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YardSmart Marin
IS THAT HOLE FROM A VOLE?
By: Tracey Liao Van Hooser | February 2, 2023
Voles, also known as meadow mice or field mice, can be one of the biggest troublemakers in the garden. But you can manage these rodents without pesticides! This article is a summary of our top suggestions. For more complete advice, visit our Voles page.
Prevent Vole Problems
Prevention is always best. Here are tips for keeping voles away:
- Help their predators by removing plants like ivy, pruning dense shrubs like juniper, keeping your lawn moved, and clearing vegetation around trees.
- Voles are vegetarians and they will eat your bulbs, plants, and trees:
- Plant varieties of bulbs that they don’t like to eat.
- Protect trees from “girdling” (voles nibble away the bark and it can be fatal to the tree) by installing guards around the trunk. This video shows two types that will also protect from rabbit damage.
- A physical barrier of ¼” hardware cloth ( made of tight weave wire) helps to keep them out of your vegetable garden. This video shows how to install it.
- Think twice before having a bird feeder.
Signs of a Vole Problem
You might never see a vole directly because they hide in their burrows and under dense cover. Instead, look for signs like:
What to do if you have Voles
First, let’s talk about what NOT to do:
- Never use rodenticide (poison)!
- Some are brightly colored and contain tasty flavorings, which may attract young children, pets, and wildlife.
- Once the vole eats the poison, anything that eats it will also ingest the poison. This creates a secondary risk to pets and wildlife. WildCare reports that 76% of raptors and other rodent-consuming wildlife brought into their facility have tested positive for secondary rodenticide poisoning.
- There are eco-friendlier baits but the voles won’t die unless the bait is their only source of food. Since voles eat so many things, these baits are rarely your most effective option.
- Never use glue traps!
- Children, pets, songbirds, and other wildlife can get stuck to the incredibly sticky surfaces. Learn more about these dangers here.
- If you find a live vole caught in the glue trap, you will have to kill it.
- A trapped vole may gravely injure themselves in an attempt to get free and eventually starve to death. Glue traps are cruel so please don’t use them!
- Repellents, poisonous gasses, and flooding tunnels are ineffective approaches for voles.
To manage voles, we recommend:
- Snap traps for mice are an effective and humane way to kill voles.
- This video illustrates how to do the “apple sign test” to determine if a vole burrow is active and should be an area of focus for your traps.
- This video illustrates proper trap placement for voles that are tunneling in the lawn. To encourage your lawn to recover from vole damage, rake out any dead grass.
- This video illustrates how to identify vole holes in a planting bed and discusses the importance of covering traps with a bucket or nursery pot. Voles feel more comfortable feeding under safe cover - plus this keeps children, pets, birds and other wildlife safe from the traps.
- Raptors are great natural rodent control! Encourage these vole predators to live nearby by hosting an owl nesting box or installing a raptor perch on your property.
Have more questions about voles or other rodents? We have more information on our Voles page and Rodents page. Watch a recording of our webinars on the subject to learn even more: