I'm new to trapping and had a question about avoiding barn cats. I recently lost four chickens and three cats, set up a trail cam and have seen a bobcat and a coyote around. Is my best bet a box trap to make sure I don't injure the barn cats? Or is there a better solution?

Snares.

Ive got a place I'm going to trap next season that has a similar problem but with foxes. My plan is to pen all the barn cats up in a kennel for a week or two and hit the place pretty heavy with footholds and catch as many predators as I can in that time.

if you mean cage traps, use fruity bait for the yotes, BUT, if you can get a yote in a cage, it's not common. Yes, on yearlings, but NOT on older yotes, typically.
Fruits won't attract cats,,,,,,,or bobcats. So you'll have to use lure or visual attractor hanging in the cage.
You could use footholds for both and set a higher pan tension so barn cats won't trip it.
If ya go with cage traps, barn cats will get trained to stay away once caught and you MAKE SURE, by shooting with squirt gun and shake the trap a bit, so they don't want to experience THAT again.

no telling whats killing them. you didn't give enough info. if your cats are running loose they need killing anyway. if your losing chickens here in ks it is legal to kill whatever is doing it. you can protect your livestock. my dad kept an old pump action 22 leaning up in a corner at the back door. that rifle saved a lot of chickens. coons are good for killing them too. whatever it is there are probably babies getting fed and if you don't get it killed it will continue till your out of chickens. owls and hawks prey on them too. rats are good at killing chicks if your raising any.

Cody come by as soon as you catch those fox. We will get them properly stretched.

Trapping with footholds in a farming community there is really no way to avoid barn cats. In many areas a lot of these cats turn into feral cats. They are like mice, they populate quite fast more so in the south where the winters are more friendly. Snaring is about the only way to avoid most. A ferral cat is one of the best predators there is and they need to be controlled also. JMO

I get more “brownie points” for a feral cat than anything else, lol.

Set your live traps catch all the barn cats you can. Once you catch one hose It down in the trap then shake It roll It around then let the cat go. It won't go into a live trap again.

It just might be your barn cats that are killing your chickens.

LOL, that's good Beav. I would have never thought of trying to teach a cat that.

I keep a dog leash in my truck on intown nuisance coons and opies. When I catch cats ill throw it over a tree limb and spin the cage till they get sick! watching them run off is worth the lose of them plugging up a trap!

Yeah I’ll do that for sure. I’ve got a couple Coyotes that I put up myself that I I would like you to look at sometime to see if I did them right. I’ve got them in the freezer right now.

Cats are interesting. Farmers tell me to take whatever and don’t worry about the cats. Farm wives, however, are a different story. Whatever you do, if there’s a missus involved, do your trapping discretely and out of sight from her.

[quote=dirtydogtrapping]Welcome to T-man,
Sounds like a bobcat problem.

2x. We lost 10+ cats to a bobcat last year, plus some chickens!

I answered this question on the ADC page once. My solution was the same as some of yours, give the cat a good shake and cut it loose. Funny thing was some guy there was selling his bait and poopooed on that solution. Glad to see I'm not the only one that does it this way.

I always make it a point to ask the landowner if he has any dogs or cats running loose before I start.

When I asked the owner of a farm I picked up last year that question he just said. "None that I like."

I thought that was pretty plain. I just said ok.