Dec 4, 2015

Blow away rodents with concussive force

Burrowing rodents – pocket gophers, ground squirrels and prairie dogs, for example – can do much to hurt a farmer’s bottom line, including destroying crops, damaging equipment and washing out irrigation berms, according to Matt Roland, owner of Rodent Nation, an Idaho-based exterminator.

“In areas with drip irrigation, burrowing rodents can chew the drip lines to pieces,” Roland said. “When gophers, ground squirrels or prairie dogs burrow into the ground, leaving a hollow spot, you have the potential for irrigation system cave-ins or washouts,” Roland said. “We’ve seen massive canal water blowouts when they’ve damaged the integrity of the bank or berm.”

To deal with the problem, Roland advocates a concussive, tunnel-destroying method that he says is more effective than traditional methods like poison, trapping and shooting.

“Poison is only effective at certain times of the year with prairie dogs and ground squirrels,” he said. “Even then, I’ve seen some ground squirrels ‘get wise’ to the poison and simply not eat it.”

There is also the chance of residual kill, if dogs or cats eat the poisoned pests, as well as the possibility of poison getting on crops or into groundwater, he said.

And shooting ground squirrels and prairie dogs is possible when they are aboveground but does not work on pocket gophers, which spend most of their time underground, he said.

“The main challenge with shooting and trapping burrowing rodents is that these methods are very labor-intensive,” Roland said. “Busy farmers have enough to do already.”

Roland recommends a product called the Rodenator, manufactured by Meyer Industries. The Rodenator injects a calibrated mixture of propane and oxygen into the ground and ignites the mixture to create a concussive force that instantly kills burrowing pests and collapses their tunnels – without damaging crops. It also prevents neighboring pests from moving into existing tunnel systems.

“In our studies and field use, we’ve found it to be up to 40 percent faster than traditional methods like trapping to achieve the desired kill rate, as well as up to 40 percent less expensive to use,” he said.

The Rodenator system worked well at a 1,000-acre wheat and alfalfa farm in Leador, Idaho, where a pocket gopher infestation was causing problems, he said.

“Gophers were all over the field with thousands of mounds,” Roland said. “You couldn’t walk across the pivot without continuously stepping on gopher mounds. But after treating the field with the Rodenator for about two weeks in the fall, we returned for follow-up in the spring and found only 30 active gopher areas.”

The tunnel-collapsing method also eliminates the handling of pest carcasses, he said.

“There’s some nasty pest plagues and diseases out there, and we don’t want to handle carcasses any more than we have to,” Roland said. “The Rodenator eliminates handling pest carcasses because they’re left underground.”

The Rodenator is easy to use, he said.

“Once you spot and open up a burrowing rodent tunnel with a shovel, just push a button to flow the gas and hit another button to ignite the gas mixture,” Roland said. “You can safely detonate a tunnel in a minute or two, and with experience can fire off from 30 to 50 shots per hour.”

Rodenator systems have effectively controlled a variety of pests including moles, voles, rabbits, armadillos, marmots, badgers, foxes and coyotes, he said.

“When farmers risk their livelihood to burrowing rodents, they’re essentially at war with them and need the maximum firepower available,” Roland said. “To save farm production, equipment and labor – even the farm itself – we’ve found that the Rodenator handles the problem faster and more cost-effectively than any other available method.”

– Matt Milkovich