Moles are a small mammal that like to create a gardener’s nightmare. Moles are highly common mammal throughout Britain but are rarely seen. Moles spend almost their entire moving around under your lovely lawn creating great piles of soil. Humane mole control is an effort in getting rid of moles to reduce the damage to your garden.
Moles are highly efficient diggers and will work their way through 14 metres of garden soil in 60 minutes. Moles measure around 15 centimetres in length and have a small tail at the back end. They have a cylindrical shaped body and shoulders like boulders with spade like hands with claws for maximum digging efficiency.
Moles can cover a lot of ground in a night shift, up to 100 metres if they are hungry. Moles will scour every tunnel in their mole network in search of food that has fallen into their mole trap. An average sized mole (around 80g) will eat up to 50g of worms in a working day. Moles will maintain their tunnels and make repairs where needed.
Molehills in the garden are created by the disposing of tunnel soil that they have excavated. There are 2 types of tunnel. The first is created by the male moles in search of females, typically between February and June; this being their breeding season.
A mole hill is the first indication that you have a mole pest problem in your garden. The mole hills left in your garden will make your lawn difficult to maintain and can really spoil a tidy, well maintained garden. Mole burrowing in extreme cases can lead to subsidence.
Moles do not actually eat your grass but they will undermine the system of roots that have been established by your plants. A small population of moles can do some real damage to sports playing fields and local amenity laws but control may not be required in areas that are less used.
For us to begin mole control we must first locate tunnels that are in frequent use. We do this by clearing away a fresh molehill and find the hole that leads to the tunnel. There will be a short passage that is a few inches in length that provides us access to the main tunnel. Once we have located the main mole tunnel there are many mole eradication methods available for us to use. Take a look at some of the methods that we use below: