family of racoons

I am a newly licensed nuisance trapper and my 1st call is for a female racoon with young.How should my approach be? To set multiple cage traps or just one? If I can catch 1 or 2 of the young will she move everybody out and problem solved? Or is it never the same. I guess my main question is how many cage traps should I set to begin with?

Since we get paid a service call and then a fee for each animal caught, you know what my answer is going to be. Just make sure you

catch her and the rest are pretty much guaranteed. Pretend it's a coon trapping marathon.

If the young are big enough to come out. If not and you remove the mother, you could have a problem. Lots of different answers.

There is that period of a couple weeks long where the young are old enough to stay silent or scoot away from you in the attic but not big enough to find a trap. About the only time of year I regret my flat rate pricing. That period seems to have passed, lately they have all been big enough to find a trap.

I had just removed a groundhog from a trap and transferred it into a transfer cage while talking to the customer a few days ago.

To our left,around 2 pm in the afternoon about 20 ft. to our left or so came a female raccoon half carrying and dragging a juvenile coon pup across her backyard about 30 yards to a neighboring property privacy fence of 6 ft. or so. Up and over the fence she went with that baby struggling to climb the fence.

There was a large maple tree just on the other side of that fence. I watched that area and in a minute or so I could see her climbing that tree with the baby.

After she crawled up out of site I searched the area in the direction of where she first appeared to find a rotten piece of OSB panel on the side of any old storage building just about ground level. Not sure why that momma coon decided to move and relocate that pup when I was standing nearby talking to our client but she did.

Not sure if there were more pups to be moved or just that single pup. Never had witnessed a female coon move pups before right in front of me in the early afternoon like that. Made my day to see that. I know they will relocate pups if stressed or harassed so difficult to say what occurred there.

Methods for removal of a female and a litter have several variables that affect your course of action. Like stated things depend on the animals ages and mobility. Our pups are still pretty small here on average so cage trapping them are not a good course of action. If you trap mom then you will have to look for the litter site. Sometimes that can be a challenge sometimes not.

Bob, some years back I got a "raccoon family in a fireplace" call. It was half snow and half rain that day. I set up my ladder and

looked down the flue. Mom looked back up at me, grabbed one of the babies in her mouth and proceeded out of the fireplace. She

actually had to swim across a few feet of water with the baby in her mouth. She knew exactly where she was going and had moved the

all four of her offspring quite some distance before dark. I was really impressed but not as impressed as the customer was with me.

She thought I had some supernatural powers and since I needed work, I let her tell all her friends about the mystical wildlife guy.

I have some questions pertaining to this topic. Say the customer wants momma gone asap, so you set your trap, catch her. How do you charge for baby removal , when hand removing. Do you stil charge on a per animal basis. Or do you give them a price for just labor like "Ok it's gonna cost between ....&.... To cut into soffits or walls and remove the babies? Or do you charge for babies and labor?

Pez77, that's a loaded question. If you are unable to remove the babies without doing work on or in the home you might wan't to come up with a detailed proposal in what you are going to be responsible for. Are you going to repair the damage or sub it out? You could end up cutting into more than one section of the home specially if they're mobile and have access to get back in the attic or crawl space, and if it's a vaulted ceiling you've just added another headache to your cause. What's your skill set on ladders while working with hand and power tools, can you move quickly while being proficient? All these things come in to play when giving a hard number and there's many more variables that could effect your profit. Animal fee is great and all but you still need to cover insurance, T&M etc.. if any is required for repairs specially working on older homes. If the babies aren't mobile yet and are accessible from a single cut then the per animal fee might work for you. Only you can figure out what the best payment method would be for how you run your business based upon your level of experience and skill set with applications needed for the job.

We usually charge a per animal fee if the young raccoons must be caught in cages. If they are small enough that we can pick them up,

we charge a litter fee. ( I think they probably call it a litter fee because Mrs. Raccoon has littered up the area with babies )

tDHP thanks for your response, I usually give customers a couple of options, and a ballpark price range. If I am lucky it ends up being right around my per animal charge and 1-2 hrs of labor, if it goes more smoothly i just charge per animal. I am good with repairs but typically sub out all the stuff that can't be repaired with materials in the truck. I know there are so many variables and aspects to that question, but just curious what others will do. Luckily I live in a semi rural/urban place so most customers are ok with lethal trapping. And are thrilled when I Hand remove babies. The downside to these areas is the animals are so trap shy , because the cost tries everything in the book before calling us.