Two hours after strychnine arrived at a Regina manufacturing centre on
May 27 from India via Montreal, it was being turned into a usable
formulation for Saskatchewan farmers.
The poison was expected to be shipped to Saskatchewan rural
municipalities two days later, where it would be available to farmers
to kill Richardson’s ground squirrels, more commonly called gophers,
said Don Punga, president of Maxim Chemicals International Ltd., which
is supplying Saskatchewan municipalities with strychnine.
The strychnine will be enough to produce 750 cases of 24,250 millilitre
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bottles of two percent liquid strychnine. Saskatchewan RMs had ordered
2,600 cases, which they mix with grain and sell to farmers.
Brian Peirce with Nu-Gro Corp. of Brantford, Ont., said his company’s
strychnine shipment was also expected to arrive this week and will be
available to Alberta farmers by the first week of June.
While Alberta farmers are waiting, the latest strychnine batch is
expected to fill only five to 10 percent of the orders placed by the
province’s counties and municipal districts.
Dale Harvey, assistant executive director of the Saskatchewan
Association of Rural Municipalities, said while SARM tossed around the
possibility of giving the strychnine to areas with the biggest gopher
problem, it decided to send a little to every RM.
“It’d be pretty tough to determine which areas needed it most.”
Punga said it’s not too late to use strychnine. In previous years,
before liquid strychnine was taken off the market, June was considered
the prime time for killing gophers.
