Why do we have gophers????

Those blasted things, hard at work in my iris beds, I guess the wire has worn out and they have hit pay day..... it is a mess, I pulled out some of the ones left, hanging by a root, and potted them, then I found the were trying to get up my Bowled Over, rescued it in time.......but the others.......yikes.....could you believe I could get out there and clean some iris beds???? tomorrow I believe rain will be here.....so for once I got some things done before the whole thing gets ugly:) here is Bowled Over, so the ? is what good are the gophers??? what is their purpose.......TO DRIVE ME CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I second that !!

LOL......Halo in Peach

I think they were invented to make gardeners work harder to keep their gardens and plants safe!

D

Amen!!!!!!

Can you back your vehcile up near one of their holes and put a hose atached to the tail pipe down it?

good thought but there are so many and most have no hole that you can see....would be hard to figure them out...I think I may try some raised beds with concrete panels on the bottom, if they can get through that, I must hand over the trowel to them:)

I have not thought of that one Polly might just do it and gun the heck out of the engine and try to kill that suckers. To date nothing has worked, now they are not doing anything as it is too darned out for them here. We have to get some rain to warm up past freezing.

D

Believe me I have tried it all, gum in the hole, bone meal in the hole, blood meal, the wind makers, the electric rods that make noise, you name it I have tried it.......they are not stupid.........

Ditto here...

D

Gophers were invented to give hawks something to eat.

never see them get any and we do have some pretty big hawks, and plenty of them, they have dined on my chicken:(

Sadly gophers do continue to burrow and work in very cold weather. I looked it up. They don't hibernate. That is borne out by my experience as well. I have heard the car hose does work -- for a while. But then more gophers move in to the vast underground structure that they have built.
Didn't I tell you what our county was doing about gophers this summer? Propane and oxygen pumped into their burrows then ignited remotely. Don't know if it worked but I am sure the Parks and Rec guys enjoyed it . It was a device they bought for $2,000 called the gophernator. We have lots of wild life lovers and protectors here, but when they announced what they were planning to do and held a public meeting on the subject, no one objected. They just wanted to know where to get the thing.
My current method is trapping. I use those metal traps that require no bait. I got quite a few that way and just before the first snow, I made sure there were traps in their main tunnels. The traps are now frozen underground, but I am hoping the will have trapped gophers in them all winter and that the other gophers will decide they don't want to come into my iris beds. MInd you, I only do this around my iris beds. There are tons more gophers that I don't even bother. It's just that I have lost so many expensive rhizomes to gophers that I decided I had to be the Daniel Boone or Davy Crocket of gophers and see if I can't at least somewhat outsmart then.
I like the idea of the concrete bottom on raised beds, but be warned, makj, they do walk around above ground when no one is looking.
Haven't tried the car exhaust yet.

I read abou the car exhaust some place on the internet. Sounds like it might work if you can get to the holes.

Thanks Betty, and yes I know the little suckers will go above ground and walk around, I saw this first hand, one was walking right through one of the beds one day, again, I have learned they aren't stupid and maybe that is how they survive when they can, but new plan of attack is the raised beds with hardy board which is made with concrete believe it or not, I feel I stand a better chance above ground then below:)

They always have at least 2 holes to enter/exit. Before you gas them, you're supposed to cover the other hole. If you can't get a vehicle anywhere near the beds, try pouring a gallon of bleach and a gallon of Ammonia down the hole and covering it up quickly. If you keep the hole covered, those poisonous fumes won't dissipate for a few days. Look around for any places that you see gas rising and plug them right away.

Then they will really be stinking gophers. Yuck.

LOL pajar, it sounds a bit like the critter huggers were feeling about gophers about like some of us feel about approaching killer bees....

The critter lovers around here make an exemption for gophers. I bet a gopher coat would sell for a pile of money in this part of the world -- not that I would even consider wearing a gopher pelt. They really aren't that attractive.
When I trap a gopher, sometimes I try that tunnel again if it has been in use for a while and is especially well constructed. They say you can't catch another gopher in the same tunnel, but I have caught 3 and even 4 in the same tunnel. But eventually they get smart and quit using that tunnel. At the point when I no longer catch gophers in a tunnel I destroy it to the best of my ability. If the hole is deep, I run water with mud in it in the hole until it fills up -- sometimes that takes an amazingly long time. If the hole isn't so deep I just use my feet and the hose to stomp it flat. That way, if they try to come back, they have to dig and I see the diggings on top the ground and know they are on their way back.
I always saw myself as a flower and vegetable gardener, not a trapper, but I find the only way I can really successfully garden is by trapping. This skill has spilled over into my house at the farm which is left empty most of the year. It is also out in the woods and becomes overrun wih mice and rats. As a result I have a major disgusting job cleaning up their poop whenever I come back. I typically leave a lot of traps out while I am there and catch quite a few.
My last visit there, however, after the usual cleaning job, I didn't get anything in the traps, though I could detect where they had come in. I didn't pick up the traps when I left. Sure enough I caught a big ole' rat in one of my traps while I was gone. Of course the neighbors who check on the house weren't thrilled to have to dispose of it, but I am always proud when I thwart a rodent.
I like animals a lot and would never hurt most of them, but mice, rats and gophers, are my arch enemies and I feel no sorrow when they die. Probably not my best trait, but there you have it.

pajaritomt, I never had any luck with those sonic vibration transmitters out in the garden. But DSO has a house in the mountains here that sits unoccupied for long periods. The mice would have a field day there, even ate all of the insulation out of the oven. He bought one of those small electric ultrasonic sound emitters and leaves it plugged in the kitchen. It's been at least 10 years now with no mice.

This message was edited Dec 13, 2009 12:14 PM

it seems to be a crap shoot, some of the gismos work and some don't, finally had to get ugly with the rats, lived here 30 years and never a rat until the vineyard moved in behind us, now RATS..........

You know, we did put in those electronic sound emitters in several parts of the house and we haven't had any mice since, but we clearly still have rats. I use those large plastic spring-loaded traps baited with peanut butter and it works, but you have to be around to remove the dead body or it stinks the place up to high heaven.
The real secret for rats is to plug up the holes where they come in but the house is old and hand made and so far has been impossible to seal. We had to give up on rat poison bars because it seem to attract them then they died indoors or under the house. So it is spring loaded traps for me.

YUK

Marie you have to get a letter off to Santa and ask him for one of these for your gophers.

http://www.rodenator.com/pests-controls-videos-rodenators

It looks like more fun then growing irises

Now Mitt, That's entirely too Rambo, even for me!

Thanks, Mitt. Enjoyed the video greatly.

My only problem with the rodenator is the price. I have turned totally rambo where gophers are concerned. But gopher traps are 7:95 each as opposed to a minimum of $1200 for the rodenator. Our county bought one for the playing fields here, but I don't think they will use it on private property -- only county land. I tend 4 traps and that is about all I can handle right now. I have them in a rough circle of traps around my iris beds. Only problem is the ground is frozen now and I can't dig into the gopher burrows without freezing my hands. Also, it is very hard to set traps in gloves, too.
I would have fun with the rodenator but one problem is one has to be sure the tunnels don't go near any structures. One could undermine the foundation of walls and buildings that they have dug under.

Now that is definitely rambo, blowing up buildings!! LOL

Didn't I read that they have business opportunities for folks to become distributors of the rodenator? There's a new career opportunity for folks in this economy!!

OK for out in wide ground, but would certainly mess up plantings as you try & follow the tunnels.

If I were a young college kid I would buy on and offer to zap people's gophers for a fee for a summer and/or part time job. I would stay away from buildings though, and warn people about soil collapse once tunnels are blown up. Around here they charge $10 to $15 per gopher to trap them. Heck, that's the price of a decent iris. So I trap them myself. Probably not worth it to me to buy the $2000 machine. But it sure is tempting. First I will see how good I can get at trapping.

pajaritomt, You need to get some of those glove warmers. Even if you have to take the gloves off to load the traps, you can put your hands right back into the warm gloves.

For the rats, have you tried any of those rain resistant cubes that are for indoor and outdoor use to kill them? If used indoors, it's supposed to make them so thirsty, they go outside in search of water. I used it for mice in my garage and basement and sure enough I found dead mice floating in the rain water outside in my outdoor watering can.

we finally had to get ugly with the rats, I hate to poison but we had no choice they were under the house and getting into the wall and insulation etc..... but nothing else is under the house, so it worked ok

I have seen it all when it comes to rats and mice -- the poison that makes them run to water and then die -- is a common form of rat poison. I think it is strychnine. I used it once many years ago for ground squirrels when I was living in a tent in Eagle's Nest, New Mexico for a summer ( long story). It works very well. I don't know if that is what is in the modern rat poisons that I have used. I have used mostly stuff like decon which is warfarin. It has the same effect. The only problem is that it is delivered in grain or peanuts and they come for the grain and peanuts and then trail blood all over the house before they go outside to die. Warfarin is a blood thinner so they bleed all over your house. Don't know if one can still get strychnine poison. I haven't seen it since my tent days, but then I haven't been looking.
We had serious mice and rats at the farm house. They ate all the insulation off the wires running underneath the house. They get hungry and even poison tastes good. Don't know if it doesn't really kill them -- just makes them sick -- or if the animal runs outside to die where there is abundant water.
They made such a mess coming in for poisoned food we had to give up poison. The little ultra-sonic gadgets work on mice and perhaps some rats. But we still have plenty of rats.
Yetch! I could come up with better solutions if I were there more often.

pajaritomt, Yes, they still sell Rat poison containing strictnine. One brand name is Ramik. I used to use it on the voles. Unless you want to risk killing other animals, you should only use it indoors or in covered, protected traps or inside of pipes. The warfarin use with rats sounds gruesome.

We usually have three mice a year. Don't know why the number, but that's what we get. In the fall. We trap them. But using the poison, we have had them die in the house. And that's horrible. Luckily no rats here, even though we are surrounded by farms. But anyway, the poison did not make the mice go outdoors.

And Betty, let's hear the story of living in a tent in New Mexico.

We trapped 7 mice this yr. Don't know where they get in, but after early Nov there were no more. Last yr there were 6, then no more. I know we caught the big female first then, saw her. These are the field mice. No rats that i know of. Now if we could clear the hill of chipmuncks------DH has used fox urine (out of a bottle) down their holes in the past, but some do return to the hill, which is a raised area which was cut to put in the driveway 30 yrs ago.

Why do you want to get rid of the chipmunks? I feared that they were a problem with my iris as well, because we have lots of them. But when I read up on them, the article said the only problem was that they can make so many burrows that they can undermine buildings! Luckily ours don't live near the house.

Okay, the tent story. I was a Girl Scout from Brownie into high school. My mother was on the board of the Girl Scouts of the Greater New Orleans Area and she was in charge of established camps. That meant I went to GS camp every summer and as I got older I was in the tent units -- where one lived the entire 2 or 3 weeks in a tent and cooked outdoors. It was a great learning experience but I did have the fascinating, at the time, but terrifying, looking back on it, experience of riding out most of Hurricane Audrey in 1958 in a tent -- before buses arrived to pick us up and take us home. Camping in South Louisiana is not something most people do for fun. It is damp and there are lots of snakes. But I became an accomplished camper so after my second year of college and my first year at the University of New Mexico, I applied for a job as a camp counselor at the Sangre de Cristo Girl Scout Camp in Eagle's Nest New Mexico. I was in one of three counselors in the tent unit. That meant that I literally lived in a tent for the entire summer or most of it -- we had 3 -2 week sessions I recall and the conditions were very spartan. There were ground squirrels everywhere and they ate everything. Disgustingly ground squirrels and many small rodents to not have urine control. We did have bunks in our tent and we had an extra bunk where we kept our clean clothes including white blouses neatly folder We went into town to a laundromat to wash clothes between sessions.
Those x#$%@&! ground squirrels used to run across our nice white blouses leaving a little yellow stripes across the front our nice white blouses. Grr. We did the most un-girlscoutly thing of asking the camp director for poison to kill them.. She got us some and we put some out and kept the cardboard can of it in our tent. We had big buckets of water, in case of fire, all over the place and they soon were filled with dead rats, but no ground squirrels. The ground squirrels actually got in the box of poison, which was mixed with flour so they would eat it, and played. I am not at all sure how one gets rid of ground squirrels. They are worse than gophers if you live in a tent. Now I have a live and let live feeling about ground squirrels but stay away from them because they carry bubonic plague around here.
So that is my story of living in a tent for the summer. For some reason, camping is no longer something I do for pleasure, though I did it a couple of times with DH and stepson during stepson's boy scout era.
I love good beds and hot showers and when traveling, maid service.

don't rabbits carry the plague as well? Hunters beware!

Yuk, I'd hate to wake up to a pail full of dead rats. I think we all have a lot more tolerance when younger.

squirrels I believe can carry the plague, however the ones we have really don't bother much, it is the mice and rats, it got so bad under the house that now we have to have the whole heating duct system replaced.......can't afford it now, so we will have to wait until summer or so........we are using the fireplace and oil heater, thank goodness for them....it may be a cooler than usually winter for us.....I guess we will have to throw on another cat to the lap:)

Thank goodness for warm critters -- and your very warm climate, makj. Anything that carries fleas can carry the plague. Here it is very common among all rodents, so I guess that includes rabbits. But what we are really told to watch out for in rabbits is tularemia. I don't know much about that disease but we are told not to touch any wild rodent no matter how it died. Plague is more common here than in most states -- but still pretty rare. The problem is that sometimes people contract it here then move or travel to another state and there the medical people don't recognize it. Several people from here have died, tragically, or been seriously harmed that way. More doctors are on the look out for it here, but people die from it here, as well.
The other disease that comes from mouse pee all over the country is hanta virus which easily becomes airborne. Keeping rodents out of your house ( and iris bed) is really important everywhere.