absolutely! and you'll get a good laugh: dog waste! Just drop the poop anywhere in the run or at the entrance. It contaminates the run and they're gone. I was overrun with gophers. My property is an extensive highway system. I've tried every trick on the web. But new gophers move right back into the convenience of the tunnels. I let my dog dig out the entrance to the tunnel and dropped waste in from her yard then covered it up with dirt. Gone! In a totally different section of the yard there was a grouping of dirt piles but the dog wouldn't dig it out...so I just moved the loose dirt over and dumped in on the area and watered it in: gone! Then I got what I thought might be a 'vole'... (the tunnel wasn't as deep as a gopher but not as high as a mole): headed into my rose bed. Just opened up the obvious spot and dumped waste in: gone. To them the territory is completely contaminated, I don't think they'll be back.

Well, duh! What a logical solution! Thanks so much for passing it on - I'll try it tomorrow! With 4 dogs, I've got plenty of "repelent" to work with! :)

Has anybody tried Milky Spore?

I have read that what the moles/voles are doing is eating grubs. If you can eliminate the grubs, the moles/voles go elsewhere. Milky Spore is a disease that will infect and kill grubs. The infected grubs infect other grubs, so one application lasts several years. I put some down a couple of weeks ago. I've seen evidence of tunneling in my neighbor's yard, but *so far* not mine. I'm sure the Milky Spore hasn't had time to work, so I'm hoping the critter will not venture in my yard. It has sure torn up the ground where it is. One year it got into my raised beds and uprooted everything.

My dog, over the years, has pooped on every square inch of my back yard, except where the raised beds are. We pick up after him but not immediately. But most years whatever residue that has soaked into the ground has not deterred the moles/voles. Maybe it's not concentrated enough, though. If I see any tunnels I'll give your tip a try.

Here is a link that might be useful: Info on Milky Spore

We had a massive grub problem when we first moved here, so of course the skunks and armadillos dug up every inch of the yard to get to them. I applied Milky Spore and Beneficial Nematodes that first year and haven't had a problem since. That's not to say that we don't have some grubs--of course we do and we always will. But I'd say we have maybe 3-5% of what we had that first year, so we have practically none now compared to what we had then.

As for moles, voles, pocket gophers, etc., if you're in a rural to semi-rural area, you'll always have them to some extent. Our cats wiped them out the first year, but the surrounding pastures and woodlands are full of them, and they constantly try to move back into our yard and garden area. The cats, though, do their job and clear them out as soon as they try to move in.

So, I do think the Milky Spore worked and I'd use it again if I thought I needed to.

Dawn

Moles go for grubs & worms. I'm not so sure about voles or gophers. They seem to like to eat the roots of my plants. I lost about a bushel of Jerusalem Artichokes to them last year and our peach tree suddenly tipped over. They had eaten the roots of the tree on one side!

I think I'm going to try the dog poop thing.

George

Just for clarity, gophers eat only vegetation, voles (?) also eat vegetation (but are more like fat mice in appearance), and moles eat insects/grubs/etc. Gophers make the big mounds above the surface, moles make some small mounds but mainly make the pushed-up underground tunnels that are visible on the surface, and voles (?) make tunnels through thick grass and also beneath the surface. Gophers are large, moles are mid-sized, and voles are little in comparison.

Do I have all this right? I'd say I know a lot about gophers, some about moles, and little about voles, so I am mainly looking for clarification on voles.

There is often a lot of confusion about gophers and moles. Gophers are relatively easy to trap out of small areas. Moles are harder for me to get rid of. I am ignorant on voles.

I had about 300 rose bushes last year, and have now tossed about 100, but we plant them in hardware cages. It works for us. We live near a ravine, and they are everywhere - even though we are on the outskirts of a city.

If you would like to know how to do it, let me know.

SAmmy

Scott,

Some voles eat only vegetation but others eat vegetation and insects as well. There are about 70 different species of voles, and the ones we have like to nibble on underground tubers. They also try to nest in the mulch, but the cats put a halt to that nonsense pretty quickly.

Around here, the voles seems to be a major food sources for all kinds of wild animals. My cats will play with them and will kill them, but they don't usually eat them. They bring them to the door and sit there proudly, wanting you to admire their "kill".

Our cats wiped out the moles the first year here and they've never returned. The gophers keep trying to come back, but it doesn't seem to take much cat activity to discourage them. The voles probably will always be with us due to the wildness of our location near the Red River, but the cats keep the population at our place to a minimum. (When the cats run out of voles to "hunt" here, they go next door and search that property for voles.)

Dawn

I've not worried too much about moles since they don't do any damage to my plants. They are very unsightly, though, and I have many.

I guess voles are not a problem for me either, although there are rodents everywhere when I brush hog each summer.

Gophers are so destructive I have become somewhat of an expert on them. I now only lose one or two trees per year to them, and I only trap 5 to 10 each year. In my first fall here, I trapped 106 (give or take a few) in Sept-Nov. I followed that up with about 40 more the next year. Now I have the front 8 acres cleared. I enjoyed the death of every one, although they are a little bit cute.

Scott, do please share your technique!

George

I think what is in my neighbor's yard is a vole. But not sure. We found one dead on the sidewalk a couple of years ago and it was small. I worry about my Jerusalem Artichokes that I planted last winter. I've been watching closely and there was only one showing green leaves on the ground surface for the longest time. Then two more, several days apart. I sure hope the little critter doesn't get into that.

My mother fought moles in her yard and gardens for years. She trapped one and it was lots bigger than a mouse. She tried poison peanuts and everything she heard of. But no one ever said anything then about grubs. My sister was married to a man whose family owned a greenhouse and he brought Mom a huge box full of tulip bulbs, which she joyfully planted and then lost them all. Next time, she dug a spot out and lined it with hardware cloth and then planted bulbs in there.

I have had some success with other traps, but the best gopher trap by far for me is a wood "gopher getter" box made by a guy in Henryetta and sold at Atwoods and various feedstores. I have about a 60% success rate per trap set. Other traps have only given me a 30% or so success rate. Don't get the knock-off wood trap made in China that Atwoods now sells. They are made really poorly in a couple of crucial ways.

It may sound strange, but every now and then a gopher's method of backfilling holes makes them immune to the traps. I had 3 different gophers avoid death for about 10 of 15 tries before I resorted to my final method: shotgun and waiting. I think that makes me a redneck!

That's OK, Scott. Anyone who thinks voles are a little bit cute (as I do also) can't be much of a redneck!

Thanks everyone for the great info!!

I have a friend in Broken Arrow, who works in exterminating. One time someone called him about exterminating a gopher in his front yard, which was damaging a tree. My friend set up to go as soon as he got through with some other commitments. But when the appointed day arrived, the fellow called and canceled. When asked about it, he replied that he no longer had a gopher problem. He had sat out in the front yard with a 9 mm. pistol and nailed the critter when it came out of the hole! Only in Oklahoma!

George

I have a bad case of voles. Last year was the first year I had them and they are going to town on all my beds. The largest bed I had to remove the few plants they left and till it up. My husband asked if I saw any voles , I said not but I am sure i made them mad. My question now is since I have tilled it all up what recautions can I take when I replant, or is there some thing I can add to the soil now to help change their mind about comming back?

George,

Well, around here the standard solution to most critter problems is a gun of one type or another, and I can't say that I blame anyone for using that approach. I can't imagine having the patience or the time, though, to sit and pick off small varmints one by one with a gun! Most folks here who have animals won't put out poison baits, and trapping the varmints in live traps means you still have to dispose of them, so that leaves either cats, killing-type traps or guns for rodent control. I prefer cats to killing-type traps or guns.

Tiny lady,

Voles can be very destructive. Your only choices are to fence them out, which is very difficult and requires the use of 1/4" hardware cloth, kill them or repel them. Most repellants don't work, in my opinion. (Cats work either by repelling them or killing them.)

How to fence them out varies depending on what you're planting. Sammy makes cages for her roses and places the cages in the ground when planting the roses so the critters cannot eat the roots of her roses. Some people plant bulbs in the same way.

If you have raised veggie or flower beds, you can line the beds with 1/4" hardware cloth to keep the voles from eating your plant roots, but you'll also need a fence around the bed to keep them from getting into it.

One of the main arguments for ridding your lawn, garden and landscape of voles and other small rodents is that, if you have those rodents present, snakes will come to eat them. If you have venomous snakes around you, you clearly don't want rodents in your yard that will attract the snakes. A lot of the ranchers here encourage black rat snakes to live in and around their barns because the rat snakes eat the rodents and take care of them for the ranchers. I don't use that approach, though, because the rat snakes will eat our chicks, keats (baby guineas), and both the chicken and guinea eggs.

Dawn

WEll since I have a clean slate this year I will use the wire mesh aproach. Each plant will get planted in wire cage.
Off to home depot to get wire mesh.

Max, it is funny what length people (such as me) will go to to protect something we have cared for. I had about 10 pecan seedlings come up on land that I bought, and then I planted about 10 more that I raised from seed. This was 5 years ago before our house was built. In the year we were building and the summer following, I lost all but 5 of these seedlings to gophers. It seemed like every week another would just fall over dead due to the roots being all eaten.

I have protected the remaining 5 as best I can since then. I battled two gophers for about a month as they made runs toward my (now grafted and larger) trees. The traps didn't work on these two specific gophers, and I had killed all of the other ones on the acreage. Finally one of them extended his tunnel about 20 feet one night right under one of my trees. I knew the taproot would be gone in 24 hours, so I exposed the tunnels of both gophers (two different sides of the property) one evening and would go back and forth to check each hole about every 30 minutes while doing yard work. When I saw that a gopher was plugging a hole, I sat and waited for the dirt to move a little and then fired off the shotgun directly into the plugged opening. I dug back a few feet and found the sucker. I was very pleased. The lives of my trees had been avenged! The next one soon followed.

If you had told me 10 years ago I would have been doing this, I would have said you were nuts (actually, I AM nuts.). But I'm not going to let a lovely 5-yr old pecan tree be destroyed overnight by some rodent, no matter what it takes.

I went out to get the wire for the pots today. That was no problem,but when i asked for hog rings peope looked at me like i was crazy. Dont't they make the little hog rings any more? I had to buy ties to hold the top to the bottom of the pot.

You men are hilarious! I wonder what creative ways you could come up with to outsmart these pea-brained creatures if guns were not available?! How about daschunds or terriers?? Aren't they supposed to be bred for digging critters out of the ground? If anyone wants to try it, I'm game for buying one and renting him out!

I didn't tell you the other things I tried before throwing up my hands and going with the shotgun method!!

Scott, you're a man after my own heart!

"When I saw that a gopher was plugging a hole, I sat and waited for the dirt to move a little and then fired off the shotgun directly into the plugged opening. I dug back a few feet and found the sucker. I was very pleased."

Yes, okiegardener, I bet those dogs would be a tremendous asset. My son and future daughter-in-law have a Kerry Blue Terrier. He's still a pup, but I think he could turn in to the most amazing exterminator. He has endless energy and it's plain that the breed was bred to kill rodents and vermin. It they weren't so doggone expensive I'd consider getting one. (Guess the other factor besides expense, would be the time involved to teach him that chickens and goats are not vermin.)

George

Sorry to call you Max, George! I think I've done that before also. I knew a Max that went to NSU there, so I guess my mind plays tricks on me when I see your user name.

I have been having trouble for years. Even have an exterminator put poison boxes out. But my best weapon has been a simple mousetrap. Think I got the idea from someone on Gardenweb. Bait a simple mousetrap with green apple (red apples doesn't work as well for some reason. Picky eaters when it comes to free apple but not free perennials.) Place the mouse trap right next to an active hole. Cover it with a nice size flower pot. (I use those black plastic gallon to 2 gallon nursery pots weighted down with a stone or brick). Caught 13 so far this season. The exterminator doesn't want to believe me, but I've been keeping track just so he knows he has competition. I've seen a drastic reduction in damage, but you still have to be vigilant. Some holes may have multiple voles in them so place the trap back after the first catch.