Biology of Gophers
The process of integrated pest control has as its foundation a requirement to know more about the pest in question. The old days of pest management focused on identifying a problem visually and then destroying it, usually through the use of toxic chemicals. This approach was not only detrimental to the life cycle of most beings within range of the treatment, it also tended to be ineffective.
You might be one of those people who hears alarm bells as soon as you hear a phrase like understand the pest”. Let’s be very clear here: integrated pest management still deals with lethal - and sometimes painful - ways of ridding your home and garden of pest problems. We are not talking about learning to live with a pest infestation, although in some cases that might be an option (specifically with spiders). Understanding common pests means that you have an idea about where they are likely to congregate, what their reproductive cycle is, and what types of food they are likely to be attracted to. Knowing all of this means that solutions used to bring the numbers of pests down will be much more effective. In this article, we are going to talk about the biology of gophers.
The gopher: An overview
Gophers are small members of the rodent family. They live underground, and are omnivorous in their appetites - that means they will eat a lot of things that they come into contact with. While primarily vegetation eaters, gophers will also occasionally eat small invertebrates such as insects and earth worms.
Like most rodents, gophers are very prolific in breeding. Females living in areas where there is plenty of water will produce three litters of pups per year, usually about six in each litter. In drier areas, a female will give birth only to one litter.
Because they live underground, gophers can be hard to control, and it is equally hard to determine the extent of your problem. They are community animals and their burrow systems can cover a couple thousand square feet, so you never really know where they are. This is unfortunate, as gophers can inflict quite a bit of damage to a lawn or garden in a short time; they are a pest that needs to be dealt with fairly quickly.
Their small size and ease with which they breed mean that gophers are at the bottom of the food chain as far as vertebrates go. This makes managing them somewhat easier because predators can keep their numbers down, but the gophers have to be in place already before their predators can show up. The exception of course is if you have your own personal predator in the form of a dog or cat.
Keep in mind that even though gophers are small creatures, they can be fierce and have been known to attack humans, cats, even dogs. This can be quite humiliating for the person involved, and gophers can use their large rodent teeth to inflict a painful bite.
Gopher or mole?
The most obvious sign that you have gophers are mounds of dirt which begin to appear in your garden or yard. This could also be a sign that you have moles, but a close look at the dirt will provide the answer to your question; gophers push the dirt from their tunnels off to one side, while moles burrow straight up through the dirt mound and it looks like a small, plugged volcano. You, or a pest control company, can deal with both animals in the same way, but it is worth noting that while gophers can do significant damage, the only trouble moles give are their small mounds.