Poisoned mice may poison your owls who are your best friends at this point. My mice are controlled by my snake population. If snakes don't give you the 'gibblies' it's a thought.

Linda

First off, You need to identify what rodents are there, mice generally don't tunnel but pocket gophers (voles) do. It is not that hard to trap all the voles in an area but you must be keep at it. For mice get rid of anything that they can hide under. My mother intentionally leaves pieces of plywood on the ground to attract them, then lifts them up for the dogs to finish off any mice that have moved in. I would set out poison on the edge of your property just before the snow flies, that should cut down on the ones moving in from else where. If they have moved into raised beds that could be a bit of work to fix, flooding them out with water might do the job. It may also be a good idea to call a Pest Control officer, some thing in the area may have pushed all these rodents your direction. Best of luck.

We do have garter snakes and owls, but they definitely aren't enough to control our population, unfortunately.

We do have pocket gophers, but these aren't them! Totally different size. Also, pocket gophers leave piles of dirt behind.

Sigh. Anyone use zinc phosphide? Is it true that there is very little chance of secondary poisoning with this poison? Generally, I am definitely not a fan of poison, but even though we have tons of natural predators, they aren't even close to controlling the population. So I'd really like to avoid secondary poisoning, but I've got to deal with these mice, or planting a garden is going to be a waste of time. :(

Thanks for the suggestions.

I had voles/moles (don't know which) in my flowerbed. I had read about Cushion Spurge releasing a toxin in the soil that moles/voles don't like but didn't think to much about it -- I decided to try planting some in one bed anyway. I still don't know if its' the spurge or what but the moles/voles don't visit that bed anymore. They still rip up the lawn tho.

Just checked on cushion spurge and it's hardy to 4a, so it's probably not an option for Weeper. The sites I looked at did say that it was poisonous. Pretty plant, though!

Ehhh...I think I've chickened out of using poison. AGAIN. (I had this same discussion with myself this spring when all my pea seeds were getting eaten)

So I put out 5 traps, and I guess I'll just keep emptying them every morning and hopefully that'll put a dent in it.

I see a badger just dug a huge honkin hole right beside our long driveway in the mowed grass. You know you have a rodent population when...

I'm trying out a different method - a Tin Cat with poison inside. The mice can get in, but not out, therefore there's no risk of poisoning the wildlife. I too have loads of hawks and owls, plus a semi-feral cat that likes to hang around. I'll keep you posted on how well the Tin Cat works.

(The poison isn't really necessary in a Tin Cat but I figure it would hasten the rodents' deaths and therefore be at least *slightly* more humane than dying of thirst).

This post was edited by Slimy_Okra on Tue, Sep 30, 14 at 20:44

Sounds good slimy!......was thinking something like this,
a funnel type of entry,..wire or tin which can expand on enter but opening too small to get out.

Someone I know who had problems with mice, had put up some home made whirlybirds/windmill, basically two wooden blades crossed in the middle, [has to be loose and not precise] ..when running, they make a clunkydy sound and give off sound vibration into the ground which rodents hate and move on. He says it works. I'd probably put them on pipe which does a better job of sound transfer.

Try this:

Here is a link that might be useful: Bucket mouse trap.

Heh, neat trick! Thanks for the video.

This bottle trap is easier to make and works good.

prairie_northrose posted it not long ago

Here is a link that might be useful: Glass bottle traps

Hmm..looks good. I'm ashamed to say I feel guilty about drowning them(I know, some farm girl!)...but they've got to go and there is no way I'm going to bonk them all on the head or something.

Weeper, do you think voles may be causing some of the damage? They are very good diggers and are the same general size as mice.

Mice and voles (I saw both) damaged many of my beets, turnips and early spring greens this year. I also had a couple of mice rampage through my greenhouse and behead some of my pepper starts. Luckily it was early in the season and I replanted.

It could be voles, but if it is them, they aren't easily caught in traps! I tried trapping whatever was causing the damage this spring(I replanted my peas 3-4 times before I finally gave up) and I always caught mice. This fall it has been the same. Oodles and oodles of mice! I did catch one vole, though, so possibly the two species are teaming up on my garden.

Darn... just now, the first time in years I have pocket gophers in the asparagus,.. [many mounds of dirt] need to trap them now!

The plus side is, pocket gophers are very solitary, so usually if there is a cluster of dirt mounds, they are all done by the same animal. And trapping them is pretty easy if you have the right traps and do it right. But they can do an INCREDIBLE amount of damage..so get at 'er!

Yea...two traps out in a tunnel.

A couple years ago I had a pocket gopher move into my flower bed just before freeze up. Then we got snow, and I didn't notice any piles of dirt in there in the fall, so I thought all was well. In the spring, when I finally realized what was in there, I had lost at least half of my lilies and a bunch of perennials. It was like a fist had punched through the ground, and entire plants were just..gone! So since then I'm psychotic about trapping them the first day I see evidence of them!

Ha, my set up/process is very similar. I think my traps are called "black box" or something, and I have a circular one too. I use lumps of dirt/grass to cover up any light that the gopher might see. And I use wire to tether my traps to a piece of rebar...I don't know why..I guess I'm in the habit from dealing with mice that chew through anything else. And I usually trap another nearby pile of dirt, just to be sure, as well.

Glad you got that sucker! Immensely satisfying, no? ;)

Yes,...since there was 0 today I moved the traps about 15 yards
into some other piles. Never had this kind of a problem before in my veggie garden, think I know why. Before I always plowed my garden before freeze up, the last 3 years I didn't because my old tractor is inoperative, ..I only used it for this purpose, not sure at this time if I should repair it, needs a clutch repair, [seized] possible tractor need to be split in half and that is not what I like to take on.
I sure loved the garden to be plowed, [then only light tilling in spring] it also pulled most of the surface roots from nearby poplar out, now it's a pain dealing with these.

That fix sounds like it might be expensive! Man, tractors are just SO expensive in general. We only deal with larger farm tractors, but all fixes seem to cost a lot, and new-to-you tractors seem too much as well. Sigh. We haven't gotten a smaller acreage tractor for exactly that reason, so for now everything is done by hand. Fun times.

Good luck with those gophers, you'll have them gone in no time.

Do those pocket gophers attack veggies too? What kind of veggies do they go after? I've been seeing a lot of those mounds.

Slimy Okra, they seem to like things with lots of roots underground, so they may go for potatoes, carrots, beets, etc., I'm not sure. They've never been in my veggie garden, but in my flower bed, they favored my lily bulbs and I think they may have eaten a daylily or two. I know "in the wild" they can infest alfalfa pastures(because of their tap root, I imagine).

I imagine they are capable of eating whatever they come across that seems tasty! They spend very little time on top of the ground, so they mostly eat things from the bottom, and sometimes they pull the plant down the hole with them.

I'm sooo..happy that I could plow the garden again this year, tractor I got fixed with 0 expense by advise from Gator in the tractor forum! All it needed was running for 3 hours, ..the heat from engine expanded the flywheel,..thus braking apart the rusted clutch. Didn't have to split tractor in half.

See link

Here is a link that might be useful: Need clutch expert

Back to the original subject, when attempting to control the rodents stick with traps and buckets, and leave out the poison, for all of the reasons already discussed here. The "black boxes" into which poison is placed isn't perfect - I just treated a case of rodenticide poisoning in a little dog who found a piece of the rodent bait under some leaves. It had been securely placed in a black box. So the rodent may go into the black box to eat but once the piece in there is small enough they move it elsewhere and other animals can come in contact. Also, putting poison into the tin cat live trap is less dangerous but keep in mind that the mouse will take several days to die in there, bleeding out internally to die. I would think drowning quickly in a bucket might be slightly more humane and no poison involved, and faster. Just my veterinary thoughts here!

I'm still on the subject,..plowing the garden keeps the pocket gophers out!

Alas, for raised beds. I do love them for other reasons, but it is annoying to have to hoe up the beds in the fall instead of zipping through with the tractor...

Myfrozenlittlepond - yes, I came to the same conclusions. Decided not to poison. We don't have any outside pets(besides horses) but we do have beneficial predators, and I didn't want to risk secondary poisoning. I think I've had at least some success just trapping them. I used to fill all the traps every night(9 traps) and now I only catch 2-3 a night.