I potty trained my boys by having them pee down prairie dog holes. It seemed to have worked. If you have animals, you might try some poo or kitty litter in the holes to see if that works. Good luck!

Klo,

Since your cat doesn't want to kill them, I think it likely that poison pellets or traps are your best bet.

I've linked the OSU Fact Sheet on gopher control below. Maybe you'll find some helpful info in it.

Good luck....first the garlic and now your ornamental plants. It sounds like your gophers are gearing up for an all-out assault on your landscape. You have to be aggressive with them or they'll make a real mess.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Pocket Gopher Control

I recommend going to a farm store and trying to find box traps. They are made of wood by a guy in Henryetta (sp?).

Those have worked best for me. I have only had a few gophers that could consistently avoid them, and I've killed about 200 with them.

Scott,

I had no idea you were a mass murderer.

I let my evil henchmen (kitty cats) do the evil deed here. They work cheap (for food).

Does your wooden box trap made by the guy in Henryetta look like the Gopher Getter in the link?

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Gopher Traps

I've always had trouble with them but this year they seem worse than ever. I worry about using poison on them, I'm afraid they may come to the surface and my dogs or cat get them. I really don't want to lose them, they are my spoiled kids! I have limited time so will check out the traps on-line and see what I can find. Have to admit I'm paranoid about my hosta's, every time I go out I check to make sure they are still there!

I have a pack of Italian Greyhounds who take care of the gopher problem in my yard. A couple of weeks ago they killed three in one weekend.

Outside of that, we used to use a type of poison that came in what looked like a stick of dynamite. You lit the fuse and put it down the gopher hole, and then covered the hole with something the gopher could not move (like a big rock). The thing spewed poison gas and killed every gopher in the den. I've never seen them in Oklahoma, though (the poison things, not gophers). We used them in California.

Yes, Dawn, that is the one! And the price is about what you find in farm stores.

I have tried lots of things and many don't really work. The one thing I have never tried is the propane type. On a large scale I would be willing to try the gopher machines that you run behind a tractor to buld a tunnel and insert poison, but on smaller scales I only use that Gopher Getter box trap now. The first time you try it on a new gopher, the success rate is about 60%. If you fail, you dig back further and set it again. My first fall here I got about 108 of them on our open 7 acres. The next year about 40, and then 10 or so every year to maintain a zero population.

That first fall here I would take my oldest boy (then 4) out every morning before work and evening after work and run the traps. We had about 8 traps and one day actually got 6 caught. Like only preschoolers can put it, my son one morning told me, "Dad, you are so cool. I want to kill gophers just like you when I grow up." LOL

Klo, The Gopher Getter trap that Scott uses sounds very promising.

Scott, At least he wasn't school-aged yet, so he didn't insist (I assume) on taking the Gopher Getter and a dead gopher to school for show-and-tell.

Dawn

Sometimes kids are just too funny for words. Yesterday one of my young neighbors was over and her 4 year old was playing with the chess set on the coffee table and we adults were chatting. The mother started to tell me about some people that I didn't know, and she said something to the effect that you can't blame the kids since there parents have been in J-A-I-L so many times. The little girl stopped what she was doing walked over and looked her mother right in the eyes and said, "Jail". Then she turned to me and said, "I know everything my mommy spells." I laughed, and I couldn't help it. Her mom just sat there with a red face.