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Old 09-04-2003, 11:08 AM
John Nolan
 
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Default Voles ate Our Daffodils !!

Hello All,

Have you ever met a vole, not the water vole but the more common bank vole ?

It's not that I dislike voles, but an old friend of my wife gave her 1,200
daffodil bulbs. Over a period of 3 - 4 years they have all vanished.

We can only assume that our plague of voles have done the damage.

Not having come across massed hordes of these creatures before, I looked at
them with mild interest. I am a great animal lover, you see.

However, we began to notice their holes everywhere and they got quite
cheeky, peeking at us during the day !

When our daffodils began diminishing rapidly, I happened to notice that,
over our acre or so, there were neat holes drilled in the ground about every
2 ft.

No vole hills or anything like that, just masses and masses of holes and
under and overground tunnels where the grass in the field had been a bit
long over winter.

What to do about them ? They are not considered to be pests, and we were
quoted 60 uk pounds per hole !! Without doing an exact calculation I think
that it would cost us a cool 500,000 or so.

Nor do I really want to harm them too much. Anyway, we do have a kestrel and
an owl about, and a bombardment of buzzards.

Jeyes fluid is a comparatively simple and "natural" chemical - phenols, that
break down in the soil - I am thinking of stopping up each hole with soil
and pouring in diluted Jeyes fluid in the hope that it will drive them away.

Any other ideas ? They will all be welcome.

John N.

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