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  • From: Leigh Hauter <lh AT pressroom.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc: sora AT coldreams.com
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Gophers
  • Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:14:45 -0400

Isn't there a terrier bred for just this sort of task. A fox terrier was bred to go down fox dens and dispose of the fox. And then there are rat terriers. I would research this 'natural' cure if I was overrun with gophers, and if they populated my countryside to such an extent that they would be a recurring problem. Something like a wire terrier if you can find one that hasn't had its hunting instincts bred out of it.


At 13:40 -0700 10/29/04, sora AT coldreams.com wrote:
>>
Yeah, I tried castor oil, but with little success. Then I tried those
battery-run beepers. They DID work, sort of. What they did was move the
gophers about 40 yards over, where they set up again! I'm now using
gopher gassers, those things that look like giant firecrackers and purport
to kill the gophers in their holes. You have to dig down "near" a gopher
mound, to find a runway. Best place to prospect for one is to look at a
fresh gopher mound which will have 3 mounds in a fan shape with the final
mound, where the gopher plugged the access hole, inside the fan. You dig
down under this final mound and hope to get a runway. It will be about a
foot and a half down. Then you light the gasser, put it in, and fill back
the hole so the gas stays in. Quite labor intensive, but seems to work!

Yeah...tried the battery beepers last year...there was one right in the
middle of the garlic....sigh. I've also been using the gassers, and had
the most success with them. I can usually find the runways by just walking
around in the garden, if the ground seems real soft and I start to sink,
it's usually a runway. One thing I've learned is that the gophers are
light sensitive. If they see light coming into the tunnel they actually
build fire walls that can protect them from the gas. Therefore...once I
find the tunnel, I make sure to keep it covered until I'm ready to gas and
throw! I have a friend who uses a pipe attached to their
exhaust...cheaper than the firecrackers. Any idea just how Organic the
gassers are considered?
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