dealing with varmints in early season production

[kenn...@gmail.com]

Hi Everybody! Thanks to Martin for starting this. When I farmed in the east there was a very healthy eastern Massachusetts listserv that was and is very useful. I had thought about something like this for out here but never took any steps.

In my new position at the South Whidbey School District, I am planting earlier than I am used to - particularly peas - in an effort to beat the end of school. In any case, I am seeing a lot of loss from voles, mice, rabbits in my earliest pea plantings and am wondering if other folks have faced this and what methods have been most successful. My preference is for non-lethal means but I will use other means if necessary if they won't endanger students at all and hopefully not other wildlife like owls. There is not a lot of food out there this time of year and they are zeroing pretty quickly in on my peas (which were started inside and planted out). 

Thanks!

-Brian Kenney

School Farm Manager, South Whidbey School District

[Martin Vandepas]

As it turns out, Shannon and I just got back from the Oregon Small Farms Conference and I attended a whole session about voles. There were two farmers there who talked about their experience with voles and some scientific researchers from OSU that talked about vole ecology and a study they were doing to use trained scent-tracking dogs to find where the voles were so they could trap them. Here are the slides if you want to check them out. Other set of slides. I'll list some of my takeaways that I learned from the session:

Ecology:

• Moles and gophers may cause some inconvenience with their mounds, but they dont feed on plants like voles do. A way to identify voles is the tracks/runways they make on the soil surface near their holes and that voles don't leave mounds of loose soil.
• Voles do provide ecosystem benefits by increasing deep water infiltration into soil and being a food source for raptors and snakes.
• Vole populations go through major boom and bust cycles. There can be years where they aren't much of a problem and then all of a sudden the population can grow very rapidly. They can have litters at 3 weeks old and then every 3 weeks after that with an average of 4-5 per litter.
• Voles live 2 to 16 months.
• Voles can't breed in winter so this is a vulnerable time for them even though you may not see much activity this time of year. If you can find them and trap them in late winter, this can have a significant impact on populations the next summer. The challenge is to find which tracks and holes are still in use. 

Strategies:

• Snakes: Encourage snake habitat with rock piles. Build a little cavity inside a rock pile.
• Raptor poles: Have good perches around your farm. >17ft high
• Owl nest Boxes.
• Foxes, racoons, and coyotes also eat voles
• Cats can be effective but have impacts on birds also.
• Deep tillage is effective, but they overwinter in adjacent grass and quickly reestablish into tilled fields. 
• Trapping

Trapping: 

• They recommend normal mouse traps without any bait. Place traps on the track, a few inches from an active hole
  
• Indicators of active hole: fresh grass clippings in the track, fresh shiny scat near hole.
• One farmer mentioned that she sets the traps at dusk and then comes back before bed with a headlamp and to clear the voles and she releases all the traps. She leaves the traps in the field, but doesn't reset them until the following evening. This prevents birds getting caught in the traps and she finds the most vole activity just after dusk. 
• A farm I worked on built little wooden boxes that held 2 traps. Full plate farm had probably 30 of those boxes across their 3 acres in production. But they still had major vole damage on winter beets, chicory and other crops.
• If I notice an active hole or track, I'll put one or two traps near it and cover with an upside down bucket and put a rock on top of the bucket.  I use peanut butter as bait. I keep a plastic jar of peanut butter in with my bag of traps and I keep a little scrap of plastic inside the jar to smear on the trap. I try to wear gloves to keep my human scent off the traps. I use these traps and they work great and are easy to set. Only one has broken in 2 years. I just caught a vole this morning from a trap I set yesterday.
• They seem to love to live under silage tarps and landscape fabric. This might be a way to lure them into a location in winter and then trap them. 
• We've had significant damage to our silage tarps from voles chewing through them, but we've only noticed tarp damage when multiple layers of a tarp were on the ground. For example if a tarp was too long and the end was folded over or if there was a pile of tarps on the ground. I haven't seen damage on just a single layer of silage tarp on the ground.

Good luck!

Martin Vandepas

Slow and Steady Farm

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[kenn...@gmail.com]

Thanks! Super good info. I was able to trap a single big rabbit that I think was doing the majority of the damage, but we've definitely got a bunch of voles as well. I'd love to put up some raptor poles. 

Best, Brian

[Brian Kenney]

Follow up question for Martin!

Hey Martin, I have a couple questions from this vole thread a couple years ago:

Most of the literature says that you don't bait the vole traps, you just put them near their tunnels/holes, but I see that you mention baiting them with peanut butter. Do you think the bait helps? 

Secondly, you mention putting a bucket upside down over the traps - why is that? To prevent bird capture? And do you do it right over a hole or tunnel so you can be assured they have access to the trap?

Thanks! I'm about to just give up on Purple Sprouting Broccoli - every year something takes it out - bunnies, frost or voles. 

-Brian

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[Martin Vandepas]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the reminder to look for some fresh vole tracks and put some traps out! Incidentally we had much fewer voles this year than we had in the past. We did have some rodent damage from rats later in the season chewing into winter squash in the field, but I was able to trap 2 of them with the same methods and then the damage stopped.

I'm not sure if peanut butter helps with the voles or not. I think it helps with rats though. Maybe it attracts birds. :-( Maybe I'll try baiting some traps and not others and see what happens. 

The bucket does a few things. Most importantly it identifies where the traps are so I dont lose them. I do think it helps reduce catching birds but sadly I still catch one or two a year. Yes I would put it right over a hole if I found it. Usually I only find vole tracks though.  I put 2 traps right in the track and a bucket over the whole thing. I prop up one side of the bucket with a rock or something so there's just enough room for a vole to get under. I think they prefer exploring the darker, dry area under the bucket too. I use 1 gal plastic pots if I run out of buckets.

Does anyone else have vole experiences to share?

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[Deep Harvest]

I think I remember reading that Elliot Coleman baited traps for voles with strawberry bumble yum. It’s been a while though, so maybe it was juicy fruit for rats and mice…

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Annie and Nathaniel

Deep Harvest Farm

www.deepharvestfarm.com