permaculture

[Doug Woodard <dwoodard@becon.org>]

Terriers might help. The breed would probably be important. Something 
with an efficient nose would be able to cover a lot of mulch. A bit of 
digging ability would be useful too.

If you could borrow some pigs to work over your land between last 
harvest and the ground freezing, and in the spring before you plant, 
that might help. Again, pigs have good noses, and they root.

If there are areas where you could run chickens or maybe turkeys when 
the mice/voles are breeding, I think that might help. Baby mice in the 
nest are just right for a chicken snack. I don't know how carnivorous 
weeder geese are, but possibly they might have a role.

For the long term, remember that snakes need winter shelter not too far 
away, ways of getting down in the ground to places that don't freeze 
where they can overwinter. You might be able to find some expert that 
can tell you details, especailly for the larger snakes like milk snakes. 
It would help if they had a good route in to this problem area too. I 
suspect they would want some sort of cover other than mulch, but I don't 
know what their requirements are..

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada


kevin s wrote:
>   thanks for all the replies on this.  i know that it is not a new 
> issue for folks
>
> i am not sure yet what all of our own strategies are going to be, but 
> definitely it would fall within a characterization of "integrated 
> pest management" which will probably mean limited poisoning by some 
> means and i definitely want to choose those that do not pass thru the 
> food chain.  i am going to start with some traps though, and see how 
> successful that is
>
> we will also try to create some owl nesting sites.  probably not 
> daytime raptors though as they already hunt the chickens, and don't 
> seem to bother the rodents much.
>
> i am not a fan of cats, as i like the songbirds too much (as do they)
>
> we will also do more trials of various plantings that are rumored to 
> deter the burrowers like voles, which are our biggest problem, and i 
> would love to hear more suggestions about this. we'll try them all, 
> so please pass them along!
>
> mostly we will do our best to limit the rodent habitat through 
> cultural practices, though that will be tough with close to an acre 
> of mulch.
>
> part of our issue of course is scale.  even though we are tiny 
> compared to most commercial growers, we have some of the largest 
> mulch bed systems i have seen,  (maybe i don't get around enough) and 
> that comes with real challenges in trying to achieve the kind of 
> ecological balance and predator habitat needed to keep the rodents 
> down.   we are working on this, but it takes time
>
> a big piece of this seems to me to be in what kind of ecology you 
> have to start with.  the areas that we grow in that were already 
> wild, with a lot of existing diversity have much less problems than 
> the plot we have that is attached to what is essentially several 
> acres of lawn.  this is the situation with by far the worst problems, 
> ....and the least predator habitat.
>
> thanks again!
>
> kevin
> Regeneration CSA
> High Falls NY
>