MOLES! Moles EVERYWHERE!

[jill.costello]

Ugh. We have finally figured out why there are "soft spots" in our yard EVERYWHERE- Moles.

I swear, I could close my eyes and toss a rock and it would land over a mole-run. I lifted up a 12x12 paver in our front walkway, and you can see their little maze right there in the soil.

This also vindicates the "bad" dog whose been digging holes in the yard.... he's hunting!

How in the world do you get rid of a mole colony THIS big? Keeping in mind that I don't want to poison my dogs or my chickens??

I am praying I don't have this many out in the pastures- one wrong step into a mole-hole could break a horses leg.....

Any remedies?

Jill

[jehehmeyer]

I had the same problem. Moles main food source is grubs. If you get rid of the grubs your mole problem should go away. I use Milky Spore. You can get it at nurseries. It is a naturally occuring bacteria. you sprinkle a little bit every two feet all accros the lawn. The grubs ingest the bacteria which multiply within the grub. The grub dies and the all the new bacteria is released. The cycle repeats. I notice a drop off in the grub population the first year. Now, three years later I really have no grubs to speak of. This really helped with the yearly Japanese Beetle hatch. One application is supposed to last upto 20 years. Since I applied Milky Spore, I haven't had a single mole.

Hope this helps...

Jim

[Headnut]

My wife and I had the same problem now we have a outside cat and no more moles we've had him about two years.
Cats have a lots of patience he will sit and watch the hole for them.

[Nature_Lover]

We had them for years, neighborhood cats and the dog didn't show any interest in them.
We tried spike traps in the tunnels, and rose trimmings, even bubble gum, none of those worked.
Finally, I went out to big lots and bought six of those pinwheel yard decorations - tacky I know, but it WORKED!
I guess they don't like the vibrations from the pinwheels, they moved away and never came back.

[insanity]

Originally Posted by Nature_Lover

We had them for years, neighborhood cats and the dog didn't show any interest in them.
We tried spike traps in the tunnels, and rose trimmings, even bubble gum, none of those worked.
Finally, I went out to big lots and bought six of those pinwheel yard decorations - tacky I know, but it WORKED!
I guess they don't like the vibrations from the pinwheels, they moved away and never came back.

You just gave me an idea.I wonder what they would do if you hit the ground with electricity? LOL My grandfather used to have a prob you plugged up and stuck in the ground to get worms to come to the surface.Notice they also come to the surface to keep from drowning when the ground get saturated with rain.As do moles.Wondering if the moles would also surface if electrocuted.
I currently try to catch them working (pushing up new dirt).There most active in early morning.Then shove the garden hose in the ground down in the tunnel.They will come shooting out of the ground to escape the water.Then you can whack-um.

I'm sure the neighbors think Ive finally lost it!

[kirsten]

I don't think it is moles. It could be or it could be what are known as pocket gophers. I see a dead mole every now and then becuase cats are the most amazing mole getters on the planet! I don't know how they do it but if you have a colony deal going on with lots of runs underground and you see a lot of mounds, it might be pocket gophers.

[famer_manda]

Not sure what I have going on in my hard but i have tunnels all over. Some years its a lot and then sometimes very little. This year has probably been the worse!

[Gideon's War]

We have 3 outdoor cats. Almost daily get a mole left for us to see their "prize"

[Dahc]

My cats keep the mole population down by killing their young. It's very common to see dead baby moles while walking out on the property but I have not seen a mole "trail" in 3 or 4 years now... and we've had the cats about 3 or 4 years. Problem solved.

Be sure to spay or neuter your cats. Wild kittens are just as hard to get rid of as moles and a spayed or neutered cat will defend it's territory and keep those that would have kittens away. Handy little critters.

[Windy_jem]

Do you wanna borrow my snake? LOL

[gspig]

I've been battleing moles for several years. This year I launched a double prong assault. First attack was to put insecticide down on the lawn. I used to use Dursban and Diazanon, and they worked well, but are now banned "for the children". I've had a hard time finding a good insecticide. This year I put out insecticide and washed it into the soil. I waited a week, then mowed the lawn. This collapses tunnels and makes new tunnels easier to find. Then I put out a new mole bait. I got it from TSC, it looks like fake fishing worms. I found the active tunnels and used a stick to poke a hole in the tunnel just large enough to put the worm bait inside. There has been a dramatic decrease in activity since then. I'm waiting for a good soaking rain to see if there is any new activity.

[suburbanite]

I like the biological control milky-spore idea. You may also get a similar effect with 'beneficial nematodes', which have to be applied at night because UV light from the sun can kill them.

If you kill off the mole food supply, they have to go elsewhere. If you kill the moles and not their food supply, you'll have a mega grub problem, which is what the moles are preventing right now.

Mole holes are very shallow and usually the whole length of the hole has a slightly raised top. Gopher holes are deep and you only find the ends of them, with piles of dirt beside them. Gophers eat plants with an occasional bug or dead meat on the side, moles are omnivorous, eating more bugs than plants, if I recall. If you wipe out the moles without figuring out why your yard is so attractive to them, you'll wind up with a huge number of whatever bugs the moles were eating.

Gophers, on the other hand, have no redeeming features.

[jehehmeyer]

Originally Posted by Headnut

My wife and I had the same problem now we have a outside cat and no more moles we've had him about two years.
Cats have a lots of patience he will sit and watch the hole for them.

Before our dacshund passed, he rid our yard of moles. Unfortunately, he would dig up the entire mole burrow to find the mole. Of course the damage was much worse than the moles alone. At least the dog ate well.

[Lerxt]

Here's something I didn't know until recently. Moles squeek when they're scared. I saw my dog out in the pasture throwing something around and then bouncing around after it. I went out to see what she had and it was a huge mole. Every time she'd grab it it'd squeek like a dog toy. Loads of doggy fun until it died. Now she's murder on moles. She's killed at least 7 or 8 this summer. Good dog!

[jill.costello]

WELL! Here it is! A resident of our rodent-colony-tunnel-diggers!

So, what is it? A mole or a pocket gopher?? Look at those claws!

[bare]

Excellent representative of a pocket gopher. How did you manage to get him to pose so well?

[jill.costello]

Originally Posted by bare

Excellent representative of a pocket gopher. How did you manage to get him to pose so well?

Well, as it turns out, if you are a pocket gopher, then getting dug up by a Blue Heeler and tossed around the driveway a few times makes you suddenly feel like doing a photo shoot!

Also of interest: One-year-old Ball Pythons do NOT believe they are big enough to eat a pocket gopher and hide at the back of their enclosure until you take the wretched thing away.

And finally: I am the proud benefactor of the luckiest dern rodent in Texas!..... (we put her back in her hole; after surviving the two near-death experiences, we felt she was smart enough to go tell her friends down at the burrow that there's a new sheriff in town....)