OT: voles

[sodly]

Sorry for the OT but does anyone know how to rid oneself of voles? They've burrowed under the snow drifts/piles in my yard and when they finally melted recently my lawn was completely torn up with trails and nests where the piles were. Only seems to happen where the snow piles sit a long time (like most of the winter). Thanks.

 

[riverbend]

Voles are hard to get rid of.

You can try making a trap. It is just a box with a removeable lid and a couple of mouse sized holes in opposite sides. Put an unbaited mouse trap in the box right in front of each hole. Set the trap with the holes lined up on the voles run way. Remove dead voles every day.

If they are just in the lawn, the track will not be noticeable once the grass starts to grow.

Greg

 

[Rod in Smiths Falls, ON]

Encourage your local coyote to visit. I watched one inhale at least a dozen on an amble across a field last summer. He was avoiding me as I rotary-mowed, but he stopped and ate every mouse he encountered.

 

[Gene Dotson]

Voles, or field mice as we call them, are harmless critters. They will not invade buildings and they eat a lot of insects. Good exercise for dogs and cats.
They are not a pest like their long tailed mice... Gene

 

[Jerry/MT]

We just finished a run of vole damage last year.Voles are sexually mature at 8 weeks I believe and then have a litter of 4-6 every 6 weeks. The populations build up and then some disease hits them and they have a big die off.

In the mean time, with huge populations, the last couple of years of the cycle they do a lot of damage. I had 12 ft diameter spots in my pasture that looked like they were disked up,lost fruit trees,lawn all torn up and full of holes wife"s flower beds damaged, garden damaged,etc. Every fence post had owl pellets or whitewash from hawks who were eating them as fast as they could. Seagulls were among the most voracious vole eaters. They"d eat til they couldn"t fly! And that didn"t make a dent in the population.

I made bait stations out of "T" PVC fittings and 1-1/2 PVC pipe and got a private pesticide applicators license so I could buy poisoned oats which T placed in the feeders and down the holes in the lawn. It knocked them back around the house and minimized the damage but they suddenly disappearaed in Spring and they don"t cause much dmage at all now. Its pretty hard to get rid of them with their population dynamics but you can control them in local areas with poison oats. Do a web search under "voles" and you can get some info on the critters and the plans for the bait stations. Good Luck!

 

[Anonymous-0]

Gene, they most definitely can be pests. I planted about 800 pine trees 3 years ago. Most of them lived and took off growing. Last spring I checked them and something had stripped the bark off every one of them from the ground to about 3 inches up. Voles. They all died. The trees that is. Not the Voles. Voles come in cycles. Some years you see hundreds of them and other years there are not many. The cyotes like the years they are plentyful.

 

[VaTom]

I garden in raised beds. Come fall, the tall plants get pulled and glass goes over the lower greens. Fresh greens all winter, down to single digit temps.

A few years ago voles found their way in. Toasty warm, salad outside the front door, doesn't get much better, eh?

JuicyFruit gum works well. Remember when your mom said not to swallow the gum? Vole intestines are pretty small, get clogged easily. I use a pack every few weeks to keep them under control. Been doing this for a few years.

Read that bubble gum works also, but my voles didn't like it. I make a cylinder of the gum, drop it down the holes. Couple days later, no activity.

 

[SparepartsTN]

Sodly,

My little female Rat Terrier has just volunteered to clean out your supply of voles! She spends a lot of time digging them out of my fields while we are walking out there, lots of experience, proven worker, loves her self appointed job. :<)

Warren

 

[jwal10]

In the bad years we broadcast bait with a fertilizer spreader....James