Elaine, I gave up on moles because they are too hard to trap, I dont like destroying their food supply and I dont like poison. I just invest in extra mower blades and dust masks and ride over a lawn that looks like it has varicose veins. I know that is not much help, but at least it lets you know you are not alone.

Larry

A good young male cat who is a couple of years old (so he is young and active), is neutered (so he'd rather hunt varmints than chase after females in heat) and has a strong hunting instinct (hard to know ahead of time) is what has worked best for us. Generally if you can get a kitten or young cat that has been raised in a barn by a mama barn cat, it will be a good hunter. If we didn't have cats at our place, we'd be overrun by rodents and other varmints. They generally only control them on the 2 or 3 acres closest to the house, but that's fine....we don't spend a lot of time on the remaining acreage anyway so don't care if the critters are out there.

If you're sure they are moles and not pocket gophers or voles, then if you can rid your property of the grubs they eat, that will be a tremendous help. We put down milky spore powder in August following the package directions either our first or second year here and never had a mole problem again. We still have voles or pocket gophers attempt to come back into the lawn or garden every now and then, but our pet cats get them pretty quickly after they pop up.

On a couple of occasions, I've used the repellents that contain castor oil to get them out of the fenced vegetable garden when they have crept into it on the one side that has sandy soil along the fence line. It would be a lot harder to clear them off a whole acre....it seems like it would take an incredible amount of castor oil to spray that large of an area. I'd still try, using a castor oil product to gradually push them farther and farther from the lawn around the house. Be sure you read and follow the label directions. If you spray the whole area at once, they can go nuts and tunnel wildly in all directions, which doesn't do your lawn any favors and doesn't get rid of them either. You want to apply it in one area first, and then keep applying it, over time, in a band next to the previously treated area in order to push them further and further out in one direction over time. The first time I treat the garden, I just treat the area where they are. I treat from that area all the way to the nearest fence. The second time I treat, I treat that area again plus a 5-10' band of land just outside the garden fence. I've never had to treat more than a couple of times in one year. It is likely that once they are out in the open lawn areal, it is easier for our cats to lay in wait and kill them.

They have not been as big of a problem here as they are in your yard. This is our 15th spring here, and I think I've only had to work to eradicate them in 2 separate years. We have mostly clay soil which might not be as user-friendly to burrowing animals as sandy soil or sandy loam would be.

Dawn

I am worrying about the poison. My dog ate a nasty thing out of my compost which is not compost done properly. He was fine that afternoon playing with the other dog and running. When I called him to come in that evening he was trembling and drooling and wild eyed. It scared me to death and cost $300 for emergency treatment and overnight in the hospital. I know it isn't the same but a pet could somehow get the poison - mine digs up voles all the time and spends his time looking for them and listening to them in the ground. Please be careful.

Larry, varicose veins is exactly how I would describe it!

Is castor oil harmful to dogs? I know the actual plant is very toxic.

I agree with helenh...that's why I'm so wary of using any kind of chemical or spray. Our dog is quite valuable as both a working dog and pet and if anything happened to him, we would be devastated.

I think my best bet is to mimic Larry - try to trap as best we can and just ignore the rest. At least we are at the end of a dead end road - not many people see our shoddy looking lawn!

Helen, I am glad your dog survived that health crisis. We have a lot of dogs and cats and that's why we don't use the poison pellets here.

Elaine, It is the seeds of the castor bean plant that are incredibly toxic since they contain ricin. The plants themselves, or the oil, are not an issue. In fact, castor oil USP is an ingredient in soap (even some hobby or artistic/crafty soapmakers use castor oil in their soaps) and is used as a substitute for cocoa butter in some chocolate. You'll likely never see castor oil on a label though, as they use a chemical name for the formulation of oil they use in chocolate.

I grow several varieties of castor bean plants as ornamental plants and have done so ever since we moved here, though I don't necessarily grow them every year. I've never had a dog or cat even chew on a leaf as far as I know, and none of our animals have mysteriously dropped dead. Sometimes deer eat the leaves of the castor bean plants as well as the leaves of the datura (I feel like they have to be desperately hungry to eat either of these two plants), and I haven't ever found a dead deer lying in the yard either. The level of ricin found in the foliage is very low compared to the level in the seeds.

The processed castor oil we purchase in the USA is from oil extracted from the seeds, which resemble beans although they are not true beans. The oil from the seeds is soluble in oil but not in water.

Would I let my animals be around the seeds of this plant? No. I start the plants from seed in paper cups with bird netting placed over it so that a dog or cat cannot chew up the cup of soil-less mix and accidentally eat the seed. They've never done such a thing with any plants, but the cats love to nip off young bean plants and eat them (well, humans eat bean sprouts so why not cats, I guess), so I keep the seedlings well-protected so the pets cannot accidentally ingest the seed.

Some people who grow castor bean as an ornamental just remove the flower heads and dispose of them in the trash after the plants have bloomed. That ensures pets or children won't get their hands on the seeds. In order to gather seed to use the following year, I sometimes do let the plants set seed late in the season, but I watch the plants carefully and when the capsules are starting to split open, I cut off the flower stalk off the plant and put it someplace out of reach of the pets so the seeds can dry. I haven't saved any seed in several years, so this year I purchased seeds to plant.

I also don't plant the castor bean plants near the fenced dog yard, which is where are dogs spend almost all their time when they're outside. The only time they are out of the dog yard, we are with them and we take them out in the back pasture to run and play....and I don't grow castor beans there.

In general I garden organically, though I've used Roundup a few times and it certainly is not organic. I don't even use some organic pesticides due to their toxicity. Just because a pesticide is organic in nature instead of being synthetic does not make it safe. However, I use mole and gopher repellent products that contain castor oil with no fear whatsoever.

Keep in mind that the castor oil only repels the moles and gophers---it does not kill them. The use of these repellents is considering a humane method of controlling the targeted pests....more humane, for example, than killing them.

Dawn

Thanks Dawn! This makes me feel so much better! Is there a particular castor oil product you would recommend?