Which animal is a problem in your garden ?

[SueG]

People who own dogs have to take responsibility for their animals

Oh how much I wish that were true. Open the door and chuck them (the dog) out is practiced by some charming people relatively close to me.

My worse animals are voles, field mice, and the like - in my garden at least they have a neat trick of mowing down my trilliums, eating my crocuses and this winter have moved into my raised beds. The household felines (now getting pretty old) have been given very firm instructions to rectify the latter or risk being replaced with a mousetrap.     
My Mum would say that for sheer destructiveness though you can't beat sheep, forget cute, little furry lambs, they are big woolly eating machines. It's only happened once but that was enough, her garden was laid waste most effectively by just one.
Oh and high on my list are those lazy b****** who think my garden is their ashtray and rubbish bin.

[Anthony Darby]

My snakes are being well fed by field mice and voles at the moment. Peanut butter and breakback traps are a very effective combination. I thought the mice were the worst, but voles are worse because of their appetite!

[Gerry Webster]

There must be two breeds of cat.  The ones round here are like Vivien describes.  Clearly others encounter a different kind

The Brighton breed is especially obnoxious.
I have just read that there is a healthy trade in cat pelts in Switzerland & I believe that in some European cities  during WW2 they were served as 'roof rabbit'. But today - "so many cats, so few recipes."

[Alan B]

Mice, Magpies and Jackdaws. I hate the Jackdaws particularly.  They dig up everything in pots and and have a good try for everything else planted in the garden that you especially want to keep.

[tonyg]

Slugs..slugs....more slugs....even more slugs - they love rockeries 

Snails....snails....all sizes - hiding in the meadow 

Night time vigil saves some plants otherwise I leave them to be eaten themselves 

Jazzy presence keeps any cats on their toes even though she misses seeing them   

Mmm .... you have reminded me of a curious sight when we were last in Wengen as a family.  On a cool damp early summer evening we came across a hedge that was alive with snails.  Literally hundreds of them, many very beautiful in their own way .... one way to keep the privet in check but not good for little plants

[fredg]

I hate the Jackdaws particularly.  They dig up everything in pots and and have a good try for everything else planted in the garden that you especially want to keep.

That's the feral pigeons here 

It's amazing how deep they'll dig.

[Lars S]

In my garden itīs the roe deers that are a major plague. Especially when the bulbs are starting to grow in spring. They just love crocus and tulips.  But last year they also killed two magnolias by rubbing their horns against the trunks  .

[daveyp1970]

Cats,i had one jump onto my cold frame collapse the twin wall in panicked and trashed all my seed pots i am gutted beyond belief all my iris seed pots all over the place.Not having a good day.

[sippa]

In my garden,

1.  Deer

2. Woodchucks

3. Slugs

I have also had visits from my neighbour's cows and once 4 pigs were rooting about.

Marianne

[Lesley Cox]

My God, why, in the face of all that lot, have I ever moaned about a small dog dig or the occasional possum in my garden. I obviously have it very easy with not even slugs or snails to worry about. A few free range chooks used to scratch around plants but I didn't mind as they kept the place free of slaters, earwigs and other crawlies.

For those with a cat problem, I highly recommend you make or obtain a shanghai and practise until perfect. Works a treat. (I wouldn't say this if Arthur were not safely in Iran )

[TheOnionMan]

Having gardened in drastically different climates, mostly northern New England (Massachusetts), USA, (USDA Zone 5) but also gardened for 4 years in the Pacific Northwest near Seattle, Washington (USDA zone 7-8), the problems and pests are extremely different.  I didn't understand the enormity of slug damage until I lived in the Pacific Northwest, with hordes if 6" (10 cm) long banana slugs that decimate everything unless one proclaims absolute war on them.  In New England, no such problems with slugs whatsoever, instead it is mostly chipmunks and squirrels, occasional rabbits and woodchucks, noisy crows (pulling out labels), and lots of moles, voles, and mice.

One pest that doesn't get a lot of attention is ants, they can tunnel, nest, and swarm to such an extent to seriously disturb some plants.  Here's a photo of a springtime and summer occurrence, the occasional swarming of ants forming sizeable black pathes on the lawn... they'll only do this for a day or two, but it's a reminder just how many ants we have (they're in the kitchen too!).

[johnw]

Mark - No slugs? Move here, with our dampness and fog they are a very big problem, the small beige ones are the worst though the black ones are bad too. The huge banana slug doesn't do that much damage.

I've never seen ants swarm like yours. Here our neighborhood problem is the newly arrived European fire ant which sets its sights on humans with a very nasty bite and they attack en masse.

Cats are a constant problem - digging, scratching, flattening, taking fiestas on the troughs and climbing atop the greenhouse and ripping the plastic on the way up.

johnw   - +24.7c here today at the airport (about 40km from the city). the outer suburbs were probably a tad warmer than that.

[TheOnionMan]

Mark - No slugs? Move here, with our dampness and fog they are a very big problem, the small beige ones are the worst though the black ones are bad too. The huge banana slug doesn't do that much damage.

I've never seen ants swarm like yours. Here our neighborhood problem is the newly arrived European fire ant which sets its sights on humans with a very nasty bite and they attack en masse.

Cats are a constant problem - digging, scratching, flattening, taking fiestas on the troughs and climbing atop the greenhouse and ripping the plastic on the way up.

johnw   - +24.7c here today at the airport (about 40km from the city). the outer suburbs were probably a tad warmer than that.

25 C here today too, very warm weather indeed. 

"The huge banana slug doesn't do that much damage."  These giant beasties could wrap themselves around anything and all but destroy them handily in a single night.  Even the mega-huge Hosta hybrids had a dastardly hard time emerging in spring from these bad boys.  At dusk they would come up from the drainage ravines that were in back of neighborhood streets, looking like someone bought about 50 cases of Cuban cigars and tossed them into the yard, that thick and large they were.  Finally after 24 years, I have stopped having nightmares about them

We do have slugs here, but by and large, they are insignificant, not liking our hot dry weather, never very big, never very numerous, never doing any serious damage, unlike my Seattle area nightmare experience.

The ant swarming thingy is not, in itself, detrimental to any plant, but it is but a reminder about just how many ants we have, and that they can make some compact rosetting plants a total mess if they actively nest around it.  Thank goodness no fire ants here yet.

Cats, I dislike them.  Everyone here has large yards (2 acre minimum is the norm, unless grandfathered in some of the more densely populated town areas), so it perturbs me when I see cats in my garden because cat owners just let their cats roam, the cats love nothing better than a new sandy garden bed as their toilet.  Whenever I see them I scare them and chase after them, to make it known they are not welcome.

[cohan]

when i lived in toronto, i had at most very small outdoor gardening areas--at one place some pots in the back yard, at another one bed right on the sidewalk; the issues at the first were squirrels (i think-never saw them in action,but presume racoons would have knocked more things over) --they would toss out fresh bedding plants daily, until/unless they managed to get rooted; sempervivums they tossed out onto the ground until they died..

at the bed on the sidewalk, pets were a problem, but dogs worse than cats--idiot dog owners seem to believe that every blade of grass or leaf or in the city was meant to be a dog toilet--you would never catch me sitting on the grass in toronto, since i'm sure that there is not an inch without dog waste on it (visible or not); this having been right downtown, i was also not safe from human pests--including, at least once, a drunk falling right into the bed needless to say i did not grow anything precious in that bed ...lol

out here, animals are not big pests, yet but that is likely to change as i expand the plantings--mice are certainly an issue, though more so for buildings, so far; cats are quite important to keep mice under control, which would be much more difficult without them;

deer and moose are issues as well--especially for pruning shrubs and small trees, which mostly happens in winter-sorbus has a struggle to grow out of their reach, and its rare to find a single  cornus branch that hasn't been pruned; other rosaceae such as prunus and amelanchier are very popular as well..
the deer have not so far done too much to smaller plants, but as i have more plants in leaf outside the season of the  natives, there will be much more temptation--they didn't touch my beginning veg garden during the summer, but cropped off all the kale after frost, when there was no more wild green (ditto for some self sown violas that flowered long past frost)..i'm presuming these acts were deer, there are plenty of rabbits in the bush, so they could come in as well..

i've not yet seen birds doing anything bad to plants or gardens (no doubt keeping bugs in check!) though ruffed grouse often perch in the crab/apple trees right by the house to eat fruit (far more than we need)-but that reminds me of one problem-robins and many others will eat any berry fruit very quickly-sour cherries need to be harvested quickly, and saskatoons are next to impossible; forget about 'decorative' berries overwintering! sorbus and lonicera involucrata disappear as soon as they are ripe, as (nearly) do cornus stolonifera; symphoricarpos last longest, but are mostly gone by snowfall... i'm always amazed to go into town and see trees with berries in mid-winter...lol

oh yes--ants...they occupy some key bits of land i'd like to use (well, i think they occupy every inch...) and i will have to figure that out, as well as trying to keep them from more intensively occupying the rest, houses and buildings with a wooden component are a problem with them as well, i'd really like to build with concrete or stone....
there are slugs--last year they were in the cat dish every morning, but i haven't seen plant damage so far--i guess they are mostly happy with the huge amounts of grass, dandelions and clover available..

[johnw]

"The huge banana slug doesn't do that much damage." 

Mark - I should have said "The huge banana slug doesn't do that much damage here."  The ones here are light brown and spotted, about 6=8" long when mature.  It must be different than the west coast one,  here it seems to feed on dead material only.  They are as a real hazard when walking about at night.

johnw