SO LITTLE TIME, SO MUCH DAMAGE- THE VOLES

It is surprising that many are unknown to a rodent called vole which is so widespread and poses a huge potential of causing an extensive damage to trees, lawns and gardens. They have even managed to put the blame for their destructive acts on moles, which do not even eat plants as voles do!

Voles, often confused with moles and shrews, are more mouse-like. These small, stocky brown rodents have short tails, small ears, and a blunt, rounded snout.

Voles are dark furry creatures about the size of a mouse. They make little runway-like paths on the surface of your yard. Their eating includes insects, slugs, snails, roots, bark, seeds, and bulbs. Voles are the guilty ones who eat your hostas, bulbs and roots of perennials. They often eat succulent root systems and burrow under plants or ground cover and eat away until the plant is dead.

Voles can cause extensive damage to orchards, tree plantings, and field crops. Voles eat crops and also damage them when they build extensive runway and tunnel systems. Voles also can ruin lawns, golf courses and ground covers. Voles rarely come in contact with humans and therefore pose no major public health hazards; however, they are capable of carrying disease organisms, such as plague and tularemia.

Voles live in a wide variety of habitats at elevations ranging from sea level to high mountains. In North America they range from Alaska southward to the mountains of Mexico and Guatemala. In Eurasia they can be found in the British Isles and across Europe and Asia to southern China, Taiwan, and Japan.

Voles breed quickly. A female vole can have a litter of ten young up to ten times a year. This reproduction rate makes a vole infestation something that can occur in a very short amount of time.

Let’s have a look at the evidence revealing damage caused to lawns by voles:

Gopher, vole populations on rise in parts of Idaho

By Brad Carlson | May 2, 2018

A mild winter gave burrowing rodents such as pocket gophers and meadow voles a productive early start to what could be a big year for the pests.

The mounds Travis Tyson sees popping up on his family’s 10-acre spread south of Nampa, Idaho, are starting to remind him of the gopher-heavy 2015.

Idaho State Department of Agriculture Program Manager Sherman Takatori said he has received reports of some higher vole populations in parts of eastern and southcentral Idaho.

“The (vole) population has a nasty habit of exploding when conditions are favorable” due to their high capacity for reproduction, he said.

Vole Presence High in Nut Orchards Thanks to Wet Winter

October 19, 2017

The wet start to 2017 ensured that much vegetation would grow in and around almond, walnut, and pistachio orchards, resulting in elevated vole – commonly known as meadow mice – activity. Girdled trees, eaten nuts, and chewed irrigation tubing reports were at all-time highs. Individually, each of these disorders may cause a nuisance, but collectively their impacts can result in economic tree losses, reduced production, and increased labor costs.

Eaten nuts are a sign of voles in your orchard. (Photo: Wes Asai)

 And the control measures applied include; all sorts of electronic, ultrasonic, and vibrating pest control devices; stuffing the tunnels with brambles, moth balls, broken glass, rat poison, and cat poop; flooding the tunnels. None of these are good ideas. Using traps and rodenticides

The logistics of using traps or exclusionary fences is only practical for small yards or gardens.

Care is needed to avoid affecting non-target species, pets, or children.

Many farmers suffering damage to their crops and grasslands from large populations of voles attempt to control them using bromadiolone, a chemical that inhibits the coagulation of their blood. Small mustelids such as stoats and weasels are often regarded as specialist predators of voles and eating prey affected by bromadiolone treatments can expose them to the effects of the anticoagulant rodenticide (AR).

At C Tech Corporation we provide you with the effective solution. Our product Combirepel™ is developed by using green technology. It is an extremely low concern, low toxic, non-hazardous and non-mutagenic animal aversive. It is durable at extreme climatic conditions.

Our product is ROHS, ROHS2, ISO 9001:2000, ISO 14001:1996, APVMA, NEA complaint and FIFRA exempted. Our product does not cause harm to targeted as well as non-targeted species. It just repels them from the applied product. It works on the mechanism of repellency.

Combirepel™ is available in three forms namely masterbatch, liquid concentrate, and lacquer.

Masterbatch can be incorporated into applications like fencing, water pipes, agricultural films, polymeric tree guards, wires, cables, etc. This would result in the final application being rodent repellent.

Liquid concentrate can be mixed in paints in a pre-determined ratio and be applied to the interior and exterior of houses, gardens, farms, etc. to repel voles from the area required.

Lacquer form can be directly applied on the application such as wooden fences, guards, pipes etc. The lacquer is compatible with most of the surfaces like metal, wood, concrete, polymer, ceramic etc.

The product triggers a fear response in rodents thus protecting the application. It causes severe temporary distress to the mucous membrane of the rodents due to which the pest stays away from the application. The product triggers an unpleasant reaction in case if the pest tries to gnaw away the application. After encountering the above-mentioned emotions, the animal instinctively perceives it with something it should stay away from and stores this information for future reference. The fact that certain rodents are repelled is mimicked by other rodents as well. Thus, the other rodents too stay away from the applications. The unpleasant experience is imprinted within the animal’s memory and passed on to its progeny.

Hence by using Combirepel™ the lawns, farms and gardens can be prevented from vole damage effectively and considerably.

Contact us at technical.marketing@ctechcorporation.com if you’re facing problems with rodents and get best remedies to combat the pest menace.

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