Any gopher solutions? Part 2

That is all possible, but i think it is more likely that they are so smart they are just deliberately taking advantage of and exploiting your kindness. There is nothing that i know of that will change anything's behavior like really getting hungry. lol.

Ernie - how do you probe for tunnels? Isn't it hard to get through the ground? Even though we are kn what used to be river bottom and is fairly sandy it is not always easy fir me to dig through. Revenge us good.

Pretty funny about the cats huddling on the washer and not finding their bowls. Our older cat is nearly 17 and has no front claws so he is kept indoors. Sometimes he wants out so I let him think he is escaping onto the front porch on rainy days. He does get off but not for long. When he gets out o. Nicer days he explores then scratches at the door like the dogs do - not very noisy with no claws.

No one loses cats to coyotes?

I'm in the city so we don't get the coyotes this far down. I'm sure they do up in the foothills. We have possums and some of them get huge and are not afraid of humans. I think the cats are smart enough to leave them alone but I'm not sure the dog would be that smart. He thinks everything is a toy. Caught him playing with a possum pup one night and had a heck of a time getting it away from him. He didn't hurt it thank goodness and I put it over the fence so it could get away.

Coyotes come into residential/tract homes to. Good feeding grounds. Before we finally had rains last year a. Lot more wild animals were venturing further from the foothills for water and food.

QG, We have a terrible hard crust on our soil, and when we started breaking up the ground for planting, we had to use a mattock and pick, as the rototiller would not scratch it. It is DG with clay and gravel in it. But it gets softer when it is wet. The tunnel that goes to the dirt pile may come at a slant but it will not be completely verticle, and you can usually push the probe through it, to find that first short tunnel. Then this winter and Spring, you may be able to push the probe through the crust away from the dirt pile. But I know the crust will get so hard here i will not be able to probe again next summer, so i have already planned to make a thinner probe to locate the tunnels away from the dirt piles, and help get the poison probe through. Just take a threaded piece of 3/8th rod, available in hardware stores, and put a handle on one end and sharpen the other end to a point, and that will be a lot easier than the thicker pipe probe on the gopher tool. I think this will work for me, but have not done that yet. Where i irrigate, which is also the places the gophers like the best, i can push the gopher probe through.

We had a coyote here last Spring, and it did eat a lot of rabbits, but they also eat cats and small dogs, etc. They are real travelers. They follow the Rio Hondo and Los Angeles rivers all the way to the ocean. Los Alamitos, just north of Seal Beach, has a problem with them killing cats there.

We are having a cold spell down here, and i have lost some begonias to frost. A friend just told me it is expected to be 20 degrees below normal. which will be below 30 again tonight. It frosted Sunday night but not last night, but supposed to again tonight.

We've had some frost but not too bad here. Being a neebee I haven't got anything this year to lose so I'm thankful for that. My problem has been wind. It tore up the bachlor buttons and wandering jew. The petunias seem to be immune to everything right now. They just keep blooming. As for wild life, I hope the coyotes don't get this low. Lots of big dogs around here so maybe that will be a deterant.

We have a flood control channel behind ou house that goes equal to another block into foothills a d we see coyotes almost daily traveling back home to the hills. There is even a path they take in the hills that is visible. Sometimes when we leave home we are tempted to leave our gate open as we will be back soon, but I am afraid that even with cats and dogs inside a coyote or bobcat would come on and we could a cidently close him IN when we got home. We were gone fo about 10 hours today and our declawed cat somehow was outside all day and evening. Pain in the butt that he is, I was sure glad to see him show up!!!!

Our ground should not be as bad as yours, Ernie, to probe. One end of our property gets visits from neighbor cats regularly and I don't see holes there!

QG, My primary career was building highways, and i have only seen dirt that compacts as easily as this soil does a few times in all those years. The prior tenant either collected or sold cars, and the entire yard had been driven on. But we have a wonderful source of Compost from a Green Recycler, so we have hauled in many loads of compost, as well as some sand from the flood control channel nearby, and the soil is getting better. But there are unimproved areas with old gopher tunnels deep beneath, that will still be hard for me to probe. The poison works if placed in the tunnels beneath the dirt piles, but seems to work even more completely when i am able to locate the main tunnels away from the piles. I see a big colony working in a neighbors yard a couple of hundred feet away, so they are very active now, but i do not have any at the moment. A Cottontail got in around the end of my rabbit fence this morning, so i will get more fencing and double up the rest of it.

I am still hoping to find out the names of some good thin skinned, high flavored tomatoes. Since i am going to eat them and not ship them to distant markets, i do not need the tough skins. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Those winds were horrible Monkey. No damage just a lot of overturned pots. Thank goodness it did strip the birch trees of their leaves. The cleanup continues.
I had a gopher service come take care of the gophers in the iris garden. I just don't have the time to get there right now. I got a real good deal, my niece is very good friends with the manager!

I glad the winds are gone. The north end took alot more stress from them than my area. They did strip my tree too. Finally got all the leaves cleared or moved to an area I wanted them to sit out the winter. Just checked on everything and everything seems good. I guess whats left isn't bothered by the really cold nights. The new naked lady bulbs look really good. I hope they stay happy.

The gopher service is a good idea. My daughter has a couple of acres in Chino, and she could not keep up with them, so she has had a gopher service for several years and is very pleased with the job they do. What method did the control service use to treat for them?

Chino is where my iris garden is Ernie. Where is your daughters property? I'm not sure but I think it's called 'gopher getter' and only licensed proffesionals can get it.

Great idea, weegy!

Maybe I will check and see if they have any in this county. I have so many, I do not know what to do. And maybe ground squirrels and voles and/or moles.

I am tired of feeding my plants to the critters!!!

I agree Evelyn...they can't have my plants!
Correction, anyone can buy 'gopher getter' but the professionals get a stronger bait then the public can buy. I'm sure you'll find one Evelyn, they are sorely needed.
Where is Grizzly Flats?

We live about 20 miles southeast of Placerville. We are in the Sierra foothills at 3500' in elevation and it snows here every winter, and stays hot all summer, but not as hot as Placerville or Sacramento. It is about and hour and a half to Lake Tahoe, and about an hour to Sacramento.

Weegy,
My daughter, Karen, lives on McKinley, north of Chino Ave. Just off of 71. She has flowers and trees, but her main interest is about 10 horses, and several stray dogs she has taken in and given good homes.

Pretty close Ernie. I know exactly the area your daughter is. Small world.
Evelyn, we aren't so close! You live in a nice area!

I tried the exhaust thing and the c02 just came up out of uncovered holes all over and the gophers block off where they are to stop the fumes from getting them.
My son in law used to do something cruel but I can't remember, it was something like setting the tunnels on fire with a small torch and putting gasoline or something in the hold. I can't remember. Someone on DG said they did gas in the holes and it blew up his garage which was far away.

I think most of the homemade gopher killing ideas work sometimes for some people, but nothing works all the time for all people. I had the gophers cleaned out of my yard, but one slipped under the fence, from an unused easement behind my place. He made no piles of dirt to reveal his presence, but chewed the 5 inch diameter trunk of a four foot tall artichoke plant off, just below ground level. Still no visible sign of him when the plant fell over.

I have fifty pounds of water pressure here, so if he wanted war, i would give him war. I was aware that there were many old abandoned tunnels in the easement, so i turned the water hose in there and let it run until it came out at a lower elevation. I had my helper dig the tunnel out, by following where the running water was coming from, so we demolished several tunnels that way. Vicente saw and killed one gopher that was trying to escape by following the hose up, but that is all we saw. Then we turned the water off and waited over the weekend to see where the activity was, and by Monday morning we found none in the easement near the artichokes, but found a couple of new hills up at the far end. So, we focused on flooding and digging them out today, and now, if and when they dig new tunnels, i will know where to place the poison. I believe there is a good chance of drowning any babies, or even some adults that get trapped when their dams fail, but i do not think they will all drown, as some dirt makes better dams than other dirt does. So, i intend to try everything necessary to keep them away from my garden.

There are lots of them on my neighbors properties, so i am sure there will be more come over, but i do not see anyway to prevent that. The poison inserted in the tunnels is still, in my opinion, the best way, and that will be my first choice each time i see any sign of them. I also bought a digging bar, which is made for digging post holes in hard, rocky ground, and it has a knob on the top end for tamping around posts. It works well for collapsing the feeding tunnels which are usually within the top 8 inches of the soil, where most of the roots are, but it will not collapse the deeper living tunnels. I feel like the work we did digging out the old tunnels was worthwhile.
Ernie

My issue is a have a dog that is part Bull Terrier and we all know how they dig. I always had the best luck with poison too, but now I am afraid to do it at all. grrr!

I do not know if it will stop a dog from digging completely, but it helps to keep their toenails trimmed almost to the quick. They will not dig if it has to be done with just the pads on their feet.

For those of you that do use the Gopher Getter devices to implant poison, I just found out the hard way that moisture, perhaps even humidity, can soften the pellet type poison, and it builds up in the tube and plugs it. A difficult job to clean out, as it hardens against the tube walls.

I do not have that problem with the bait made from grain, just the pellet type.

What will keep their toe nails trimmed Ernie?

You, or a Vet or a dog groomer will have to do that, just like you trim your own. In nature, dogs, sheep, cats, etc., kept their toenails worn down by having to walk, party on rocks, digging for food, etc, but now that they have such easy lives, the toenails grow too long. You can trim them with large toenail clippers, or they have a painless battery operated device. Just like our nails, if you trim too deep, into the quick, it hurts for a little while, just like ours do, but not for very long. With a little practice you can tell how close you can come without drawing blood. If you can keep the toenails short enough they do not protrude beyond the pads, he will have nothing to dig with. They do not dig with their paws. They scratch it loose with their toenails and then drag it out with their pads. Younger dogs dig worse than older ones, so it may just be excess energy and boredom. He may outgrow it. All of the dogs i have had really wanted to please me, and if i could make them understand what i wanted or did not want, they seemed anxious to do what i wanted, so you might be able to train him to not dig, toenails or not. You might go on Google, asking for ways to stop dogs from digging, and get some more ideas. Basically, it would just be another form of obedience training.

We have a nail trimming event periodically where I hold the animal and DH trims their nails. I say 'event' because we have 28 feet to take care of what with 4 dogs, 2 cats and one bunny. Poor bunny, we must have missed him the time before last and his nails were scary long! I have not thought about the nail/digging relationship. Our girl Miniature Pinscher is quite the digger, trying to dig under our fence line to go explore. When she does that she is going into coyote territory. the boy MP cannot fit through all her holes, so is left behind, but if he does get out, he is likely to come back soon and not go too far on his own.

QG, I think some special trimming for the Digging Pinscher might cure her of it. When she starts a hole, cut her nails back to the pink, even draw a bit of blood would be okay, since you want her nails to hurt when she digs. Then let her go back and try to dig some more, and if she does, cut them a little closer. A little bit of temporary pain would not hurt her near as much as a Coyote bite. Pain would probably not stop here if she is in estrus, and they do still get the urge, even if they have been spayed, but it might stop her digging other times. The most frustrating thing about training dogs for me is when i am not smart enough to make them understand what i want them to do or stop doing.

If my dog would dig the ground just enough to make it ready for planting I wouldn't mind. If he would dig a hole big enough to put in a swimming pool, I might be ok. But he is digging for China. There's really just the one hole that is about three feet deep. I fill it in and he digs it deeper. I'm going to clip his nails and see if that works. I hope so or else he might hit water or oil and that would be a mess.

Linda was trimming the nails on the Cavalier Spaniels today, as they are lap dogs and scratch jumping on our laps when their nails get too long. If i had been trimming them i would have used some trimming shears i used to use on sheep hooves, but she has a battery powered sander made for dog nails, and it took them right down. She did not go deep enough to stop them from digging, but she could have if necessary. The name of it is Pedi-Paws, so i am sure you could find it in the Pet stores or on Google, if the regular nail clippers do not suit you or the dog.

Oh yes. I never tried to trim his nails but my Shar Pei is really hard to do, their quick is so far down that the groomers refuse to do it and we gave up trying to trim them. It hurts her and she bleeds. I should try the sanding thing though. It may be easier.

I do not know for sure, but i believe the quick will move back, if you keep them trimmed back as close as you can without drawing blood. Or so it seemed to for me.

Maybe that is true but they always bleed so close to the end of the nail tips, it is hard and they cry. One friend of mine, has his poor dogs with these curled up toe nails. It is freaky.

I have broken my fingernails part way, and when i have pulled the rest off, i have gone into the quick, and it bleeds but only hurts for a little while, and then heals over, but i know from trimming the sheep, the quick can be at very different depths. Does your Shar Pei dig, like the Bull Terrier and the Pinscher?

I think i have my gophers under control now, until some more move in as they are ejected from their mother's areas. The easement area which had never been treated was full of nice ready made tunnels, but we have flooded, excavated, collapsed by compacting and treated all of those that we could find. One or two gophers remained after the big push, but they left small new dirt piles which revealed their locations, so i treated them, and have not seen any fresh signs for over a week now. It has been full of foxtail grass and weeds, but i will keep it mowed.

It is becoming obvious that our microclimate is 4 or 5 degrees colder than the local forecast, so after they were damaged by the frosts, i built shelters for the Guava, small Avocado and Mexican Lime, to prevent more or deeper damage, and will prune and regrow them as only the new growth and leaves were killed. The trees will survive. I will cover them whenever the local forecast is for 40 degrees or less.

We had some good Kohlrabi and some beautiful yellow cauliflower from the winter garden yesterday. First time i have grown either one, but i will plant some more. Bugs like Kohlrabi, so will need to give them some of the attention i have been giving the gophers.

Ernie, welcome to gardening in So. Cal! We can't depend on even the local forcasts due to our micro climates. I always put off any serious prunning until late Jan. because I don't want any new growth on anything yet. As long as the frost is of short duration, most of the tropicals will bounce back. The only thing I protect is the warm growing orchids. The rest of my tropicals do just fine out there. About 5 years ago we had a cold winter, and all the tropicals suffered badly, but come spring they all came back.

Is winter coming? It's still in the 80s here.

Ha! all bets are off this year!

We bought this place last February, and the Guava was fine, and then while it was in escrow a frost hit, and killed every leaf on it. There are other sub-tropicals in the area so i assumed that was just an unusal frost, so with forecasts of 34 or 36 i was not concerned, but the actual was about 28 or 29 for a few scattered nights, and that took off 85 percent of the leaves from the Guava and half from the Lime, and all the leaves from the small avocado. I moved the lime up near the house where the frost line on the grass had not reached, and built shelters around the others with PVC pipe and tarps, and i cover the lime tree, by draping a tarp from the porch railing. No more damage. The trees are still alive but the softwood and the leaves that were hit are dead. The Guava came back fine last year, but the fruit was just getting ripe, and we only had one guava from it when the others were ruined by the frost. I will protect it earlier next year. Statice, cyclamen, camellias, blackberry foliage, are on higher ground and none were hurt, but the begonias near those froze down. It will be fun learning the details here.

Foxtail grass is really right up there on my top ten list of worst things to fight, along with the gophers and crab grass.

I am putting pre-emergent down this week.

Last year the coldest part of the day, early AM, got down to 23, as it did here in Dec (19 AM's 32 degrees to 23 degrees that month). But, here in SoCal, we are fortunate that we spring back with warm temps in the daytime or damage to plants would be a lot worse. This year, as last, my lantanas freeze melted along with cannas, begonia, some annuals (while other annuals like petunia and alyssum thrive) and some salvias. I planted, in ground, 2 new citrus - mandarin orange and dwarf Meyer lemon - and info on both said OK only to 32 degrees, so I put tomato cages over them and draped them with flannel sheets and tiny Christmas lights inside. I think the Mandarin was damaged before being covered, but don't want to cut anything yet. It is crazy needing to water everything!

Yes it is. I can not do citrus here uless I have a green house and it is dwarf enough to fit in it. We had a record cold in November down to 18.

For those of you that cannot use poison on your gophers, if you would like to try trapping them, my granddaughter caught six in her mother's front yard. If you are interested, i will find out the details, or put you in touch with her direct, to find out how she did it.

LOL! Ernie, that is a God given talent! When I worked for CalTrans , we had a new hire that had been raised on a farm, and was averaging 17 gophers a day in a 3 mi. section, until the great state decided that wasn't cost effective. This guy tried to teach the rest of the crew, to no avail. We hired professionals to gas them, and it worked, but they punctured several irrigation lines in the process....which , of course, we had to go out, dig up , and repair. We ended up with 2 doz. Macabee traps hanging in a storage locker, and left the gophers to the Coyotes. You can't possibly appreciate how destructive the gophers and ground squirrels are until you work on a freeway with steep slopes and heave rains. I've been remembering that since you started this thread, and just had to put it into some perspective. LOL!