It seems awfully early to me. We have been missing some hens. I set traps around the chicken pen and caught a opossum. It seems wasteful not to skin the opossum after dispatching. So I figured what the heck for 50 cents I would skin it. Surprisingly to me it had six babies in it’s pouch. Seems early to me.
What do you think?

Nope not to early when you consider they give birth way early in what would be a normal gestation for a mammal and complete gestation in the pouch.

The opossum is a marsupial.

I had the same problem used the same solution. Only I just tossed the opossum in the ditch. That's when I saw the babies wiggle and a few came out of the pouch. I was surprised then felt a little bad tell I remembered my lost chickens. I emptied the mag of my mark 2 and went on my way.

Yep I did this with a possum we caught in out yard kinda felt bad till I thought about having quail and turkeys around.

Not too early down here. I joked with a landowner I was gonna charge him per possum when I caught a female with about 6 babies crawling out of the pouch...7 possums in one trap, lol!! I dispatch them all.

Exactly

Know a guy that had his grandkids down from Chicago for a couple weeks, thinking the last of May. He and the 3 kids was walking down a country road when they walk up on a road kill possum. They stand looking at it when the dead possum starts moving. About a half dozen live possums and some dead ones underneath. Kids say Grandpa we can't leave them, so go get a box and take them home and set up a possum nursery, all went fine til kids had to leave after a couple weeks. So Gramps starts lookin for a possum shelter. Finally finds an animal shelter that will gladly take them, and its only 55 miles away. So he loads the possums and kids up and heads to the shelter. Get there at closing and unloads the possums and ready to leave when the gal says, Sir there is a $75 dollar fee. What? No body told me. He had $60 cash, gave that to her and said he would send the rest.

Several lessons there, never roll a dead moving possum over while in the presense of kids. Never feed the wildlife, bad stuff can happen, never make contact with any thing that says humane without asking the cost, never take kids to the final destination because at that time you are locked in to the point of no return. And finally never promise to pay $15 you have no intention of ever paying, watching over your shoulder for the possum collections agency just ain't worth it.

That's good stuff there.

And skinning possums are still worth money!