Chickens are nasty little critters. It's been half a century, but I can still smell our chicken coop. The cold didn't seem to bother them, but an Oklahoma summer was definitely hard on them. But on the plus side, I took a lot of fur with a board-leaning-against-the-chicken-house set. Enough to pay for their feed, anyway.

If you're having a problem with skunks or 'possums (I don't even know if you have 'possums in your neck of the woods), a recipe for a good bait can be found here .

There are no fur buyers who will buy skunks on-the-carcass or "green skinned," so if you want to sell their pelts you'll have to skin them, flesh them, and stretch and dry them yourself. And if you do have 'possums in your area, they're most likely not worth skinning anyway. But you can always extract the skunk scent with a hypodermic needle and store it in a clean glass jar. Just about any lure manufacturer will buy it, and sometimes the essence is worth more than the pelt itself.

Onward and upward,
airforce