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How To Treat Lawn For Voles

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What Good Are Voles

How to get rid of Moles and Voles in your lawn

In addition to acting as a food source for larger animals, voles may benefit your lawn and garden. Like moles, their digging improves soil quality and disperses nutrients. They also encourage the growth of beneficial mycorrhizal fungi, symbiotic species that perform a critical function in the root systems of trees.

Utilize Motion Sensor Lights Alarms And Water Sprinklers

Many times, pest animals can be scared away from your yard using bright lights, loud noises, or predator scents.

Voles? Well, they could care less about anything strange going on. Motion sensor lights, alarms, radios, wind chimesthey just dont phase a vole!

This could be because they live such short lifespans that they dont have time to learn of frightening devices. Most voles only live about 1 year. It could also be their high reproductive rate that allows these creatures to adapt quickly to changing environments.

If youd like to learn more about using these devices to deter voles, you can read our guide on using motion sensor lights to deter animals and wildlife here.

Ultrasonic And Vibration Devices

These devices usually operate by motion detection, only coming on when a vole scurries by. They emit a high-frequency noise audible only to rodents, while the vibration devices stick into the ground and cause a disturbance that the voles can feel as theyre running. Both devices will scare the voles away, but you may need to purchase more than one depending on the extent of the runways.

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Step 5 Use Repellents

There are also repellent products that you can use to get rid of voles. You can buy commercial repellent products or make an all-natural one yourself using various spices and oils.

You should keep in mind that if you’re using an essential oil-based repellent, some of your plants may die. The same thing happens with commercial repellents, even if they are organic. The good thing is that once the voles leave your yard, you can remove the repellent product and plant replacement will be easy.

If you want to use an all-natural repellent, here’s what you should do:

  • 1. Mix water, soap, cinnamon, cloves, peppermint oil, and castor oil.
  • 2. Spray this liquid around your yard in the places where voles are commonly found. Shake well before use.
  • 3. If you’re not satisfied with the repellent’s strength, add more of any ingredient until you get the desired result. You can also experiment on your own to find out what gives you the best result.
  • 4. Put brambles and rose shrubs near your garden – voles don’t like thorns and prickles.
  • 5. As a last resort, you can use electronic repellents designed to keep animals away from your yard. However, be sure that the devices are well hidden so that you don’t scare away the ones who are beneficial to your garden.

You can also make a homemade repellent using peppermint oil, which voles dislike. You will need:

  • 10 drops of peppermint oil

Get Rid of Voles Naturally with Plants

What Is A Home Remedy To Get Rid Of Voles

How to Get Rid of Voles ( The most useful Method)

Apart from the multitude of over-the-counter products like VoleX and Vole Scram, there are a few DIY remedies you could make at home. Mix spicy peppers, dish soap, and water into a bottle, then spray vole hotspots and affected landscaping. Another excellent technique is the use of castor oil on plants and vulnerable greenery. Both of these mixtures deter voles from chewing through your garden and help to remove them from the yard.

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How Voles Damage Lawns And Gardens

Voles can burrow into the root systems of landscaping shrubs and trees, causing young specimens to lean or to experience dieback. These rodent pests will also gnaw on a tree’s trunk and at the base of a shrub. In addition, voles damage the roots of perennials such as hosta plants, spring bulbs, and the root crops in the garden, such as potatoes. Mainly, however, voles eat the stems and blades of grass. And the runways they leave behind in the process make for an unsightly lawn.

Voles look like a cross between a mouse and a hamster, with lush fur and small, rounded ears. There are over 100 vole species, and most types measure between 4 and 8 inches long and have brown or gray fur. They weigh only about two ounces but can eat their body weight in a single day.

Learn How To Identify Their Damage

Gnaw marks are a telltale sign.

The gnaw marks and girdling damage that voles cause are similar to those caused by many other species of wildlife, particularly rabbits. Because of the voles small size and inconspicuous nature, vole damage is often blamed on other species. Vole girdling is characterized by nonuniform gnaw marks at various angles in irregular patches. In contrast, rabbits clip branches with neat, clean cuts. Vole gnaw marks are about 1/8 inch wide and 3/8 inch long gnaw marks from rabbits are usually larger. Careful examination of the damage can help identify the perpetrator, although often all youll see is that something has eaten the roots of your plants.

The most prominent sign of vole damage in yards and fields is their extensive runway systems. Runways are an inch or so wide, and vegetation is often clipped close to the ground next to well-traveled routes. You may also notice small holes used for entry to the surface. These are generally located at the beginning or end of the tunnel system.

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How Do I Know I Have Voles In My Yard

The type of damage voles do to your yard is easy to distinguish from mole and gopher damage. Voles create a crisscross system of tunnels that help them travel through your yard in search of food. Their burrows will look like a lot like cracks on the surface of your lawn. You will also notice holes throughout your yard. Voles create golf ball-sized holes, and this is where they enter and exit the tunnels.

What Good Are Moles

Lawn Care Tips: Voles

It may be hard to envision anything good about moles, especially if youâve twisted your ankle in a mole tunnel. However, moles do provide a valuable service when it comes to soil management. Their tunneling loosens soil and provides aeration. It also causes soils to shift, blending surface soil with deeper sub-soil and improving overall soil quality. Additionally, moles consume numerous invertebrate pests. They are hearty eaters, consuming up to 100% of their body weight daily. So, while you may need to move moles out of your lawn, take consolation that they may have eaten a good share of Japanese beetle grubs.

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How To Tell If You Have Vole Damage

Before we get ahead of ourselves, lets make sure were actually dealing with voles. After all, moles, shrews, and mice are small, darting critters as well. This is an important step because what deters voles will not be the same for mice, shrews, or moles.

Lets dive into the underground world of voles and see what vole damage really looks like!

Voles In The Landscape

Voles are often implicated in damage to young trees and woody ornamentals. Chewing by voles at the base of unprotected stems can cause girdling and result in significant dieback and even plant death. In gardens, voles have been observed to gnaw on roots and crowns causing damage to plants such as parsley and celery. As turf pests are concerned, voles are among the vertebrate pests most likely to cause turf damage. Notable damage to turf most commonly occurs during the winter season under snow.

Winters with lasting snow cover provide relative protection from predators, and voles enjoy the freedom to construct elaborate and frequently-used runway systems within the turf canopy. Daily vole activity normally consists of many short forays from the nest to seek food along these runways.

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How To Get Rid Of Voles Humanely

Voles are social animals that typically live in colonies, so if you think you have a vole, you probably have many. The best way to completely get rid of vole populations is by employing several control methods at once. Below, Havahart® provides more information about control methods as well as other helpful tips to protect your yard and garden from vole damage.

Ridding Your Lawn Of Vole Infestations

Prevent vole hole &  runway damage to your garden or crops!

Traps are generally the best DIY method of getting rid of voles in your lawn, but you have to be very careful to position the traps correctly. If you do and you secure them so they dont blow away in the wind or wash away in the rain.

That means putting the traps on runways used by the mice and setting them with the trigger in the mouses path of approach. You dont actually have to bait the traps if they are set correctly in the vole hole, but a little PB, cream cheese, or other favorite rodent food certainly wont hurt!

In the wild , voles eat roots, insects, seeds, snails, and slugs. But they are constantly foraging day and night and will eat almost anything any other mouse would eat, so no need for special baits for voles.

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Rid Your Yard Of Voles In Four Easy Steps:

1. When ridding your yard of voles, it is important to first be sure that your yard is, in fact, inhabited by the creatures. According to All State Animal Control, the signs of vole infestation are as follows:

Trails running throughout a yard. An abundance of green vole droppings that later turn gray if they are left to dry. Flowers, plants, and trees that appear as if they are being eaten by a small animal. A number of small holes throughout a yard. These holes are entrances to underground tunnels used by the voles.

These signs, which can also be viewed at www.AllStateAnimalControl.com, are indicative of a vole infestation. In addition, it is important to be sure that moles are not the problem. Moles do not eat plants. Therefore, if plants and gardens are being eaten, then voles are the problem. While moles also burrow and dig tunnels, they do not eat plants or destroy gardens, which is why many people choose to simply leave them alone.

4. Once the voles have been removed, the yard should then be vole-proofed. This can be done by simply getting a cat to patrol the area. However, if the homeowner is not in need of an additional pet, other measures can be taken. Place wire wages around the case of trees to limit a voles food source. In addition, homeowners that frequently suffer from vole infestations may want to enlist the help of a gardener. By cleaning up a yard, voles will be less likely to find the area a suitable place to infest.

Common Species Of Voles

How To Identify:
  • Adults can reach up to 10, including their tail
  • Tail encompasses almost 30% of their length and can make them difficult to distinguish from mice
  • Dark hair, usually ranging from gray to black
  • Found throughout the western U.S. and Canada
  • Less particular with their habitat than their cousin species and have been found in grassy areas, meadows, forests, and banks against bodies of water
  • Active year-round, but are mainly nocturnal
  • Not known to construct underground tunnels, unlike other voles, therefore less of a property damage issue

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Choosing The Right Vole Extermination Method

Many people immediately think of the best vole poison when they want to get rid of voles, but thats not usually a good idea. Poison could end up affecting your cat or dog or the neighbors. And it can kill harmless wildlife too, besides possibly being a hazard to small children playing in the yard.

Also, the dead carcasses left behind by poisoned bait could be eaten by cats or hawks and hurt them. Or, it could just sit around hidden in your grass and rot, spreading disease.

What should you do then?

Your major vole extermination and removal methods are as follows:

  • Covered traps at vole-hole entrances. Use peanut butter to ensure your rodents can resist. But its hard to catch a whole group of voles with traps set in one location, so this method has its limits.
  • Use vole repellents as soon as you notice the infestation. And plug up all the vole holes. This is a hit-and-miss method, but its worth a shot at least. Further details can be found here.
  • Introduce a cat into your vole infested area. Cats, and the mere smell of cat, can often drive voles away.
  • Use a catch and release trap that holds numerous mice at once. A trap door style contraption that lets voles in but not out can be placed by a vole hole.
  • Contact a vole exterminator. Voles are difficult to remove, and you might end up having to call in the professionals.

If you want to know how to get rid of voles naturally, click on the link for more information.

Identify Areas Of Damage

Lawn Care Tips: Voles

It’s likely that the voles in your lawn are concentrated to an area about 1/4 acre in size. By identifying the vole damage on your property, you can better pinpoint where the voles are living and where to focus.

Common signs of damage include:

  • surface runways: irregular paths of clipped and trampled grass or soil, about 1-2″ in width
  • burrow entrances: clean, round holes about 1.5″ in diameter, often in line with surface runways
  • delayed or halted fruit production in trees: indicative of root damage caused by girdling
  • girdled bark/stems: irregular gnaw marks about 1/8″ wide, 3/8″ long and 1/16″ deep along the very bottom of trees or plants.

TIP: The amount of vole damage in your yard may also indicate how large your vole population is. Keep this in mind when choosing a control method.

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Rodent Bark Chewing In Winter

Voles and rabbits probably damaged the bark on this unprotected pussywillow. Use tree guards or fine hardware mesh around the trunks and stems of young trees and shrubs to deter them.

Voles and rabbits probably damaged the bark on this unprotected pussywillow. Use tree guards or fine hardware mesh around the trunks and stems of young trees and shrubs to deter them.

Protect your trees. Surround your trees with fine mesh tree guards, burying the bases in the ground. Keep the guards loose enough to let the trees grow.

Put up a physical barrier. Fence your garden with 1/4-inch mesh hardware cloth. Bury it six to 10 inches deep in the ground and let it extend at least one foot above the ground.

Try a natural remedy. Some gardeners swear by putting mothballs into vole burrows or mixing irritants like garlic and ammonia with water and spraying them in the entrances. The downside is that these wash away in the rain and have to be reapplied.

Apply predator urine. Some garden centers and nurseries sell the urine of predators like coyotes and foxes, which is said to repel voles.

Exterminate voles with mouse traps or poison baits. Do this as a last resort, and do not use poisons or any kind of traps around pets or children.

Need more help? Call a wildlife control professional to get rid of pesky moles and voles.

Ways To Get Rid Of Voles

If voles are already damaging your landscaping and exclusion and prevention measures have been unsuccessful, you may need to consider vole eradication. Voles can be removed humanely from a yard using live traps or exterminated with mouse traps or bait traps . They can also be deterred by fencing and driven away with vole repellents.

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Killing Moles Using Poison Baits

The development of poison baits that resemble the mole’s food havebecome quite popular. Many professional are now using these in additionto traps. The price is the biggest problem with these products. Talpiridis the name of a product used by many professionals, but comes with aprice tag of around $60.00 a box. Homeowners can also purchase and useTalpirid.

Other manufacturers, such as Tomcat, offer a similar product for less than half that price.

Read the directions carefully before using. Gloves should be worn when handling the bait.

Placing the Baits

Followthe same methods listed above for finding an active tunnel. Afterfinding the active tunnels, make a small quarter sized hole in the topof the tunnel and drop a worm into it. Make sure the worm is completelyin the tunnel and then cover the hole with dirt. You find it easier toplace a small rock over the hole first, then cover the rock with dirt toblock out all light from entering the tunnel.

Ithelps to mark the drop location with a landscape flag, rock or stick.After a couple of days you can check to see if the worm has been eaten. Ihave used a lot of these baits and found worms to be completely missingor partially eaten.

Good Luck! Please write to me and tell me if you are having success or if you have found a better way of killing moles. We can share your results with other readers.

Voles Cause Garden Damage

Pin on lawn pests

Damage to your garden vegetables is a little less specific than spotting runways or tree damage. Voles like to eat a lot of the same stuff as other garden raiders like rabbits, deer, raccoons, and skunks.

According to the University of California, some of a voles fav foods include cauliflower, lettuce, tomato, and carrots, among others.

If youre not sure what youre dealing with, try to look for other signs of voles. Are there tracks? Droppings? Runways? These could all help in identifying if its really a vole raiding your garden, and not some other uninvited guest.

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