Farmers have mixed feelings about the value of baiting pocket gophers, finding the money better spent on irrigated acres than dryland.
These findings come from a three-year pocket gopher control project initiated by the Irrigation Crop Development Corp. on 2,750 acres in the Lake Diefenbaker area.
Les Bohrson, senior agrologist with irrigation resources at Saskatchewan Agriculture, said the study found farmers more willing to pay for mole baiting to protect higher value crops such as alfalfa used for seed or dairy feed.
“They do it to protect irrigated land but not on dryland and lower value forages,” he said.
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Bohrson said pocket gophers, commonly referred to as moles, are spreading out of the black soil zones into brown and dark brown soils. The animals also favour moist irrigated land that is easier to dig.
Bohrson thought most farmers would want to push the rodents back at the source in tree rows, ditches, fence lines and road allowances, but the farmers preferred to deal with them in their fields where the mounds plug and wear down machinery.
Farmers found trapping as a control method too time-consuming, unfeasible, inconvenient and more suited to preventing mole populations than reducing an established group.
Most felt hiring a pest control officer was more economical than trying to do it themselves during their busy season.
Bohrson said the solitary nature of the seldom seen rodent makes it difficult to control with trapping, so baiting with a zinc phosphide product was offered to lure them to a central area in the study.
Richardson’s ground squirrels, more commonly known as gophers, are another concern in farm fields, he said, but are more visible and easier to trap.
Half the control costs in the study were paid by the corporation with the producer responsible for the remainder and for levelling their fields in spring.
The research found control possible for about $3.50 an acre, not including the cost of baiting.
That’s an affordable price to alfalfa grower and hay processor Greg Sommerfeld of Broderick, Sask., who participated in the project.
“The cost is minimal,” he said.
He has gone from levelling the field to doing twice-annual preventive maintenance on his dry and irrigated acres, poisoning the rodents at the perimeters of his fields.
On a 160-acre field, that meant baiting about 10-15 acres, he said.
This preventive maintenance has resulted in a cleaner, more productive stand of hay and less wear on the machines.
“When you get mounds of dirt all over, there’s nothing growing there, that’s for sure,” said Sommerfeld.
Added Bohrson: “We don’t expect to get rid of the pocket gopher but are trying to control their effects.
“We’ve been able to make the cutting situation better but we can never walk away and say we’re done.”
