Farms using no-till or adding more cover crops risk inviting a voracious pest to the field. Voles, also known as meadow or field mice, can eat through stands in a hurry.
Indiana Farmer Aaron Krueger is going all in on cover crops but last year, that added cover along with a mild winter, provided ample opportunity for the small rodents to dig into his fields.
“After we had planted the beans, it became pretty evident as the beans were emerging, you could see the stems and cotyledons were basically just munched off,” Krueger says.
Typically, their farm will see a few spots the size of the car hood, last year they replanted entire fields.
“It was the worst I’ve seen it since I’ve been farming,” he says. “You know, we were cooler in the spring and the beans just weren’t growing as fast and at that stage, the voles could just go along the ground in munch them off pretty easily.”
Farm Journal Field agronomist Ken Ferrie says voles are common, especially as farms move away from heavy tillage.
“Once we moved to cover crops on top of our no-till, that’s when that problem can really explode,” he says.
Missing stands, holes and bare earth are the tell-tale signs the problem needs attention.
“What causes a vole outbreak is a habitat for them to hide under, so the predators can’t get to them — be it foxes, hawks or whatever can feed on them; that’s when the population explodes,” says Ferrie.
On average Voles live three to six months usually from March to October. Gestation is less than a month and females can have five to 10 litters per year. It’s not uncommon for just one vole to become 50 in no time.
Ferrie says his advice is to start clean. If there are voles in your no-till fields, he recommends getting them under control before moving to cover crops.
“That’s the time to react,” says Ferrie. “You can put some bait stations out there to try to slow them down. Once we get into cover crops, they can explode like rats in a granary and they’re hard to control. At that point, you can’t put enough bait stations out.”
Ferrie says if it gets out of hand, he’s seen farmers pull fields out of no-till and out of cover crops in order to catch up.
“There’s a lot of guys who did throw in the towel, especially after last year,” Krueger adds. “They went out there and ran inline rippers or vertical tillage tools.”
Ferrie says that can help, but Krueger is trying something different on his farm. He’s adding poles, perches and nesting boxes to fields in order to encourage more natural control.
“We just stuck a two-by-four across the top of these telephone poles and set them up 12’ to 15’ off the ground,” Krueger says. “We placed those strategically throughout the farm to help break up some of the distances between electric lines or tree lines just to better accommodate any birds of prey that might be flying around.”
Ferrie also says using strip tillage in combination with cover crops can help.
“That tends to maybe open it up a little bit more but we noticed the vole issues drop quite a bit with just the stripping in there,” says Ferrie.
While voles are notorious for fluctuating populations, peaking every two to five years, Krueger is focused on long-term soil health and searching for ways to keep these pests in check during the growing season.
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