Voles: Understanding These Animal & How to Control Them
Voles are tiny animals that form a network of deep crisscrossing tunnels and create a big problem for homeowners and gardeners as these tunnels can destroy your lawn or garden and may even kill trees. You can identify voles by seeing their burrows at 1-2” paths that look like holes around the trees and by noticing gnaw marks on plants or trees, exposed stems and dead plants.
If you want to get rid of Voles then you should remove excess vegetation or use live traps or wrap the lower trunk of young trees or use natural repellants like castor oil, etc. Otherwise, you have the option to hire a professional expert to get relief from Voles.
Procedure Used By Professionals For The Elimination Of Voles
Professionals help you create a beautiful outdoor space like your yard and garden by removing even the last Vole. The team finds out the best way to remove voles.
Step-1 Voles And Their Behaviour
Introduction to Voles: Voles are tiny digging rodents and they live in networks. They are very damaging to your lawns and yards and they feed on vulnerable stems of woody ornamental plants and young trees. For protection from predators in winter, voles have the advantage of snow cover. They hibernate in Vole burrows and their signs of infestation are grass is suddenly very short, no root structure of dead plants remains, and gnaw marks on stems of young trees and woody plants.
Different types of Voles: There are various species of Voles present in the world and there is a Vole Control Bait System for getting control over them. Here 3 categories of Voles are described here:
- Below-ground foraging vole type: These types of voles are present below the ground that is under the tunnels and mulch and damage plants that are present below the ground.
- Above-ground foraging vole type: The voles which are present above the ground damage lawns because they eat all the grass present and make the lawn clipped runways. They live above the ground and connect the openings of all the burrows.
- Voles that forage both above and below the ground: This type of voles can be present above or below the ground and they all can be controlled by Vole Control Bait System.
Step-2 Vole Control Bait Station System
These are the systematic approach to control voles from both above or below the ground. There is a mulch-covered method for below-the-ground foraging voles control while there is a tent set-up method for above-the-ground foraging voles control.
Step-3 Apple Sign Test
You can only be able to control voles when you are able to identify where they are present and their activity. So, the Apple Sign Test is a systematic approach for verifying the vole’s presence and activities.
Selection Of Bait Control Station System
The selection of bait stations depends upon the following factors:
- Value of plant material
- Size of property
- The number of vole colonies or hotspots of vole activity
- Your time and patience.
- Budget
Here 3 bait stations are placed near each other and after the control is achieved bait stations are moved towards where the vole is present.