- What does a vole hole look like?
- How are vole holes different from molehills?
- Mole or vole? - The hole test
Voles dig holes with little mounds around them, just like moles. Voles may be killed with traps and repelled using more aggressive methods, but moles may not. Therefore, it is extremely important to distinguish the vole hole from a molehill. We explain the features.
Before a trap is set, it must be ruled out that the intruder is a mole
What does a vole hole look like?
Voles dig small, round holes that are located on the side of the mound, i.e. the heaped earth. Behind it is a sophisticated corridor system that can have a length of up to 25m.
How are vole holes different from molehills?
From afar, molehills and vole holes look quite similar. But if you take a closer look at the building entrances, you can see clear differences:
| vole | mole | |
|---|---|---|
| hill size | significantly smaller | 25cm |
| hole position | side of the hill | in the middle of the hill |
| number of inputs | about 5 | up to 20 daily |
| damage | nibble on vegetables and plant roots | purely visually by hills |
Mole or vole? - The hole test
Make sure the garden dweller is a vole before resorting to aggressive control methods. Moles may also be gently driven away, but under no circumstances killed. The best way to find out who is digging holes in your garden is to use the hole test: destroy one of the entrances and 30cm of the passage behind it. A vole will repair the burrow within hours; a mole will take much longer to repair, if it bothers at all.
tips
If, with the best will in the world, you are not sure who is digging holes in your garden, you should use a control method that is approved for both animals. These include odors and noise. For example, you can build a vole scarecrow yourself or drive away the animals with unpleasant smells such as buttermilk.