I help manage a small commercial orchard where they poison them with devices that you stick into the ground made out of pvc pipe. They use similar devices to kill gophers in CA.

At my own orchard and nursery I manage to keep them under control with bait stations on the surface which I'm cycling through my nursery and orchard right now.

I used to just use baited traps instead of poison, placing them under trays, but other wildlife has started taking the bait in recent years because we've not been getting normal acorn crops. This also means there is more competition for the seeds that meadow voles eat, I think. Normally they only eat bark in the winter.

I don't know how well glass will work but that was sometimes used for gophers when I was a boy and young man in CA.

I'm going to start using poison bait also. Any recommendations on a brand for the pine voles? Most of the stores in my area carry mole bait and I don't t think that's the best choice for voles since their diet is different.

The key is to feed them enough to keep them healthy but not enough to make them lazy. If you fill their food bowl and they don't empty it promptly you are feeding them too much.

I guess we have to move the woodpile my dad started (he's not running his woodstove now since he got a heat pump), it's less than 30 ft from my high tunnel. DH does keep the grass mowed. I won't cover the beds with burlap b/c they were nesting under a pile of bags we had (now removed) but didn't know they'd be attracted to cardboard. So what do you do, just weed in the spring (and keep weeding?)? Plastic? Landscape fabric?

She tried anything she could think of including castor oil, bait, smoke bomb, traps. Nothing really worked. Finally, she got a feral cat, not a friendly house cat. The guy was a real hunter. He got voles and squirrels, too. After a few weeks, my friend saw no vole damage.

My friend kept the cat inside at night but a few months ago, he went out one night and never came back. We believe, a fox or a coyote got it. My friend will get another feral cat if voles return.

Also agree that it should not be well-fed.

If you use poison bait and are persistant it is likely to work- try an anticoagulant that requires more than one feeding to kill. You are much less likely to kill your hawks or foxes that way should they eat a poisoned vole. Also if your dog or a child accidentally eats it they need only be fed vitamin K as an antidote.

Close mowing in late summer is also very helpful.

Now I need some extra large feral cats to thin out the deer population, too.

That said, I have found it as affective to trap with baited spring traps if other animals don't take the bait and spring the traps. It just requires much more work if you have to cover much ground. Traps need to be covered with a tray. There are also bait stations that are just large enough to hold a single spring trap.

When you have pine voles, wraps don't protect the trees.

If I may say so, that is one of the best vegetative free and neatly mowed areas I've seen in a home orchard.

I think your area is so clean, voles would be non-existent even if you skipped the gravel (especially in your zone 7).

Overall, the most effective is strychnine laced grain, it seems to work the best but is a persistent poison in the food chain so I try not to use it unless really necessary (and it seems to be hard to get now).

My second favorite is zinc phosphide bait. Works sort of OK. Poison is activated by stomach acid, and so dead animals are not a hazard to predators (supposedly), but left over bait is.

Last is the anti-coagulant based poison bars. Harder to place and more expensive, but supposed to work better and longer than the other baits. I have not noticed them working that well.

I have found that a regular routine of finding tunnels and placing bait is necessary to keep these guys under control.

And catching any bird that eats fruit from my tree would be a bonus . . .

hawk