Damage and Damage Identification

The mink, Mustela vison.

Mink may occasionally kill domestic poultry around farms. They typically kill their prey by biting them through the skull or neck. Closely spaced pairs of canine tooth marks are sign of a mink kill.

Mink will attack animals up to the size of a chicken, duck, rabbit, or muskrat. While eating muskrats, a mink will often make an opening in the back or side of the neck and skin the animal by pulling the head and body through the hole as it feeds. Like some other members of the weasel family, mink occasionally exhibit “surplus killing” behavior (killing much more than they can possibly eat) when presented with an abundance of food, such as in a poultry house full of chickens. Mink may place many dead chickens neatly in a pile. Mink can eat significant numbers of upland nesting waterfowl or game bird young, particularly in areas where nesting habitat is limited.

Legal Status

Mink are protected furbearers in most states, with seasons established for taking them when their fur is prime. Most states, however, have provisions for landowners to control furbearers which are damaging their property at anytime of the year. Check with your state wildlife agency before using any lethal controls.

Economics of Damage and Control

Although an individual incident of mink predation can be costly, overall the problem is not very significant to agriculture. Mink damage control on a case-by-case basis generally can be justified from a cost/benefit standpoint, but large-scale control programs are neither necessary nor desirable. Exclusion procedures may or may not be economically justifiable, depending on the severity of the problem and the amount of repairs needed. Normally, such costs can be justified for a recurring problem when amortized over the life of the exclusion structures. Usually damage from other predators and rodents is reduced as well.

Mink are important semiaquatic carnivores in wetland wildlife communities, and are also valuable as a fur resource. About 400,000 to 700,000 wild mink are harvested each year throughout North America, for an annual income exceeding $5 million. Therefore, all lethal control should be limited to specific instances of documented damage.