Skunks are a complex species. They are omnivorous in the winter but carnivores in the summer. Skunks are incredible diggers and have long claws that are hard and sharp. Their most common food is grubs which they eat on mass from spring to summer and even into the fall. They are a serious pest as their spray can continue to smell at eleven parts per million, an amount so tiny that no matter how hard you clean you will smell it for months.
Preventing skunks from coming on your property in the first place is the best way to avoid them entirely. While there are ways to get them out from under decks and sheds and other areas where they can burrow it can be expensive. Taking the situation by the horns and treating your lawn for grubs in the spring will save you a great deal of pain and suffering. Call Skunk Control for guaranteed skunk-proofing.
Skunks are generally nocturnal but during mating season which can last as long as February to march. That’s just mating season, however. The babies take another four to eight weeks t mature and until they do they stay with their mother. The mating process is frightening. The males will fight by spraying each other. They do not care if you are present in your family is having dinner or a barbeque. They will travel up to five miles, four times their normal travelling distance to find mates. These mates will then wait for the males to fight and if the wrong one wins they too will get a dose of the female’s spray. Skunks are fickle in love and are violent in their mating. If this happens on your property it is likely to cause your property to smell terrible for months or even years. Once this is over it is likely some of the skunks will try to stay on your property to raise their children. Mothers are aggressive and will spray at a moment’s notice if they think you are threatening their children.
Skunks come to your property for many reasons. Like all wild animals they eat garbage and other smaller animals but skunks are preferential to one type of insect species. They love grubs. The grub is an insect that lives in the soil just beneath your lawn. They eat the precious fluids of your grass turning it yellow. If you have a lawn with a flowing patchwork of yellow grass then you have grubs. While dogs can make grass yellow as well as other animals they tend to use a latrine structure, urinating and defecating in the same spot over and over. If the whole lawn is yellowing then you have grubs.
To resolve this you must do a grub lawn treatment in the spring. Treat your lawn with a low or zero nitrogen fertilizer and aerate it. That is the loud machine that punches holes in your lawn. Follow that up with a grub pest treatment, a domestic one is fine and you will never see another skunk on your property again.