Voles can chew up your plants and form tunnels throughout your lawn. Learn how to identify and get rid of voles.
What is a Vole? How Can I Identify Vole Damage?
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Voles drive gardeners and homeowners crazy! You’ll know voles by the snakelike tunnels all over your lawn. Here’s advice on how to identify, prevent, and control your vole population.
What’s the Difference Between Voles and Moles?
First off, voles are not moles! People confuse the two animals because they both tunnel through your yard and are small, dark-colored mammals. You might not have seen either critter since they’re usually underground, but they look very different up close. Voles are small, stocky rodents similar to field mice. In fact, a vole might look like a mouse at first glance. In contrast, moles are NOT rodents. Moles are all nose and mouth. And they have big feet used for digging! See our article on dealing with moles here.
Voles have small, rounded ears that are often hidden by their fur, small eyes, and short tails. Their fur is generally thick and light brown to gray. Two common species of voles in North America are the prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster) and the meadow vole (Microtus pennsylvanicus). Meadow voles are more widely distributed, but prairie voles are more common in grassland and prairie areas. They are very similar, and methods for controlling them are mostly the same.
What Do Voles Eat?
Voles, like many other rodents, are omnivores, which means that they’ll eat almost anything. However, voles have a primarily vegetarian diet; they mainly eat stems and blades of lawn grass—so it’s usually vole tunnels that you’ll see near the yard’s surface. Moles, on the other hand, have a mainly carnivorous diet consisting of invertebrates. (Moles are actually beneficial in many ways. They help plow the soil and eat pest larvae and insects!)
It’s helpful to know this difference not only because it will help you identify the damage (see below) but also because a vole bait might use peanut butter, whereas moles would be more interested in an insect or earthworm.
If it helps, remember that their frenzied activity does subside. Vole populations cycle, and about every 2 to 5 years, there will be a population boom. Mild winters with good snowfall can help to increase vole populations, as the voles can travel beneath the snow cover, safe from predators.
Photo Credit: Washington State University.
Catherine Boeckmann
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A really nice gopher company owner told me to place a trap over an opening and mound if possible. Then cover it with a box adhering it to the ground with stakes so nothing else can get hurt. Check each morning. Other than that, Coyote/fox urine granules among other smelly ones around three sides of the outside area so the voles will head in the other direction.
Voles are a new one on me, so I looked them up when I saw one near my front steps. They avoid going into houses and hate to climb -- good. Only that was a week and a half ago, and one not only came into the house, but somehow climbed through our drain and into our upstairs tub. NOT GOOD! I FREAKED OUT!
The maintenance people at my local park use a product called Gopherhawk. It humanely kills gophers, voles and small rodents without poison. The maintenance people then dispose of their carcasses. If there's a hawk nearby, they'll toss the dead vole in its direction. It would take an army of raptors to keep up with our park's vole population.
Yes, we have voles or mice and our dog gets them and dumps them on the sidewalk. Then we take them out front and put in
street for possums or hawks or birds to take them. they are usually gone OVERNIGHT.
When using poison to kill voles is there a danger to critters that hunt and eat them? I don't want to harm any cats, owls, hawks, etc.
Most definitely.
If the rodents die of poison ingestion whatever eats them could and will probably kill it from secondary poisoning.
Why I don't use poison...therefore never getting a handle on the stupid voles...
Foster or adopt an outdoor Barn Cat; the Cat will get everyone over time; (put the outdoor Cats litter box outside using Feline Pine); (try Tails.org Ct). (all Barn Cats are "fixed").
Make sure you use first generation rodentcides if you do. second generation takes multiple feedings and more days... making it more dangerous to birds of prey.
I got rid of the voles, moles and mice tunneling through my lawn by spraying the lawn in the late fall with castor oil. Have had zero damage from any critter in the last 3 years. If you do this, make sure you buy a natural castor oil that has not been deodorized. The unscented one you find in most drug stores will not work. Plenty of the natural one can be found with Google.
Do you have to do the spray in late Fall or could I do spring
