That freaking gopher is doing so much damage. I filed the hole with water today to try and drown the sucker, water started coming out everywhere. I thought the ground was going to drop. The gopher is winning. I have a few more things I am going to try next week.
dug, making it
=EF=BF=BDI filled it
=EF=BF=BDIt finally
there. =EF=BF=BDCO
Here's my expericnce:
We, and the surrounding houses, had a lot of gophers... until one of our house cats (my wife had four) went feral. We put out a little dish of cat food for her, just enough to keep her around, but now all the gophers are gone for the whole block. She must love the taste.
Buy or rent a cat and be sure to leave it out at night!
I came home after six days in the hospital to find gophers had moved in to the tunnels left after I blasted the last ones out with my home made Rodenator. (see
Gophers are a pain in the neck. They are difficult to kill, and then if you do, there's an OPEN sign in gopher language for the next one. Water does not work well often, and only wreaks havoc on your garden/foundation/whatever. Poisons are OK, but there's a danger there. CO from a lawnmower exhaust works pretty good if you get it in the right tunnel. A propane/O2 device works good, but they are expensive to either build or buy. And then you just have to use it over and over and over again on every new juvenile delinquent gopher that comes along.
I have abandoned the idea of hiring out my device, and will use it only now on my and neighbor's properties because you really need to provide it like a monthly extermination service. Once you kill the ones there, new ones move right in, even with collapsed tunnels. The costs of fuel and labor are only a draw when matched to the fee one can charge. I had many desperate people call in on ads I placed locally. However, the dangers of fire and accidents is very high. Two Canadians using the Rodenator set fire to twenty acres and burned $200,000 worth of outbuildings recently. They were fined $1500 each for their good intentioned work. Fire can come out the other end of a blast, so one needs to be cautious around buildings or dry vegetation. I've had secondary shots after a minute or so of the first, indicating a slow moving fire underground.
I have heard of anhydrous ammonia being put into gopher tunnels, and that works with a side benefit of fertilizing the surrounding soil. It works, but that stuff is nasty with a capital N.
Good luck.
Steve in SW Utah
Here's my expericnce:
We, and the surrounding houses, had a lot of gophers... until one of our house cats (my wife had four) went feral. We put out a little dish of cat food for her, just enough to keep her around, but now all the gophers are gone for the whole block. She must love the taste.
Buy or rent a cat and be sure to leave it out at night!
My Lab/Rott mix dog has gotten a couple. She sits and waits like a cat.
Steve
Just thinking outside the box and never having seen a gopher or a gopher hole and not knowing the gopher temperament.
What about ferrets?
They use hunting ferrets to flush rabbits in Britain.
I've heard of hunting ferrets used on rats.
The question is, could they be used for gopher control?
The idea is for the predator to kill the prey, thus reducing the number of gophers. Do the ferrets kill the rabbits? If so, there may be hope for your approach.
According to one of the web sites I listed, sometimes.
The idea is for the ferrets, (you use them in pairs) to flush the rabbits and you trap them at their exits. There are nets designed for the task.
If a ferret kills a rabbit, and they say they sometimes do, it stays with the kill, eats and sleeps. Which means you're less one ferret if you can't locate and dig it out or trap it later. They used to tie a string or ribbon them and follow it to dig them out. Now they use radio locators to find them.
Supposedly, ferrets can search pretty much anywhere and will explore a warren quite thoroughly. My purpose, if I ever chose to try them would be to exploit this ability and make the holes uninhabitable by constant, random harrassment. I'd reduce the population by trapping the gophers at their exits and dealing with them later. If it worked and according to how well it worked, I'd spread the idea, and my developing expertyse around.
Whether the purpose could be fulfilled is another question since I am supposing and theorizing. I never thought seriously about ferrets as working animals before seeing this thread.
so, there may
Your method certainly has merit, but the cat solution is a lot less effort.
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