North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Del Stubbs <northernlights2n@yahoo.com>]

I had good success this year with a simple method. 
I hung a foot diameter cylander of 2' tall chicken wire, an inch off the bare 
soil, using
plastic twine hung off the bottom branches. Then I strung over a lead from 
our electric
fence. The  racoon and squirrel  munching ended immediatly on the 30 trees I 
did.
I will only use it occasionally though, since I have several hundred trees - 
this year I
did it because my 8 year old test orchard (85 kinds of apples) is just 
starting to bear
and the few apples each tree had were quite important to examine.
Long term I am just about done adding a 2' high roll of chicken wire to the 
bottom of my
woven wire deer fence, then I am adding a couple of electric wires at the top 
of the
chicken wire. This all works because racoon's front paws are very sensitive. 
Just finished our first cider pressing of the apple-crab Centennial, 
delicious! 
Del 


--- Nathan Torgerson <nathantorgerson@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I had a lot of problems with animals this year with my bagged apples.  For 
> the previous
> 5 years, animals left the apples bagged in clear plastic alone...but this 
> year was
> different for some reason.  I never saw what was eating the apples, but by 
> the "taste
> and pick another" I'm guessing it was squirrels. In two days they only bit 
> a few but
> knocked off 80 other apples in the process.  I fought back by putting 8' 
> fence posts
> around the tree and stringing two 6' tall chiken wire around them.  I 
> topped the fence
> with bird netting. I couldn't cover the very top of the tree, but I sealed 
> up most of
> it. At the bottom of the fence I put bricks down on the wire to prevent the 
> squirrels
> from crawling underneath it.
>     This dramatically l reduced my losses.  The fence staying up for the 
> month I needed
> it.  They still ate at the apples they could reach through the fence, but I 
> actually
> got my crop of apples harvested instead of stolen.
> 
>   Nate
>   
> Donna &/or Kieran <holycow@cookeville.com> wrote:
>           Jim,   I find your racoon baffle interesting, but I'll bet you 
> don't have
> honeysuckle climbing up every object that stands still like we do down 
> here.  Donna 
>    
>    
>   >A good way to handle raccoon problems is with an 8' chickenwire fence.  
> Staple the
> first 4' - 5' to posts and  let the remainder hang down toward the outside 
> of the
> fenced-in area.  The coons crawl up the fence and back down where they came 
> from.  It
> is best to put a cross bar at the top so the fence doesn't kink from the 
> weight of the
> coon crawling down.  It takes a pretty smart coon to figure it out; most 
> never do.
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Del Stubbs  http://www.pinewoodforge.com   zone 3   N. MN

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