I am at a farm that has been around for a LONG long time. They have always had problems with ground hog holes appearing near the edges of the indoor arena. They get filled in and dont “re-open” for an extended period of time.
Seems like there should be something that could get done to not have any more indoor holes from ground hogs??!?
Thanks for the help!
You obviously have to get rid of the groundhogs. Are you sure they aren’t rats? An exterminator would be the place I would start.
I can vouch that groundhogs WILL do such a thing. I wouldn’t have guessed an animal that big would choose to burrow into/under an indoor/barn but I have seen them doing it. They also love under the bleachers. Anything with a roof and soft enough ground to dig into, I guess. Our handy dandy barn worker has started carrying a pellet gun…
Goes without saying that you need to remove the things that make your barnyard an attractive place-- clean up spilled grain, make sure cat food is not left out, etc.
Raccoons will also dig big holes like that, along edges of outbuildings. But regardless which pest, around the barnyard/house we control them with trap and kill (with a .22). Poisons just put the whole ecosystem at risk, and while I’ve tried those gas cartridges out in a field, I wouldn’t use them near the barn due to fire risk.
Trap and kill is pretty effective-- we’ll go through “spurts” where there’s a lot of activity, and then after trapping and dispatching them systematically, we can have a year or more where they’re not a pest. Then new ones move in to the territory and you repeat. I am sure you’ll have folks tell you to “humanely” relocate them instead of killing them. Aside from the reality that you are putting the pest animals onto someone else’s property, relocation is not humane–high probability they will die from hunger due to the stress and energy cost of being dumped into some other adult animals’ territory.
[QUOTE=HungarianHippo;7247419]
Goes without saying that you need to remove the things that make your barnyard an attractive place-- clean up spilled grain, make sure cat food is not left out, etc.[/QUOTE]
While that is an excellent suggestion, sometimes it’s not what they’re after. My dad has an issue with groundhogs digging under his barn wall and has for years. He doesn’t have any animals and opens the barn maybe once a week to get out the tractor, and rarely goes in there in the winter. It seems they’re just looking for shelter. He gets some dry ice, drops it in the hole, and covers. That generally does the trick. But they do come back. But he managed to slow it down with the dry ice before they got too established.
haven’t heard the dry ice technique. is it just that it makes the lair inhospitable and they move along? Or does it kill them?
For making the lair inhospitable I’ve also heard of dumping used cat litter down the holes, not sure if that really works though. Tried that in my field but quickly decided driving the ATV around with garbage bags of cat $hit wasn’t my idea of a fun weekend day. :lol:
Seems like blocking up the burrows would help. But I think you need to do something to really discourage the sucks-- like loud noises or bad smells or something.
Dry ice is carbon dioxide as a solid. When it sublimates (melting from solid directly to a gas) it releases CO2 into the small space. It would kill the critter in the hole.
When I started leasing the barn I’m in now (it had been vacate for 4-5 years), I had a critter burrowing problem. Turned out to be a skunk. I used some capsasin powder at the different points of entry and after a couple of tries, it did the trick.
Running a hot wire about 3" off the ground on the exterior will keep ground hogs and any other burrowing beast out.!
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