1) Fencing: Trees can be protected by wrapping heavy mesh hardware cloth, sheet metal or a few layers of chicken wire around the base of a tree to a height of one metre, to prevent winter snow chewing. The fence generally does not need to be anchored to the ground, and the bottom can be cut to fit a sloping ground, or to protect prominent roots from chewing. Leaving a few inches of space between the tree and the wire allows for tree trunk growth. Replace as needed with a larger diameter cylinder to allow for trunk expansion.
2) Homemade Repellents:
a) Abrasive Tree Paint (Textual Repellent): It is advisable to make only in small batches of the paint at a time on the day you are going to apply it. Using too much sand will cause the mixture to roll off the tree. Apply paint to bottom three to four feet of tree trunk. For best results, do not paint every tree, leaving some for beaver food. This formula does not work for saplings, so protect them with wire fencing. To reduce the conspicuousness of the repellent, it is usually possible to get the paint tinted to match the colour of the tree if you bring a sample of the tree bark to your local hardware store.
Ingredients
Paint: Exterior Latex (choose a color to match the bark)
Mason Sand (30 mil or 70 mil)
Formula Mix 5 oz sand per quart of paint, or
Mix 20 oz sand per gallon of paint, or
Mix 140 gm sand per liter of paint
b) Aversive Taste Repellents: Cayenne Pepper: Vegetable or mineral oil infused with cayenne pepper and then painted on the tree trunks has also been reported as an effective means of preventing beaver chewing.
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