Buffalo Exterminating - Tough on Pests. Easy on You.^©

Voles

Voles, also known as meadow mice, have their natural habitat in rural pasture and cropland environments. They feed on seeds, roots, grasses, fruits, new bark and other soft plant material. As suburban neighborhoods have replaced rural grasslands vole populations have become very well adapted to living in our lawns, gardens and bedding areas. Voles are stocky, 4 to 6 inches long with very short, hairy tails and black to gray-brown fur. They tunnel through grass often chewing it down to soil level. Small droppings and grass chewing’s found in these above soil runways confirms vole activity. They dig shallow burrows with entry holes about an inch in diameter. Runways resemble bicycle tracks in the lawn and are commonly noticed when snows first melt. Mole activity, commonly confused with voles, occurs in extensive tunnels below the grass (thatch) layer with dirt piles usually pushed up at entry holes. Voles and moles commonly occur in the same areas.

Vole Voles can do extensive damage in gardens and shrub beds. They feed voraciously on bulbs, tender shrub and tree roots, grasses and girdle bark of shrubs and young trees. Voles reproduce at a high rate over the summertime and have become one of our most important lawn and garden pests in recent years.

What to do:

Outside bird feeders often allow seeds to spill onto the ground which is a great attractant to voles and other rodents.
1/2" hardware cloth screen buried from soil surface to 12 inches deep is helpful in creating a barrier to reduce tunneling in and around gardens, landscape beds, young trees and decks built close to ground level.
Leave a three foot grass, plant and mulch free area around young trees to help discourage tunneling close to their roots.
Before adding mulch to bedding areas in the springtime be sure to thoroughly turn over old mulch and soil to dislodge tunnel systems. Look for signs of activity.
Voles may infrequently wander inside where snap traps or rodent glue boards may be used. Voles will not establish inside as other rodents do.
Expanded trigger mouse or rat traps baited with fruits such as apples are sometimes helpful in shrub and mulch beds if placed along well worn surface runway. Dipping wood traps in a boiling water/wax bath prior to use helps protect them from the weather outside.
Poison baits placed directly into burrows and used in tamper proof feeding stations placed in bedding areas is probably the most effective control method. Great care must be used when placing toxicants outside to prevent access by children and pets.

Maintenance Program
A Buffalo Exterminating maintenance program offers year round protection. Initially we bait burrows directly and place several tamper proof feeding stations in runways. Follow up visits are made once per week for three to four weeks until activity has ceased. Maintenance services to inspect for new activity and replenish bait placements in feeding stations are then scheduled every eight weeks years round.