Best Way To Get Rid Of Gophers Without Killing Them – Most of a gopher’s food and life goes underground in a vast network of tunnels that serve from its home.

Sometimes called the pocket gopher because of its fur-lined cheek pouches, this small mammal is unique to the Western Hemisphere. Their homelands stretch from Central America to Alberta. This means that most of the United States serves as a gopher’s backyard, from coastal areas to high elevations. Unfortunately, their tunnels create a host of problems for North American farmers and landowners. In addition to being part of the food chain, gophers play an important role in ecology. Their burrowing adds organic matter to the soil and increases aeration. But if you think or know that they have caused damage to your property, your first step is to understand gophers and how to see the signs of their activity.

Best Way To Get Rid Of Gophers Without Killing Them

Between 10 and 13 species of gophers live in the U.S. While they live in different regions, they all share similar characteristics:

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Gophers and groundhogs can easily be mistaken for one another. Their daily lives and social habits are very similar, but their physical differences can help distinguish them:

Each burrow is likely to house only one resident. Their habits change, however, during the breeding season from late winter to spring.

After gestation between 18 and 50 days, females give birth to litters of two to five gophers. When the young reach about half their eventual adult size during the summer, they leave the den.

Gopher populations can vary greatly depending on the species. Some groups can only count to six to eight gophers per acre, but others stretch to nearly 60 per acre. While this poses problems for landowners and farmers, the population is controlled by natural predators such as hawks, owls, badgers, coyotes, foxes, bobcats and weasels.

How To Get Rid Of Gophers Permanently

Gophers not only grow quickly, but mature quickly. They reach sexual capacity in the spring after their birth. This makes sense given its short life. Geography plays a role in the life cycle of animals. Gophers in northern states can breed only once a year, while gophers based in the south can mate twice.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not recognize gophers as carriers of viruses or diseases. The rare exception is rabies, which gophers are not known to transmit. That said, any bite from a small animal to a human should be examined by a doctor. If you need medical assistance, be sure to tell the doctor or nurse that the bite came from a burrowing mammal.

Gophers can carry harmful diseases such as hantavirus, leptospirosis and plague like other rodents. However, they are still underground and do not usually come into contact with humans. A more common danger is in their ability to transmit fleas and ticks to outdoor animals.

Your garden offers a food source. Gophers are herbivores, so plants and fruits are on their menu. They feed underground by eating the roots of plants such as alfalfa, carrots, dandelions, grasses, potatoes, radishes, tree bark and tulips. In fact, a population of gophers can seriously damage alfalfa fields by reducing the harvest by about 20-50%.

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Your land is just one of its kind. Moisture is crucial for gophers, as is a high concentration of clay. Sandy soil can prevent you from digging a house because of the potential for a cave-in and a lack of insulation from extreme temperatures. This means they are probably looking for the preferred amount of clay and water when looking for a place to build a den. In an attempt to find moisture, gophers sometimes bite into irrigation pipes.

The weather is his sweet spot. Much of the United States is hospitable territory for gophers. If you go to the western two thirds of America or some states in the Southeast (Alabama, Florida and Georgia), one or more 10 species of gopher are part of the landscape.

Their near-constant chewing and chiseling on plants and underground equipment helps them keep those incisors to a manageable size. There are three ways that gophers can have a negative impact:

A single gopher can cause major damage to plants and fruit in a garden in a short amount of time. If you are dealing with more than one gopher, an even larger area could be affected.

Get Rid Of Gophers

The soil cultivated by gophers can damage or break parts of farm machinery as it passes over mounds of dirt. In fact, iron-shaped mounds of dirt are indicators of gopher activity nearby.

Gophers can gnaw on utility cables, sprinkler systems and plastic water lines to maintain their rapidly growing teeth or to get a drink from your water supply. This is a more difficult type of impact to assess because it is hidden from view.

No specific smells or noises are associated with this species, although they signal danger or threats to their neighbors with a whistling sound. However, this is not an everyday action for them. If you are looking for signs of activity, focus on burrows, crop damage and soil movement.

Although this small mammal lives much of its life underground, it leaves clues above the surface. The damage it can cause to crops and plants is an indicator. But also look for changes at the ground level. As a gopher builds its den, it hits the ground and leaves the freshly dug soil, moved into a fan-shaped mound. To be specific, this mount will be 12″-18″ wide and 4″-6″ tall. A gopher can create one to three mounds per day during ideal weather and can also deposit up to 2 ¼ tons of soil per year.

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If you believe gophers have destroyed your land or farm, consider purchasing a gopher probe (generally available for $30 or less). You will need to locate a mound with a plugged opening, then point your probe about 8″-12″ from the plug. The burrow will run 6″-12″ underground, and the probe will encounter a noticeable drop of two inches. You may need to drive several times in the dirt to find the main burrow, but your skill will improve with practice.

Simply put, gophers are determined diggers. When you know the basic layout of a gopher burrow, you will better understand how to probe and use exclusion or control methods as needed.

A burrow extends underground from about 200 – 2,000 square feet and 2 ½” – 3 ½” in diameter, with nesting and food chambers that can reach a depth of six feet. The main tunnel starts about 12″-18″ away from a soil plug above ground and typically runs 6″-12″ (or slightly more) below the surface. This leads to tunnels that branch off from the main one. The burrow system is complex and can even lead to 200 yards of tunnel.

Gophers do not hibernate. Although their activity decreases when the temperature drops – and during the heat of summer – they continue to build mounds. Mound-building activity usually peaks in the spring and fall, as temperatures are more moderate and gophers are more energetic. Farmers and gardeners should pay special attention to their soil, since the mounds can break or use mechanized equipment.

How To Get Rid Of Gophers In Your Yard & Garden

As noted earlier, the months from late winter to spring lead to population growth thanks to the breeding season. The young leave the den during the summer when they have reached a size large enough to care for themselves.

Otherwise, your gopher problem could last a matter of weeks or months, and you’ll be stuck with even more damage and more money to spend. The following methods should also be used to prevent a gopher infestation altogether:

Although gophers are not great climbers, they can and will dig under a standard privacy fence to access food. Wire mesh or hardware perimeter fences can keep gophers out as long as they extend at least a foot below ground. You can also bend the bottom part of the fence so that it is parallel with the surface of the ground. Once the gophers reach this part, they will likely turn around. This tactic also keeps out other burrowing animals, such as marmots, moles and voles.

Mulch around your plants to prevent gophers from pulling them underground or eating their tops. Mulch makes it harder for these animals to dig, and they are also known to dislike the smell and taste. The gravel creates a similar barrier when it is poured on the yards or even mixed into the ground in a perimeter.

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Baskets made of mesh material that sits in the ground allow the bulbs or young plants to sit in the ground without being vulnerable to gophers.

Raised plant beds give your plants the room they need to grow while making them less susceptible to gopher invasions. Planters are available at many hardware and lawn care stores, or you can easily make your own from plywood. Overall, this is a pretty easy DIY project and can be a very cost-effective way to “gopher proof” your plants.

Unlike some other wild animals, gophers are too small to be a danger to cats and dogs. Most likely, your pets will chase the gopher to catch or play with it. The smell of their dung and urine alone can be enough to scare the gopher