Discouraging voles

[starhorse]

Yep, voles. Not mice or moles. Definitely voles.

Their tunnels are tearing up the yard by the barn and some of their tunnels actually collapse under weight. I am constantly seeing them in the feed room. They go under the pallets under the hay and pull off the tips of the hay pieces and eat the seedy parts. I can sweep up every excess grain pellet daily but they seem happy to just chow on the hay, and obviously there’s no way to have no hay out in the barn.

We have tried mouse deterrent packs (before we realized they are voles). I see there are some stakes you can put in the ground online… Do they work? Other ideas?

Thanks all.

[walkinthewalk]

Subbing in case someone mentions something I haven’t tried:(

I once had a Lab/Red Heeler who would dig them out, kill them, and leave them for me to dispose of. He did a great job keeping their population down and I didn’t care how much of the yard he tore up going after them.

my current Rottweiler knows there is something under ground in the back yard. Her. nose is always covered in dirt when she comes in the house But she hasn’t dug deep enough yet.

[goodhors]

My barn cats present dead bodies of voles, mice, for praise. Trapping is one method of getting rid of them, not poison. Being bottom of the food chain, animals eating dead mice and voles also get poisoned or have their blood thinned enough, not clotting, to die from the poison.

I would try trapping them over putting out poison baits.

[SusanO]

I used to have them in droves - both meadow voles and pine voles that dig tunnels. I would plant tulip bulbs and the voles would get them just before they got big enough to bloom. My cat has thinned out the population. I have had some success trapping them. Google it. Basically I put out a chunk of apple ( or tulip bulb) in a Tomcat snap trap next to where one of their tunnels surface. Then I put a bucket or 5 gallon pot over the trap. This did get a few of them. My cats are bringing me lots of dead ones this Spring. YIPPEEE!!!

[Heinz_57]

Currently having this issue as well, though mostly in our front yard. I just read something the other day about a castor oil spray being a deterrent, I’ll have to go look it up again. We lost our barn cat last March and they seem to have exponentially multiplied since then, ugh.

[RedMaresRevenge10]

Honestly a motivated pet - cat or dog is the best answer. I got our labs to rat which is awesome, until one - bless her heart - ran flat out smack into the barn wall and knocked herself out. Now I rely on our cat, who is crazy about bringing us live-ish rodents then consuming them in front of us, ( whole may I add) with such happiness I don’t have the heart to vomit anymore I just cringe and say “good Kitty”. If you find a network of tunnels you can duct tape a heat resistant tube (Dryer duct) to the tailpipe of your car and put it over the hole so you CO2 them to death. A small engine like a tractor works well too, just takes longer. Some people swear by those small high frequency spikes that run off of solar or batteries with the high pitch frequency. I personally have found them helpful but not enough to say they take care of the problem. I have had to use a multiple pronged approach with the noise pest control (some of the brands work - others like from home Depot don’t at all), control through cats/dogs/wildlife, and manual traps that you put out but won’t harm the “hunters” of the voles/rats/mice. I have also heard peppermint or essential oil deterrent helps but won’t fix it by itself. Just my two cents, good luck and I know it’s hard but poisoning them, I’ve seen that go wrong too many times and like other people mentioned - it does go down the food chain pretty far. The rats, if I poisoned them would have killed the red tailed Hawks that prey on them - that was great 3’ away boom! Downed rat and the hawk got such a fat one he had trouble taking back off! To the foxes and onwards up, even neighbors pets. Good luck.

[Lucassb]

I hate voles. Just saying.

I haven’t found a great solution yet so reading this with interest. My cats will pull them out of the ground (good kitties!) which is super but not sufficient to eradicate them entirely. Good luck.

[avjudge]

One year (about 20 years ago, when I was in Conn.) my raspberries weren’t happy come spring. I wondered what was going on - until I tugged on one and it came right out of the ground. I checked the rest of the patch and a significant number of the plants had had their roots eaten through over the winter! Voles seemed to be the culprits. No, not my favorite animals. (But, they didn’t noticeably bother me again so it seemed to be an odd population surge.)

My barn cat now does seem to get about as many voles as mice. (But more chipmunks and birds than either, which makes me sad.)

[enjoytheride]

We have one barn cat, which we feed daily (he’s fat). He ran out of mice to murder and has been working on the vole population. He seems to average at least one a day. We haven’t seen one in months.