Summer Camp Nuisance
Moyer Pest Control
Moyer Indoor | Outdoor is a family-owned company founded in 1869. Today Moyer has nine service divisions, including Moyer Pest Control for residential and commercial customers. Moyer Pest Control serves Southeastern Pennsylvania and portions of New Jersey and Delaware.
Overview
A summer camp in Pennsylvania contacted Moyer Pest Control to remove several beavers that had become a nuisance. In Pennsylvania, Beavers are considered wildlife, not pests, and Moyer Pest Control has the required license to remove nuisance wildlife and was able to help.
Challenge
With the summer camp located 45 minutes from Moyer’s office, considerable time was spent making the trip to and from the summer camp and checking the cages only to find them empty. Moyer chose the Skyhawk Kiwi to complete the job more efficiently by reducing drive time and ensuring that a capture occurred before sending out the licensed technician.
Moyer used the versatile Kiwi single-trap solution for this application. The device is designed to be placed almost anywhere on any trap. An accessory pack with various attachment options is included, and even a standard zip tie can be used to hold the unit in place.
Plan of Action
For this control method, Moyer chose the Comstock live cage. These cages do not rely on a trip pan but rather have wires in the middle of the cage that, when engaged, trigger the door to close. One cage was set on a clear trail and one in a shallow feeder stream that the beavers traveled. Due to the nature of the beavers, Moyer did not use bait since the travel paths were easily identified. Skyhawk Kiwi remote sensors were installed on each cage so Moyer’s office would be alerted that a capture had occurred, avoiding unnecessary travel and cage checks.
The Skyhawk CE App is the control center for all your deployed Trapmate devices. Moyer monitored battery status, managed notifications, and added and removed sensors through the streamlined user interface.
Customer Satisfaction and Efficiency
Kiwi was the perfect electronic trap monitor to make the process more efficient for Moyer and unintrusive to the customer. When a beaver entered and remained in the trap, and the door was activated, the Kiwi sent text alerts via the Skyhawk CE App to the technician, indicating a capture. Using the pause feature on the Kiwi allowed the alert to be paused until the technician arrived on site. If a trap was tripped but no further movement was detected, a single alert is sent, and the technician could avoid an unnecessary trap check or determine follow-up action.
Results
The day after the cages were installed, the Kiwi activated an alert with 100% certainty of capture. The cages were checked, and one beaver was caught and safely released at a pre-approved site. After a day of no captures, a second beaver was caught and released. Following that, the cages were left in place for three consecutive days with no further captures, so this nuisance wildlife job was now complete.
By the Numbers
Without Trapmate: Two traps set for seven days with a daily trap check would require 1.5 person-hours daily.
With Trapmate: Two trips were for confirmed captures, and the third was to pick up the traps.
A total of 6 person-hours were saved by having Trapmate devices on two traps at this site
