home during the start-up phase.
I'm having cards printed to hand out when making contacts or for sticking into gate locks.