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Most people have heard of moles, but they may not be familiar with voles. Relatives of hamsters and lemmings, voles are small mouse-like rodents also called prairie voles that live in the wild and can damage trees, lawns, and gardens.
Voles eat grasses, herbaceous plants, bulbs, tubers, bark, tree roots, and seeds. Voles are attracted to gardens with lots of plant debris that provide food and a place to rest.
Voles construct well-defined, 2-inch wide, crisscrossing tunnels or “runways” at or near the ground surface.
Read on to learn how to get rid of voles in your yard.
How Voles Damage Lawns And Gardens
Voles can burrow into the root systems of landscape shrubs and trees, causing young specimens to bend or die back. These rodent pests also gnaw through the trunk of a tree and the base of a bush.
In addition, voles damage the roots of perennial plants like hosta plants, spring onions, and garden root crops like potatoes. However, voles mainly eat the stems and blades of grass. And the marks they leave behind make for unsightly weed.
Voles look like a cross between a mouse and a hamster, with lush fur and small, rounded ears. There are more than 100 species of vole, and most species are between 4 and 8 inches long (including the tail) and have brown or gray fur.
They only weigh about two ounces but can eat their body weight in a single day.
What Causes Vole Infestations?
Voles are attracted to yards and gardens that have food sources and hiding places. Unlike mice and rats, they don’t usually take shelter in buildings. Voles occur in greater numbers in landscaped areas during relatively mild but snowy winters.
You will likely see the damage when the local population peaks, which can occur cyclically every three to five years. A single female vole can produce 15 to 50 offspring per year.
These rodents usually live for about 12 months. Voles nest in above-ground clumps of grass or tunnels extending several inches underground.
Best Methods To Get Rid Of Voles
If voles are already damaging your landscape and elimination and prevention measures have not been successful, you may need to consider eradicating the voles.
They can also be deterred by fencing and repelled with vole repellents.
1. Catch Voles With Mousetraps
You can use mousetraps to kill voles. Place the trap perpendicular to a vole’s trail and align the trap’s trigger with the path the vole must take to use the trail.
Peanut butter is an excellent bait for catching voles. The best time to catch voles is fall or late winter. The key to catching success is determining where in your landscape voles are most likely to serve as a thoroughfare;
That’s where you want to place the trap. Wider runways indicate heavy traffic. Another good indicator is a trail heavily contaminated with vole urine and droppings.
2. Removing Voles With Live Traps
If you’d rather not kill infested voles, you can try catching them in live traps (such as Havahart traps) and moving them to a convenient location. However, the translocation of rodent pests is restricted or banned in many areas, so check with local authorities before using live traps.
For best results, use a live small rodent trap with two openings. Place the trap directly on the road and parallel to a well-defined road surface (e.g. a bridge on a highway).
Baiting isn’t always necessary, but you can add peanut butter to the trap if you’d like. Catch and release captured voles frequently to an approved location at least 5 miles from your home.
3. Repelling Voles With Chemicals
Thiram-based vole repellents such as However, repellents need to be reapplied frequently because they disintegrate in the rain. The voles become accustomed to the smell, which reduces the effectiveness of the repellent.
Thiram should not be used for garden plants. Predator urine is often preferred as a vole repellent as they like it the least. Fox and coyote urine can usually be purchased online or at farms and garden centers.
4. Fencing And Gravel
Garden fences can also be placed around garden plants to protect their roots from field mice.
Be sure to bury all fences at least 6 to 10 inches below the soil surface to prevent voles from burrowing under. Also, voles don’t like crossing sharp gravel.
When planting perennials or bulbs, add a granular substance like perlite or sharp gravel at the bottom and on the sides of the planting hole to protect roots and bulbs.
Plant garlic in bulb and perennial beds to repel voles, which don’t like the smell.
5. Natural Repellent
To get rid of voles naturally, mix chopped hot peppers with water and organic dish soap. Put this mixture in a spray bottle and spray the areas where you suspect field mice are.
This spray keeps them away from your plants. and will not harm your plants or the environment. Castor oil is another natural way to get rid of voles. Castor beans are poisonous to animals.
Voles don’t like the smell or taste of castor oil and repel them. Mix with water and spray around the plants you want to protect from vole damage.
How To Identify Voles Damage
You can identify field mice by the shallow, snake-like tunnels that you see all over your lawn. The tunnels are about two inches wide and very close to the surface so they can eat their favorite food: weed. stems and leaves.
Voles are especially manic in early spring. Moles, on the other hand, have deeper feeding passages that they use as a web.
They have secondary tracks that appear on the surface of their grass, however, they more closely resemble raised ridges and have small volcano-like mounds.
Tracks are the result of voles eating vegetation such as grassroots and shrubs, and the constant traffic of numerous tiny feet following the same path.
Voles share many characteristics with moles but are more destructive to plants. Meanwhile, moles usually feed on larvae and earthworms, creating deep and extensive underground tunnels.
Voles don’t leave mounds. You can also identify voles based on the type of damage. voles are the ones that feed on plants.
If you’ve been partially eating carrots, potatoes, or other tubers in your garden, you probably have a vole problem.
Voles will also eat flower bulbs underground as they are close to the surface. If you see chewed bark near the bases of trees and shrubs, look carefully.
A vole’s front teeth leave ¼-inch side-to-side lateral grooves in the wood as it gnaws through the bark.
Voles also tunnel through any root system and cause damage to trees and shrubs. If you see crooked young trees or bushes, this may be due to vole activity.
Tips On Management Of Voles
A vole problem is more likely to occur in gardens where voles have a lot of vegetation and debris in which to hide and build their nests.
Keeping weeds in your yard, avoiding planting dense ground covers (like creeping juniper), and keeping your lawn mowed will likely worry you less about voles.
But it’s not just the vegetation that voles seek refuge under. Because voles chew on trees and shrubs, use caution when applying mulch too close to trees and shrubs.
Voles are encouraged by the presence of a deep layer of mulch. Even in winter not free from possible vole damage. Voles use the snow as cover to make a sneak attack in your yard.
Therefore, try to keep the snow away from bushes and young trees. While voles typically feed on roots, they can gnaw through the bark of a tree or shrub just above the ground line
It can kill the plant if it damages the bark around the stem or the main shoots (called the girdle). You can also protect young trees by wrapping wire mesh around the bottom of the trunk.
What’s The Difference Between Voles And Moles?
Because voles aren’t the only animal pests responsible for lawn and garden walkways, they’re often confused with another pest you want to get rid of.
Because moles and voles are rarely seen, it makes sense to base identification on the marks they leave rather than what the animals look like. there are two kinds.
These are feeding tunnels and appear as raised ridges running through your lawn. The second type of mole track runs deeper and is used to connect feeding tunnels into a network.
When a pest leaves mounds of dirt in your garden that resemble small volcanoes, made from soil that has been dug into deep underground tunnels, these mounds of dirt are a sure sign that moles, not field mice, are your problem.
Frequently Asked Questions
Still, need more answers? Explore the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) here.
Do Voles Get Into Houses?
Voles typically live and nest outdoors and do not often enter homes or other buildings. If you find voles in a garage or other building, trapping or baiting may be the best method of eradication.
What Do Voles Do In Winter?
Voles are cold-hardy animals that are particularly active under a blanket of snow. In snowy climates, the first signs of a vole problem often appear shortly after the spring snowmelt, revealing the surface voles.
Tunnels and, in many cases, chewed bark on trees and shrubs near the ground.
How Do I Get Rid Of Vole Tracks?
Vole tracks are essential tracks left by dead grass.
You can eliminate these signs of damage by raking up dead grass and replanting bare patches with grass seed.
The new grass will fill in and the paths will be gone in a few weeks.
Final Thoughts
Voles like dense, dense ground cover, weeds, and meadows because they provide shelter from predators and provide nesting material.
Reduce weeds, cut grass, weeds and create a clean space. Keep grass mowed and bushes off the ground.
Follow the tips in this article to get the best result.
