Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Mice in hoophouse

market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Market Farming

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Shawnee Flowerfarmer" <farmingflowers AT hotmail.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Mice in hoophouse
  • Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 20:03:32 -0500

I have live trapped them, snap trapped them, rigged up the ever popular 5 gallon bucket with bait in the bottom (a smear of peanut butter), had the Champion Mouse Catching Cat of All Time and every method worked.  There were always more mice.  And more mice,  And more mice.  Digging up flats and eating the germinating seed and the seedlings.  They tunneled into large pots of impatients and would crawl out pitifully soaked when I watered the containers. 

  A couple of weeks ago, I left a bucket of fish emuslion sitting in the middle of the greenhouse aisle, intending to use it first thing the next day.  There was a mouse floating in it in the morning.  One twenty-something staffer, perpetually romantically inclined, gazed at the pathetic body and said, "It was for a woman. He ended his pain over a woman."   Good, I said.  One less mouse.

I don't use poison because we have a large population of predatory birds in the area and if we poison the food, we poison the predators.   Still, the birds aren't able to help inside the greenhouse.  (I had kestrels in my chicken house once which was pretty exciting.  The kestrels were not after mice unfortunately) 

A friend of mine has a farm in central Illinois, and she uses one of those repelling sound systems and swears that it cured the rodent problem.   I didn't ask the name of the product that she uses, but I could check into it if anyone is interested.

I thought about encouraging a family of foxes, but the chickens objected.  Such is the dilemna of an ecosystem out of balance.

Sympathetically, Shawnee...zone 5 depending on the path of this week's jet stream and the ENSO.

A ps thought on rereading your message...I would suspect cutworms if your seedlings are planted in the soil and it's warm enough in whatever zone you are in.  Cutworms are evil also and can graze down a row decapitating plants in no time.  I  usually find the cutworms in the top inch of soil near the plants.  Then I collect them to feed to the chickens, who are running from predatory birds who should be stalking mice and so it goes down on the farm.....this sort of senario leads to my number one rule of organic farming....always overplant to account for the cut that the bad guys take.


From:  Lucy Goodman <goodows AT infinet.com>
Reply-To:  Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
To:  Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject:  [Market-farming] Mice in hoophouse
Date:  Tue, 11 Apr 2006 20:11:34 -0400
>
>
>Have a pretty bad mouse/vole problem in our hoophouse that has cukes and
>zuke planted in it. Today they ate about 15 zuke plants while we were
>just outside planting lettuce. We have put mouse traps in but the bait
>apparently is not as tasty as the seedlings. We did put pieces of drip
>tape around the stems hoping that would keep them from being able to eat
>the seedlings.
>
>today we removed the row covers hoping that this would mean less cover.
>We do not have any cats currently that will venture out to the market
>garden but we do have a dog that is interested in digging up[ the
>rodents in the hoophouse.
>
>Any suggestions that do not involve poison?
>
>Lucy Goodman
>_______________________________________________
>Market-farming mailing list
>Market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
>http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/market-farming
>
>Get the list FAQ at: http://www.marketfarming.net/mflistfaq.htm



Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page