Orchardace...when you figure it all out let me know too. The broken glass seems like a great idea, but it won't work either...long story on how I know this. They tunnel right through it seemingly unscathed...don't ask me how, but they do.
If you had declining trees in the presence of heavy mole population they most likely are responsible. I had a young 1 year old peach bite the dust from them. When I dug it out to autopsy the roots the gnawing damage and lack of roots was unmistakable. It slowly declined just like a tree without adequate moisture and after seeing the roots chewed away it was surprising it held on as long as it did.
It seems here in my area it has been really bad the last few years. I had hoped the brutal winter would have reduced their numbers...no such luck. Hate 'em.

Only closely mowing the grass and weeds seems to prevent the voles for me. But if any tall grass and weeds, or piles of firewood, or tarps and other stuff are nearby, they seem to establish themselves. In this case the close mowing won't help unless your trees are far enough away. The only thing that seems to keep them at bay is to give them no place to hide. I use the hardware cloth but they have tunneled underneath it and girdled trees....otherwise it seems to work.

I too have a great crop of voles, thanks to favorable conditions the past couple years- big snowpack, my mulching habits and lack of mowing, also growing grain and rootcrops in my orchard aisles. I do the hardware cloth 18" up all my trees, keep the weeds back at least 18" from trunks, periodically do a 'indian war dance' around the trunks to flatten out any tunnels in that zone. This year I've started baiting with an OMRI-approved rodentcide, placing stations around my nursery zone.
I'm wondering if I need to get a pack of orchard cats, terrier, or adopt some weasels....

The pine mice (voles) killed several of my berry bushes this year. I started setting mouse traps with peanut butter and oats and caught some but ants and other creatures often ate the bait before the voles got it. The voles also ate my goji berry plants so I tried bating a trap with goji berry leaves and that worked. Overall they breed two fast and are too slow in tripping the traps to get them under control that way.

I'm going to start using poison bait also. Any recommendations on a brand for the pine voles? Most of the stores in my area carry mole bait and I don't t think that's the best choice for voles since their diet is different.

Four hungry outdoor cats works pretty well for me. Hardly a week goes by that that they don't leave me a present or two (dead vole) on the deck where I feed them.

The key is to feed them enough to keep them healthy but not enough to make them lazy. If you fill their food bowl and they don't empty it promptly you are feeding them too much.

I'd love to get an outdoor cat or 2, the neighbor has free kittens but I don't have a barn. I'm afraid that if I keep them in the house (even the basement) over the winter they will become pets (DD loves animals, but is allergic to cats). We also have coyotes (and bobcats, etc.), so even waiting til next year (summer?) for another litter might not be a good idea, I wonder if the predators will pick off any small mammals that are wandering loose.

I guess we have to move the woodpile my dad started (he's not running his woodstove now since he got a heat pump), it's less than 30 ft from my high tunnel. DH does keep the grass mowed. I won't cover the beds with burlap b/c they were nesting under a pile of bags we had (now removed) but didn't know they'd be attracted to cardboard. So what do you do, just weed in the spring (and keep weeding?)? Plastic? Landscape fabric?

My friend's home orchard was seriously damaged by pine voles (underground damages).

She tried anything she could think of including castor oil, bait, smoke bomb, traps. Nothing really worked. Finally, she got a feral cat, not a friendly house cat. The guy was a real hunter. He got voles and squirrels, too. After a few weeks, my friend saw no vole damage.

My friend kept the cat inside at night but a few months ago, he went out one night and never came back. We believe, a fox or a coyote got it. My friend will get another feral cat if voles return.

Also agree that it should not be well-fed.

A problem I have with the feral cat idea is the animals kill indiscriminately and take a huge toll on songbirds amongst other things a fruit grower isn't necessarily gunning for.

If you use poison bait and are persistant it is likely to work- try an anticoagulant that requires more than one feeding to kill. You are much less likely to kill your hawks or foxes that way should they eat a poisoned vole. Also if your dog or a child accidentally eats it they need only be fed vitamin K as an antidote.

Close mowing in late summer is also very helpful.

I seem to have gained some ground with the warfarin based poision. Hopefully, Staying on top of the mowing and rotating poison around will get things under control. Looking at the dead critters I find in the war zone, I seem to be fighting Cotton Rats, mice and voles all using the vole tunnel system. The Cotton Rats will strip every piece of bark and cambium from fruit wood in my burn piles.

Some feral cats have adopted my place too. We have had a lot of mice, rabbits, and voles. They have killed a lot of my plants. I feed the cats hoping they will hang out here. They empty the food bowl quickly, so I guess they are hungry. We will see if they get the rodents.

Now I need some extra large feral cats to thin out the deer population, too.

I have tried everything except poison, the risk of birds or pets etc getting into poison is too great. What worked? Only plastic tree tubes. The last two years I haven't lost a tree.
Prior to that I lost dozens. Mothballs and tinfoil are a deterrent but they will go through it without hesitation if hungry.

My sister is a vet with her own clinic and staff that includes three other vets, so a lot of animals go through her clinic. Her practice is in coastal N. CA where norway rats are plentiful and poisoning them is pretty common practice. Secondary poisoning with modern products is rare in her opinion and experience. If the bait takes multiple feedings to kill a vole, eating the vole shouldn't kill the predator.

That said, I have found it as affective to trap with baited spring traps if other animals don't take the bait and spring the traps. It just requires much more work if you have to cover much ground. Traps need to be covered with a tray. There are also bait stations that are just large enough to hold a single spring trap.

When you have pine voles, wraps don't protect the trees.

Songbirds are useful because it is them who control the grubs, including codling moth and curculio. Given that voles prefer to be nocturnal, and barn owls vastly prefer rodents, barn owl houses placed in the immediate surroundings are worth a shot. They require some care as far as placement (face east, out of reach of squirrels, out of earshot from your bedroom), and they need to be cleaned yearly (easy to do with a bottom that can be opened).

I'm no professional but I've been orcharding since 2007 and I haven't had any vole problems to date. When I was contrstructing my orchard and gathering advice, Lee Calhoun told me to add a bag of drainage rock around the base of each tree at planting time and lightly tamp it in. In the 5'ish ring around the rock you can still add mulch and the trees are protected. If I don't have mulch there I weed eat the snot out of it (wearing full goggles) to control veg.

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Thomis, how deep is the stone ring?

Thomis,

If I may say so, that is one of the best vegetative free and neatly mowed areas I've seen in a home orchard.

I think your area is so clean, voles would be non-existent even if you skipped the gravel (especially in your zone 7).

Thank you olpea.
nyRock: each tree receives one bag of drainage rock, I don't even think one bag is a whole cubic foot. So I'm thinking the rock is tamped in maybe two inches deep at most. Of course, you could add more if you like if you want deeper.

I have tried several type of poison bait for voles/gophers over the years.

Overall, the most effective is strychnine laced grain, it seems to work the best but is a persistent poison in the food chain so I try not to use it unless really necessary (and it seems to be hard to get now).

My second favorite is zinc phosphide bait. Works sort of OK. Poison is activated by stomach acid, and so dead animals are not a hazard to predators (supposedly), but left over bait is.

Last is the anti-coagulant based poison bars. Harder to place and more expensive, but supposed to work better and longer than the other baits. I have not noticed them working that well.

I have found that a regular routine of finding tunnels and placing bait is necessary to keep these guys under control.

I have 6' tall, approximately 8' by 8,' open to the sky, fencing-wire cages around each tree. If I were to be blessed with some owls nesting in my orchard, I suppose the mice and voles could hide inside the cages. Anyone with experience with owls and tree cages? Northwoodswis

Nope. None of us put any owls into tree cages. We would have to then feed them and give them water which is a lot to bother with. Unless you are asking if the owls will go into the tree cages voluntarily. Is this what you are asking?

Swampsnaggs,
Of course I mean voluntarily. I was wondering if the wire would interfere with their hunting and negate the benefits of putting out some owl houses in the hopes of attracting some owls.
Northwoodswis

Mice and rats have several natural enemies that I know of which are barred rock chickens, snakes, guinea, rat terriers etc. You might consider a flock of barred rocks in the spring. My barred rocks ate mice, rats, and snakes as well as insects. They tear up the ground a lot which is the reason I had not mentioned it. Black snakes are the best rat control I know of the first one they catch makes noise and the others leave ASAP. I take great care to not spook owls, bobcats and coyotes away because they consume large amounts of rodents.

I had no idea what a vole was--never even heard of one--until I was exiled in Pennsylvania, and the semi-feral cat that my daughter adopted started bringing them to the porch (great hunter--but I truly have no idea how a cat catches bats, but he did . . .)

And catching any bird that eats fruit from my tree would be a bonus . . .

hawk

. First of all I am not an animal enthiast....Really always disliked Cats and dogs even more..... BUT now
I second the cat....
we let stay a cat that showed up last Nov 2013. HE is outdoor only... We thought he was a girl and took to have spayed.... ha ha
so he was neutered instead....
We bought him a nice USED drum..enclosed end table, added a "cat door",to the table" and insulated it with foil "Refletive ".bubbled insulation, lots of old wool sweaters, covered end table wth old rug to keep out the wind,etc
Also bought him a heated pet mat. His "house"the end table , sits on front patio covered porch...against the house... Plus he has gobs of places to go to, and sleep etc.....spoilted really,,,,till I decided I wanted chickens...
he has gotten fat..... so I need to make sure I dont give him more than he finishes right away...
well he mostly catches "voles" play with them first. I say "Kitty" make sure you kill them or injure them" He also keeps the mice down some...
ALSo he knows if he, "Kitty Kat", hurts My Barr Rockers he will be permantely unemployed... It took some doing to constantly watch him, train him.... when I let the chickens out of their fortress to free range....Plus he knows I carry a BIG STICK....... LOL
just my two cents worth...
Luv.....Thomas' orchard,,,,, are those 4" pipe? the common type ????
now to address the mole issue Kitty wont do anything to him...... Hubby calls him A DA and I call him lazy......
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