We just bought a new property that has a pretty large crayfish community - there are tons of their little mud houses all in my pasture! Any ideas on how to humanely get rid of them? We do have a pond on the property and we’re trying to figure out drainage issues but I wanted to reach out and see if there was anything we could do this fall/winter. Thanks!
Where are you located? You need to talk to your state natural resource agency (if you are in the US). We have quite a lot of rare crayfishes, they are one of taxa that I work with, & they are regulated. Your state biologist is the one who can talk to you about your specifics. Questions like these are part of our job.
All livestock, horses included, should also be fenced out of surface water bodies both for their safety & for water quality / safety. (I have a creek on my own farm full of muskrats, crayfishes, & many other species, the horses are fenced away from it)
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What wildlifer said.
Get a good Cajun cookbook and eat them? Crawish Cardinal, Crawfish Pie, Crawfish Etouffee, are all quite tasty! 
On a more serious note, don’t crawfish live in really moist environments? That would suggest a very wet pasture and that has some other issues for horsekeeping. Talking to your local Extension Agent will give you both the practical and legal limitations of suggested ways to deal with the issue.
G.
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Thanks everybody! We are in middle TN so I will definitely reach out to our extension agent. Parts of the pasture are sort of in a bowl shape and we get excess/run-off water from the properties behind us so we definitely have our work cut out for us.
I thought it was a sign of a healthy, clean stream if crayfish are living in it. Am I confusing that with some other creatures? Maybe lampreys. I know they need clean streams.
Cradads are welcome in my stream; lampreys not so much!!!
G.
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My farm is in river bottom land between Red River and Twelve Mile Bayou so when it is wet, like it was here from September 2018 to July 2019 we have crawfish mounds. The cattle egrets and other birds and animals will take care of any that are brave enough to show their faces above ground but the holes are small and pose no issue to horses. They will be gone when the weather gets cold but until then your lawn mower will take care of the above ground chimneys.
We are also in middle TN and havent had a problem with the holes that occasionally pop up in a lower corner of our pasture that is near but not in a stream. Holes are small and I’ve not seen any that caved in and created a problem. When we dragged the fields and re-seeded earlier this year, the mounds came down and a few rebuilt, but some did not. Of course its so dry now and with the creek being dried up, I’m not sure they could rebuild if they even wanted to.
@BlackBird9, i know, old thread BUT how did it go for you?? I am in east TN and we have the little mounds everyyywhere, how do your horses do with it have you found any miracle cures yet!!!
Some species (there are many - in NC we have about 50 described but many more still in need of description) are more tolerant than others. Some species are also primary burrowers, meaning they spend little to no time in streams, while others are primarily in the stream itself & don’t burrow at all.
Also, native stream lampreys are small & harmless & they are less tolerant to degraded water quality. They feed on insect larvae, so do help keep mosquitoes down.
Neither animal poses a threat to horses.
Thanks for the info!
I am not so much worried about the crawdads hurting my horses, more about what their little burrows will do to my field and my horses hooves 
I get that - I dig up burrows quite a bit (that’s one of our survey methods). Their entrance holes/tunnels are very small & they usually go straight down for a ways. They also don’t make big chambers , since they don’t need much space & most don’t share burrows. So I would not worry about cave in issues. I drive vehicles over areas with burrows, horses aren’t heavier than that. They will also improve your soil aeration, so I don’t see any downside here. Enjoy the critters.
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