Voles Digging Holes In Yard

Pesky voles and shrews create small holes with openings of about 1 to 1 1 2 inches while squirrels and chipmunks leave behind 2 inch holes.

Voles digging holes in yard.

This guide helps diagnose what s digging tunneling feeding and otherwise disturbing turf grasses. A vole s burrow can be identified by holes found in lawns or around the base of trees. Mole holes are covered by a hill of earth while a vole hole is not. Vole holes can be right out in the open or cleverly hidden under foliage or debris in the garden.

Some are commonly called meadow mice or pine mice. Moles are all nose and mouth. The animals dig dime sized entrances to their burrows around the roots of plants. Vole holes may be even as small as a dime.

The runways may be about one to two inches wide. Voles have small rounded ears that are often hidden by their fur small eyes and short tails. Use the links above the graphic to find more information about many of the offenders and be sure to check out our problem wildlife page for more details on other wildlife conflicts around homes and farms. Holes throughout the lawn are usually sourced to small rodents like voles or moles or insects.

Even though these little critters only grow to be 5 7 inches long they can cause massive destruction to your yard and garden so figuring out how to deter voles is paramount. Preventing vole lawn damage. Voles look like mice. Evidence of a vole problem is easy to see but spotting these shy nocturnal pests is rare.

Following surface runways often leads to a vole hole. Eliminate entryways even though you re more likely to see other rodents like mice and rats inside your home voles are the same size and just as likely to make their way there. By mixing gravel into some of the dirt in your lawn voles will likely turn around and head toward softer soil that is more conducive to digging. In contrast moles are not rodents.

Voles may travel through mole tunnels but also dig their own burrows. Birds make holes in sod as they search for food and earthworms make small little holes the size of pencils to aerate the soil and provide air to their tunnels. Voles are small little mammals that spend part of their lives underneath the ground which makes them hard to detect. In fact a vole might look like a mouse at first glance.

The only visible evidence of a vole burrow is the neat exit holes an inch or two across. And they have big feet used in digging. See our mole page. Voles myodes are small stocky rodents similar to field mice.