Voles are unpopular with home gardeners as they undermine and devastate gardens in a short period of time. Does butyric acid help against voles? Or are you doing more harm than you are doing by using them?

In a nutshell

  • Voles are easily repelled by strong smells
  • Butanoic acid stinks, but it can also damage the organism intensively
  • safer alternatives allow the animals to be driven away without endangering their lives

What is butyric acid?

Butyric acid is the common name for a substance known chemically correctly as butanoic acid. It owes its name to the fact that it is odorless in its pure form. On the other hand, if moisture and oxygen are added, it develops a strong smell of rancid butter. It is not necessary to add water for this, it is already sufficient if the humidity and the oxygen content of the normal ambient air meet the acid.

How does the active ingredient work?

The effect of butyric acid against voles is based solely on the intensive development of a pungent, unpleasant stench. Since the animals live largely without light underground, they rely on a particularly fine, well-developed nose for orientation and, above all, for finding roots for food. Surely you can understand that a substance that already has a lasting effect on human olfactory organs means a disproportionately greater disruption for highly developed olfactory senses.

How does the anger take place?

The application of butyric acid to voles found in the garden is therefore very simple:

  • Saturate rags or other absorbent materials with butyric acid
  • Equip found entrances to the vole colony with prepared scent sources
  • leave an exit near the edge of the garden unprepared as an "escape route".
  • If necessary, repeat the process after it has smelled out

Attention: When handling butanoic acid, be sure to use the necessary safety precautions in the form of gloves and safety goggles!

Gently effective or deadly?

If scaring away voles with butyric acid is so easy, one may still ask whether it is still harmless. Is it effective and harmless, or is the substance not that simple and uncritical to evaluate?
A look at the chemical properties of butanoic acid shows very quickly that although it is an intensely odorous substance, it is also a real acid with all its disadvantageous properties. Possible consequences are:

  • Vapors irritate respiratory system
  • Chemical burns to eyes and skin on direct contact
  • Nausea, in extreme cases vomiting

Of course, all of these effects apply to humans as the "causes" but also to the vole as the affected organism. And since the mouse cannot protect itself with goggles and gloves, you have to assume that in addition to the unpleasant odor, there are also serious health problems for the rodents. So it turns out that while butyric acid may be effective, it is far from being the harmless and completely safe substance it is often thought to be.

Advisable alternatives

If you don't want to harm the animals, but just scare them off, it's worth using one or the other alternative:

buttermilk

Use buttermilk instead of real butyric acid to gently scare away voles. It also develops an intensely unpleasant odor during fermentation, which the vole abhors. Of course, the fragrances are less strong here, so the motto "a lot helps a lot" applies. Put a good helping of buttermilk in each cave entrance and repeat the process every few days. Sun, temperature and microorganisms from the soil do the rest. The buttermilk ferments, the same stinking fumes waft through the aisles and the mouse is constantly looking for a new home.

Garden Gloxinia (Sinningia)

The garden gloxinia is considered a relatively fragrant, lush flowering plant. Only its tuber exudes a bad smell, which you don't notice because of the location of the tuber in the ground. The situation is different for the voles. The intense scent of the tuber penetrates from the earth into the burrows of the vole burrow and once again creates an unattractive, even deterrent atmosphere.

Tip: It is important that you position the plants several times over the building, since the transmission of the odorant in the soil is limited.

frequently asked Questions

Why does the vole come into contact with butyric acid at all?

Of course, one might assume that the mice would notice the stench and disappear. In reality, however, the animals first check the foreign body as an intruder in their burrow and come very close to it. This contact is enough to damage the animals' lungs, nose and eyes.

Why shouldn't I just kill the vole in the garden?

Although voles are not protected under species protection law, they should not be killed unnecessarily. Because like any other animal, they also fulfill an important task in our ecosystem. If you drive the animals away, they can live elsewhere and make their contribution to a functioning environment.

Are there other chemical fragrances to repel?

Of course, artificial preparations can be used against the vole. As a rule, however, these also lead to side effects, for example on the plants or the general condition of the subsoil. Better are therefore "home remedies" that occur in nature in one form or another anyway, usually only in much lower concentrations.

Category:

Garden pests