Trapping feral mother and kittens

Need some advice please! There's a feral mother and her kittens hanging out at my old workplace, and we want to catch them.

A lady who works there was someone who was helping me with the TNR and she's putting food out for them every night for the moment. We can't trap until Monday night as Tuesday morning is the earliest we can get mum into the spay and neuter clinic.

Does anyone have any tips for catching them all? We're going to go out with multiple traps and a feral recovery cage for them. I'm not sure how old the kittens are. If the kittens are still tiny, is it better to wait until they're bigger and can survive without food while mum is undergoing surgery in case she gets stressed? Will she abandon them if we intervene? Should I plan to bottle feed/hand feed the babies?

Thanks!

I would trap them now....if the babies are tiny, you can have mom spayed and have her stay in a wire crate with her babies until they are older. The problem with waiting is that you could lose the opportunity to trap her at all.

Katie

Originally Posted by TNR1

I would trap them now....if the babies are tiny, you can have mom spayed and have her stay in a wire crate with her babies until they are older. The problem with waiting is that you could lose the opportunity to trap her at all.

Katie

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Do you think it's worth separating them now, and hand raising the kittens so they can be adopted out? Will that upset the mother too much if we take the kittens away?

Originally Posted by sarahp

Do you think it's worth separating them now, and hand raising the kittens so they can be adopted out? Will that upset the mother too much if we take the kittens away?

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Hey Sarah,

Of course it's best to keep mom and kittens together if at all possible...but only you will know whether it makes sense to try to confine mom for weeks or spay and release her now.

Katie