Muskrats in a manure lagoon

I recently signed a contract to the year to remove muskrats from a maunure lagoon at a dairy farm. I removed 3 in two day back in February and have had no sign there since then. The water is dark, but not thick with manure. The muskrats had just about destroyed the levees and it is situated near a high quality stream. I just wondered if any of you have had to do muskrat removal in similar environments. The client is a friend who I taught with and was quite happy to have someone to take care of the problem. Good learning opportunity for me.

Turtle man those rats!

The last lagoon I trapped for rats I never got to pick up a single rat . The Mexicans took every last one. Never stole a trap but took my rats . I think they were eating them.

Funny you say that Bud! I had to do just that to find the dens! No way to see anything below the surface. I think their activity in their was seasonal in nature as there was too much damage for just three rats!

Muskrats are good to eat River Rat, but not from the manure lagoon!

I agree but not outa a lagoon. My mother had a fit when she came to my place one night I was having fried mystery meat and sauerkraut.
That was fine till she figured out it was muskrat LOL she wanted to take me grocery shopping

We eat them all the time ,there also a great meat market here for them ,even the stores will buy them , the fire mans ball they eat muskrat, it goes back to the French which lived here ,they say they would have all starved to death if they didn't have the muskrat , it's a very common food for the down river area , I trap a lot of rats every year , sounds like a prefect spot to just keep a few float sets out , you could string a rope across the pond to keep the sets out in the middle , floats sets work best away from shore , simple find a Y in a fallen tree ,then cut it of , nail hardware cloth to the Y , there's your float , next one small leg hold trap , this float works the best for me , I don't use floats much but sometimes there better than taking a chance in that stuff , come summer oboy , next take fence out to about 6 ' deep and line the banks ,then they can't dig there no more , because more will come , if next a creek even more so

Pesky, here's a handful of periods:
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Use all you want. I've got more.

Gavanized chainlined fence across the levee will keep them from digging. Put it along the ground down four feet fromt the high water mark. That plus trapping will stop them.

Thanks gentlemen! Good advice for sure. Still interested in amyone who has trapped similar situations.

When I'm fur trapping on farms that do dairy that's always the terms to trap the ponds and barns , yes I've been there . Small price to pay for the run of the farm . There's never much in there , the barns are good . I also give them frozen turkeys before Xmas

I have had a couple of jobs where the muskrats were draining small lakes by making holes next to the dam. The owners took care of the holes; my job was to remove all the 'rats.

I think MoFarmBoy is telling us that Pesky is having problems with his period.

I've trapped muskrats in the town waste stabilization pond (human waste). Similar situation, rats were ruining the levees, other side of the levee was a marsh. Caught a couple dozen rats in there using #110's and colony traps. Only problem was, after being in the water for a couple days the traps turned green and wouldn't take Speed Dip anymore.

OMG mike , not saying I wouldn't go there

I knew somebody had been there and done that!

Mine always turned midnight black and then blue but again wouldn't die. Standard sets 110s 155s and colony traps

My fondest memory of sewage lagoons of the human flavor involves turtle trapping the catching was easy the cleaning of my traps afterwords was a pain in the back side and not worth the $$ I made LOL

I know some times there's a fence around these sewer treatment ponds and that keeps the rats in kinda like a muskrat farm . Ive herd the trapping can get really good in there , just don't lick your fingers after you eat lunch