If you’ve got small, furry intruders in your yard or garden, it might be time to learn how to get rid of voles.

Relatives of hamsters and lemmings, voles are small, mouse-like rodents (also called meadow mice) that live in the wild and can damage trees, lawns, and gardens. Voles eat grasses, herbaceous plants, bulbs, tubers, bark, roots of trees, and seeds.

The fastest way to get rid of voles permanently is to remove their food sources and use traps or repellents. Below, we walk you through keeping voles out of your yard and garden.

7 Ways to Get Rid of Voles

Voles can be removed humanely from a yard using live traps or exterminated with mouse traps or bait traps (which use poisons). They can also be deterred by fencing and driven away with vole repellents, We’ll dig into it all, pardon the pun, right here.

Mouse Traps

The best time to trap is either autumn or late winter. You can install mouse snap traps in a runway to kill voles. If there are multiple runways, know that the wider ones indicate heavy traffic, as do those heavily soiled with vole urine and feces.

Place the trap perpendicular to a vole runway, aligning the trap’s trigger with the path. You could try some peanut butter for bait.

Live Traps

If you prefer not to kill vole pests, you can attempt to trap them in live traps (such as Havahart traps) and move them to an approved location at least five miles from your home. Place the trap directly in the path and parallel to a well-defined surface runway (sort of like a bridge on a roadway). Baiting is not always necessary, but you can add a bit of peanut butter here, too.

Note: Relocating pest rodents is restricted or prohibited in many areas, so check with local authorities before using live traps.

Commercial Repellents

Thiram-based vole repellents, such as Shotgun Deer, Bobcat urine, and Rabbit Repellent, may be effective against these pests; however, thiram should not be used on garden plants.

Repellents must be reapplied frequently because they dissipate with rain. However, after several applications, the voles become accustomed to the smell, reducing the effectiveness of the repellent.

Fencing and Gravel

Wire mesh garden fencing (hardware cloth) can be wrapped around the base of a young tree in winter to keep voles from gnawing at its bark. Garden fencing can also be placed around plants to protect their roots.

Make sure to bury all fencing at least 6 to 10 inches below the ground surface to prevent voles from burrowing underneath.

Additionally, voles dislike crossing sharp gravel. When planting perennials or bulbs, add a gritty substance, like perlite or sharp gravel, in the bottom and up the sides of the hole at planting time to protect the roots and bulbs.

Natural Repellents

Voles hate the smell of capsaicin, the chemical in spicy peppers. Take advantage of this fun fact by filling up a spray bottle with chopped hot peppers, water, and earth-friendly dish soap. Then, spray those spots where voles are digging to keep them away without harming your yard.

Castor oil is another natural method to remove voles. Voles dislike the smell and taste of castor oil and will be repelled by it. Mix it with water and spray it around plants to protect them from vole damage.

Natural Predators

It might seem counterintuitive to add more predators to your yard, but voles find their urine abhorrent. Fox and coyote urines can usually be purchased online or at farm and garden centers.

Plant Repellents

In addition to tending your garden to keep voles at bay, it’s time to add some more to it. In particular, plant garlic in your bulb and perennial beds to help repel voles, as they dislike the scent. Want something prettier? Anything in the allium family will do nicely.

Prefer something with a more pleasant scent? Try daffodils, iris, salvia, and snowdrops. These are just some of the plants that voles will turn their nose up at, and if there’s no food they like, they will move on.

How Voles Damage Lawns and Gardens

Voles share many characteristics with moles but are more destructive to plants; meanwhile, moles typically feed on grubs and earthworms and create extensive, deep underground tunnels. Read on to learn ways to get rid of voles from yards.

Voles construct well-defined, 2-inch wide crisscrossing tunnels or “runways” at or near the ground’s surface. These runways result from the voles eating vegetation, like the roots of grass and perennials, and the constant traffic of numerous little feet beating the same path, leaving an unsightly lawn in their wake. And if any lawn and garden pest can literally “beat a path” through the grass due to their sheer numbers, it’s the vole.

The real damage happens when voles burrow into the root systems of landscaping shrubs and trees, causing young specimens to lean or to experience dieback. Voles can also wreak havoc on the roots of perennials such as hosta plants, spring bulbs, and the root crops in the garden, such as potatoes.

What Causes Vole Infestations?

If you want to be proactive with predators in your yard and garden, it’s important to know what causes them to come around in the first place.

• Untended yards. Voles are attracted to messy yards with a lot of plant debris, which easily provides them with both food and a hangout spot.
• Snowy winters. Unlike mice and rats, voles do not typically seek shelter inside buildings. Voles appear in more significant numbers in landscaped areas during relatively mild but snowy winters.
• Population surges. You will likely see the damage when local vole populations peak, which can occur cyclically every three to five years. A single female vole can produce 15 to 50 young per year. These rodents typically live about 12 months. Voles nest in grassy clumps above ground or tunnels extending several inches below ground.

How to Prevent Voles in Your Yard and Garden

The first rule of integrated pest management is to prevent pest problems through foresight rather than waiting for the damage to occur, which requires pest control.

For example, if you keep your garden weeded, avoid planting dense ground covers (such as creeping junipers), and keep your lawn mowed, you’re less likely to worry about voles.

Because vole gnawing will cause damage to trees and shrubs, you must also be careful about applying mulch too close to trees and shrubs. You can also protect shrubs and young trees by wrapping the lower trunk with wire mesh to keep voles from snacking on the bark, which could eventually kill the plant. And in the winter, be sure to clear snow from the roots to discourage voles from digging a snow fort.

Voles vs. Moles

A vole resembles a cross between a mouse and a hamster, with lush fur and small, rounded ears. There are over 100 vole species, and most types measure between 4 and 8 inches long (including the tail) and have brown or gray fur. They weigh only about two ounces but can eat their body weight in a single day.

Voles are often confused—and rhyme—with another pest you like to get rid of, which is a mole. Here are two ways to tell the difference.

1. Type of runway. Voles create aboveground runways, while moles prefer to travel underground. Some mole runways are just beneath the surface; these are feeding tunnels and appear as raised ridges running across your lawn. The other type of mole runways run deeper to connect feeding tunnels into a network.
2. Presence of dirt mounds. If a yard pest is leaving behind piles of dirt that look like little volcanoes from soil excavated from deep underground tunnels, you’ve got moles, not voles.

FAQ

• Can voles infest a house?Voles typically live and nest outdoors and do not usually enter homes or other buildings. If you find voles in a garage or other structure, trapping or baiting may be the best eradication method.
• Are voles hard to get rid of?They can be, because you’ll likely won’t see what those sneaky voles can do to your yard until after it’s done. In fact, you might not even know they’ve come for a visit until you start to see your lawn suffer or plants or shrubs die off.
• Are voles worse than moles?Both pests will definitely destroy your curb appeal. While moles dig deeper than voles, they at least compensate homeowners for their trouble by eating grubs and other predatory insects. But voles will devour plants and other vegetation in your yard, so voles are the bigger nemesis.