vole rampage
 

Just wanted to share a few pics of the habitat taken up by voles this winter, and revealed when the snow receded! At first I thought there had been some kind of animal drama involving a fox and hare on a very soggy muddy slippery day which afterwards froze! Maybe that did happen too. :twisted: But on closer inspection you could tell these were the burrowings of some small army of voles :surprised:. I believe they must have fled into my garden when they lost their snow cover in the middle of winter. Anyway the best part is they didn't venture into the raised beds and instead ate away some of that grass in the pathways, that I didn't want there anyway. :D:))

Hopefully you have done foxes and raptors to thin those out for you and keep them out of your garden!
Karen

If you want to thin them out really good get a few miniature dachshunds. I had them for years before my son gave me a couple. Nearly every day for months I they would leave one or two on the back doorstep until they were all gone.

Bill

The moles and voles are usually there to feed on the grubs in the area. You can treat the area organically for grubs with Milky Spore. One application lasts for several years. Once the grubs are gone the rodents will be too since they will have nothing to feed on. Of course there are several products with chemicals that will work too.

I had a severe outbreak of voles several years ago. They ate probably a quarter of my cantaloupe crop and I had a 150' double row of beets that when I went to pull , the voles had been in between the two rows and eaten the majority of them. The worst part came towards the end of the season the voles had chewed so many holes in my drip tape that I had to abandon several rows. If you look at there life cycle its amazing how many can be produced in a season, the young are reproducing 30 days after birth. Anymore I am proactive, if I see signs of them I put out the wax bars of rat poison I think its called Radamix. I generally don't like poison things but I make an exception for voles.

Good luck, Marcus

I found a shrew once in the yard the cat had caught it.
Though it looks like a mouse it is not a rodent.

I've never seen any vole damage in my garden except once or twice the same burrowing in winter got into a patch of hollyhocks I was sad to lose... never on this scale though. I sort of doubt they will hang about here in the summer because there isn't that much grass in my garden. Overall there seems to be a rodent thing happening everywhere here, mice, rats, too many! Everyone is plagued. I feel lucky there was no sign of rats this winter, and no rodents getting into my house or greenhouse...phew!



I've seen shrews here too Worth. I thought they were rodents, though? They are really small and boy do they move fast. No one complains about them, if anything they probably eat a few insect pests! :D

Count yourself lucky.

The Killer Shrews
[YOUTUBE][url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwbf-WJZWWs[/url][/YOUTUBE]
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwbf-WJZWWs[/url]

Nope shrews not rodents but some sort of carnivore / insectivore.
I found out when I looked them up in the dictionary when I saw the thing the cats brought in.
Way back before we had the internet and had to use books.:lol:

Wow... [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrew[/url].


Closer to hedgehogs than rodents.... and I never knew that some of them have venemous bites!

They really are pretty common around here, but the normal thing to do is... nothing! Just don't mess with em. :)) Although personally I doubt you would easily catch one. They are fast and furtive, and small enough to disappear in a hurry. :)