No one likes having voles in their garden, but how do you get rid of them? The control methods range from anti-vole plants to butyric acid and shot traps. Below we will give you an overview of the ways to combat a vole and explain how to prevent it from coming back.
How to fight voles in the garden?
To combat voles effectively and in an animal-friendly manner, you can flood corridors, use buttermilk or smelly products, set up vole scarers or use ultrasonic devices. Live traps are a good option if they are checked regularly. Kill traps and poison should be avoided.
Identifying voles in the garden
A vole is often discovered quite late, especially if you don't have a vegetable garden: its holes are not as noticeable as those of a mole and the damage usually only becomes visible when plants above ground die or nibbled vegetables are harvested. This is how you recognize a vole:
- Holes in the lawn or vegetable garden with small hills around them
- Eaten roots, especially on clematis, root vegetables and fruit trees, the favorite food of voles
Excursus
Distinguish between voles and moles
Voles and moles both throw piles and live in an underground tunnel system. But that's where the similarities end: While voles damage garden plants, moles only eat insects, often even pests, and loosen the garden soil. Their damage is purely visual. Moles are protected and therefore may not be caught or killed. Read here how to distinguish moles from voles by their holes. Before you fight the vole, you should be sure that it really is one.
Molehills (pictured here) are larger and more numerous than vole mounds
The control methods with their advantages and disadvantages
| Control method | Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|---|
| Vole scarecrow | Cost-effective, easy to build yourself, animal friendly | Limited effectiveness |
| Scent bombs like buttermilk | Cheap and quick to produce | Limited effectiveness |
| Ultrasound devices | Quite effective | Also drives away other useful animals |
| Flooding the hallways | Easy and fast | Limited effectiveness |
| Livetrap | Success directly visible, animal-friendly | Must be checked several times a day |
| Snaptrap | Success immediately visible | Vole suffers, danger when setting up |
| Plier trap | Success immediately visible | Vole suffers, danger when setting up |
| Shottrap | Success immediately visible | Danger when setting up |
| Poison | Very effective | Harmful to other animals and people |
Voles are not protected and may therefore be driven away, captured and killed; However, suffering of the animal must be prevented.
Animal-friendly control methods
Gentle control methods are particularly effective when used over a longer period of time and in combination. The aim is to make the vole's stay as unpleasant as possible and thus drive them away. You have various options for this:
Flooding the hallways
Who likes getting their feet wet at home? The vole also doesn't like water in the hallway. To flood the corridors, do the following:
- Locate a vole hole and dig it open enough to fit your garden hose.
- Put the hose in and turn on the water.
- Wait at least 10 minutes.
- Then find another entry hole and repeat the process.
This method alone will not be enough to control the vole. However, if you combine it with the following measures, it can definitely help the vole escape.
butyric acid
Butyric acid smells barbaric as soon as it comes into contact with oxygen and moisture. No vole likes that – and neither do people. However, the fumes are corrosive and harmful to both voles and humans. It therefore makes sense to use buttermilk instead of pure butyric acid, which has a similar but less harmful effect:
- Put the buttermilk on a cloth and stuff it into a vole hole.
- Repeat the process for at least two more holes.
- If you do use butyric acid, make sure to protect your skin, eyes and respiratory tract accordingly.
Vole scarecrow
Voles have fine ears and don't like noise. Therefore, they can be easily driven away with “noisy” wind chimes, which hardly make any noise to our ears. The purpose is to conduct the vibrations into the ground. To build a vole scarer yourself, you need a metal rod and a noise generator to attach to it. This could be, for example, two cans of threads that hit each other in the wind or a classic wind chime. You can also find vole scarecrows in specialist stores or online.
Ultrasound devices
Ultrasonic devices are not a good option in the fight against voles
Ultrasound devices are widely advertised in specialist retailers. The problem: Not only voles don't like the high tones, other garden visitors such as moles, bats and pets also can't stand the noise. We therefore recommend building a vole scarer yourself, as mentioned above.
Other smelly products
Voles have a very keen sense of smell. Use it to fight them and get creative! Build your own “scent bombs” and place them in the voles’ burrows. Here are a few ideas about what could drive voles to flee:
- Cat or dog excrement
- Fragrant herbs such as lavender, mint or marjoram, especially in the form of essential oils
- Fish leftovers
- Horseradish
Tip
You have recently planted a fruit tree and want to protect it against vole damage? Surround the tree with a tight-mesh wire basket that extends a few inches above the ground. This means the vole can't reach the tasty root.
Catch the vole with a live trap
Live traps are very popular because the success is visible and at the same time you feel good because you didn't kill the mouse. Nevertheless, live traps have fallen into disrepute among animal rights activists. Why? The problem is that you have to check a live trap several times a day. If a vole falls into a trap, it won't survive for long without food and water. So if you only check the trap a few times a week, you run the risk of letting the vole die a painful death in the trap.
Set up the vole live trap correctly
There are three things to consider when setting up the vole trap:
- Human smell: Be sure to use odorless gloves and avoid any direct contact with the trap. This means no “human smell” sticks to it.
- Attractants: If you want to equip a trap, you probably first think of cheese and bacon. Voles are purely herbivores. Fill the trap with vole treats, not mouse treats! Place root vegetables such as carrots, cabbage or others in the trap.
- Location: Dig a vole exit wide enough for the live trap to fit in. Many traps have entrances on both sides. If this is the case, the trap should also be accessible from both sides. Place the trap inside and bury it. Use gloves.
Killing traps for voles
Shock traps
A vole snap trap looks a little different than a classic mouse trap
The vole snap trap looks a little different than the typical mouse trap because it is inserted into the passage from above. But the principle is the same: when touched, the trap snaps shut and kills the mouse. It is not a good option, as it can happen that the mouse is not caught by the head but by another part of the body and therefore does not die immediately, but dies painfully slowly.
Plier traps
In contrast to the snap trap, the pincer trap does not strike from above, but rather crushes the vole between two pincers. You can imagine that the same risks exist here as with the snap trap: the vole may suffer for an unnecessarily long time before it dies from the injuries.
Shot Traps
Shooting traps are promoted by manufacturers primarily because the vole supposedly does not suffer but dies immediately. This type of trap, which is loaded with a cartridge, poses a risk of injury to the user when setting it up. This trap is particularly dangerous for small children and pets, who may dig it out and be seriously injured if it is triggered.
Poisoning voles
The worst method of all is to poison the vole. Vole poison is strongly discouraged for several reasons:
- The vole dies in agony.
- The poison is also toxic to other animals such as moles and pets.
- The agent poisons the soil, microorganisms and water.
- You must regularly inspect the passage for success in order to dispose of the dead vole in time before it begins to decompose.
Keep voles away
So that your garden is not infested by voles again, you can maintain a few of the measures, such as the vole scarer. You can also grow plants that voles don't like, such as imperial crowns, mullein, lilies or daffodils. You can protect particularly valuable or endangered plants with a wire basket. A tight-meshed wire should always be laid under raised beds to prevent voles from gaining access.
