OCR Text |
Show a few remaining ones, and oftimes with two applications an entire colony may be exterminated. Pocket gophers are much harder to destroy than either mice or ground dogs. A very good plan for reaching them is to place a little strychnine into a slit out of a small piece of po ,toe, which is pusbwd. down into one of their runways and then the opening open-ing very nearly closed over. Some uae raisins aad pat the poison in them, and in this way are able to get the gophers to take the poison. "For meadow mice, the same treatment treat-ment as for gophers can be used, or the poison material can be sown broadcast in the places where the mice are thickest. Care must be used in any case not to allow chickens, stock or ohildren to get at the poison grain. Care should also be taken, that the vessel in which the strychnine strych-nine mixture is made is not used for cooking food until- thoroughly cleansed." Exterminate the Pests. Tbe county board of commissioners at their regular session iu February concluded to disoontinue the paying of bounty on gophers, etc., and instead in-stead furnish the farmers who wish it, and who are trustworthy, the necessary neces-sary supply of poison, free of cost, for destroying the pests. It would seem the bounty method is unsatisfactory in its results and the method of poisoning pois-oning it is believed will prove the more efficieut way of asoomplishing their destruction. Commissioner Madsqn states he is prepared to supply the needed ingredients ingre-dients to responsible applicants at any time now. A communication from, Prof E- D. Ball of the agricultural agricul-tural college to the county clerk suggests sug-gests a suitable formula and the macner in which to apply it. The letter in part here follows : "I am inclined to believe that the paying of bounty on ground dogs, gophirs, squirrels, etc, as you sug gest, is not the best method of handling handl-ing the pests. It has been demonstrated demon-strated conclusively in a sumber of cases, that the same amount of money expended in hiring efficient men to use the best known methoda of ester-mination. ester-mination. has brought about much better results, with the same, or less outlay, The best method of handling handl-ing each one of these pests will vary with local conditions, time of year, stc. "In general, the best method of handling the ground dog is by poisoning pois-oning in the spring when they first appear. At this time vegetation is scarce, and they are hungry, and they Usually will take most any food provided pro-vided for them and then there is the added advantage that at this time they ars small iu numbers, and evsry one destroyed will prevent the briug-ing briug-ing foith of a large brood of progeny later in the sjason ; also labor ischeap-er, ischeap-er, and it is much easier to see the holes and runways. After the grain is beginning to ripen is, of course, the time the moct damage is done by these pests, and by at that time, with pleuty of grain in the fields, it is practically prac-tically useless to attempt to use grain to poison them. "The standard method of poisoning poison-ing is to use one ounce of strychnine dissolved in a quart of boiling water, and theu one half bushel cf cracked wheat, or eveu whole wheat, is soaked in this liquid until all has been absorbed. ab-sorbed. Then while the wheat is still damp, a mixture of flour and sugar is stirred in, so that every grain of wheat i.-i coated over with the flour and sugar, making about teu pounds of flour to tbjee pounds of sugar. This conceals the taste, of the strychnine strych-nine and makes a sugar-coated pill an it were. This poison materia 1 is theD distributed, a small amount iu the runways of the dogs, and if this is done very earlj in the seisou in usually usu-ally quite effjetive, A scoud appli- satiou is sometimes nece3snry to kill i e |