How to Get Armadillos Out of Your Yard?
Armadillos are beneficial mammals as they eat bugs and keep the insects away from your house. However, they can become a nuisance when they dig holes in your yard. This more apparent especially when your yard is well kept and landscaped. Getting these pesky creatures away from your home quickly becomes a top priority when one invades your property.
Armadillos dig holes under the ground in search of insects to eat as well as creating a place they can hide from predators. The predators include: dogs, foxes, coyotes, and raccoons. There are different methods of keeping armadillos out of your yard.
Traditional Methods
Here are some traditional methods on how to keep them out:
Sturdy Fencing: Fencing is an effective way of keeping an armadillo out of your yard. However, there are some things you need to consider for the fence to work. The fence has to be one with small loopholes not to allow the animal to go through. An electric fence is preferred as armadillos, like all animals, are scared of getting shocked. The fence should be installed about a foot below ground level because the animal can dig under the fence to gain access.
Fencing is an expensive affair; therefore, you could consider only fencing where you don’t want the armadillo to access. For instance, you could fence off your food or flower garden to avoid hole damage. There are other methods of keeping the animal out if fencing is expensive.Use Traps: Traps are an ingenious way of catching animals. Traps are available in hardware stores around you. Follow instructions in setting up the traps and once the armadillo is captured, look for a humane way of relocating the animal. Either put it in a forest near you or make arrangements to move it to a national park, zoo, or game reserve.
Trapping and relocating any animal can be hectic, therefore, contracting an animal exterminator will save you a lot of problems. They will do the dirty work for you but at a fee.
Natural Methods
There are also natural ways of keeping armadillos out:
Cayenne Pepper: Armadillos forage by sniffing. Cayenne pepper makes them itchy and uncomfortable as it irritates mucous membranes, just like in people. Sprinkling cayenne pepper around your yard can help keep off the animal. However, you’ll need to be careful not to harm any pets in the household with this approach.
The drawback of this method is that you have to keep on sprinkling the pepper as it wears off after some time. Weather change like rain will lead to you having to restock. When it gets windy, cayenne can blow into your eyes or nose.Predator Urine: As mentioned earlier, armadillos have predators which include: dogs, raccoons, foxes, and coyotes. Armadillos smell predator urine as a survival instinct to keep them away from predator territories. The question here is how to keep them away using predator urine.
Predator urine can be procured online. For instance, you could get wolf pee from Amazon. Put the urine in small bottles and place the bottles around your yard. Armadillos will stay away once they get a sense of the smell. You should take extra precautions not to directly touch the urine as it smells and could potentially transmit diseases to humans.
What are you waiting for? Start getting rid of Armadillos today!