How to Get Rid of Shrews

If you are interested in how to get rid of shrews, we’ll be discussing some very practical ones in this guide.

Shrews look similar to rodents but aren’t. They are easily identified by their long snouts.

Having them around your home can be unsettling. This is because of the damage to vegetation, especially trees and shrubs.

Finding a solution to this problem can be challenging, especially when you have little or no knowledge of how to control shrews.

Luckily for you, the information provided here should help you keep your home free of shrews.

Information About Shrews

Shrews have a hell of an appetite. They can consume food 3 times their body weight in a day. This is due to their active nature.

In addition to that, they have a high metabolic rate. This makes them feed at all times of the day.

These mammals aren’t bad to have around though. This is because they feed or prey on a variety of pests, especially insect pests.

The downside with having these around is the damage caused to vegetation. They are also venomous. Which is reason enough to keep them at a healthy distance. It may interest you to know that shrews can starve if left without food for half a day! Their high metabolic rate can be used against them as you’d find shortly.

How to Get Rid of Shrews in the Yard, Garden, and Garage

Shrews can be gotten rid of using a range of methods. This fact makes it even easier for anyone facing an infestation.

If you do, the following shrew removal strategies should prove helpful. In this section, we would provide you many effective ways to address the problem.

We are confident you’d find these quite useful in your quest for a lasting solution to your shrew problem.

• Eliminate Hiding Spots from Your Surroundings

Shrews love environments that provide abundant shelter and cover. Yards with overgrown bushes and shrubs provide abundant covering. These will need to be cleared and removed to expose their nesting areas.

Debris, leaves, and piles of wood also provide shrews with hiding spots. You’ll need to clear your yard regularly to make it unwelcoming.

Piles of wood should be placed as far as possible from your vicinity.

• Live Shrew Traps

Live traps should be considered if you wish to adopt humane strategies. These traps come in different sizes Which brings us to the types of traps available.

Different types of traps can be used on shrews. But those selected should be small (spacing between the cage) enough to stop shrews from escaping. Recall that we mentioned that shrews are mostly small in size.

Traps should be placed in areas where shrew activity is most visible. One safety measure you must never forget is to try as much as possible to avoid direct contact.

Remember we told you that shrews are venomous? As such, try to avoid bites completely. Only purchase traps that guarantee zero human contact with shrews.

Some good shrew traps include;

i. NoMol Mole Trap

Though it’s called a mole trap, it has been used with great success on shrews.

Due to its design for outdoor use, it is made with rust-free material. It comes with every use instruction needed. It is easy to set too. Its trigger mechanism must be adjusted to open help spread open the trap.

This should then be placed along paths or tunnel openings used by shrews.

This trap must also be disguised to make it blend in with the environment. It can be disguised using brushes, leaves, or grass. Check every day to see if it has caught any shrews. If not, try changing its location or get more of it to place at several locations.

ii. Havahart Live Animal Traps

This product is used on a variety of small rodents.

It also works perfectly on shrews. Its 2 doors are gravity controlled and are activated when stepped upon. It is designed to be humane, and as such has smooth sides that shrews slide in without being injured in the process.

This product has been made with long-lasting material to make it last.

It comes cheap too and is very affordable. You only need to find the areas of your home having the most shrew activity. This trap is placed along such paths and bait is placed at the top. These traps come with detailed instructions as to how they should be set. Always check at least twice a day to see if any shrews have been trapped.

So many other shrew traps are available. These are just 2 of several. If you can’t find any of these in hardware stores, be sure that other alternatives will be available.

• Mow your Lawns as Frequent as Necessary

Overgrown lawn and shrubs provide perfect hiding spots for shrews. The same applies to brushes and low-hanging tree branches. Thus, you must pay close attention to your surroundings.

Maintaining your lawn and keeping it short will make your surroundings less inviting. Shrews don’t find the perfect covering they seek to nest around.

Such exposed surroundings also make it easy to be spotted by predators. They will have to find more suitable environments when your home offers none.

• Eliminate Secondary Food Sources

Shrews possess voracious appetites. This means they must find food to eat frequently.

You can make your surroundings even less inviting by removing all secondary food sources. These are targeted when they can’t find their usual delicacies. ‘So, to begin, your pet food should be moved indoors.

Try as much as you can to feed pets indoors. But if you must feed them outside, always clean up feeding areas after each feeding session. You will be making food scarce. Food is all they ever need. So, its absence will impact directly on their presence.

• Apply Predator Urine

While shrews prey on other creatures, they aren’t left out of the equation either. In other words, other predators feed on shrews. Shrews have a strong sense of smell. This alerts them to the presence of food as well as predators.

By applying or treating your surroundings with predator urine, you are sending a signal to them. This signal alerts them to nearby danger.

You should notice an almost immediate drop in their activities as well as presence. Although predator urine is effective, it must be applied frequently, especially during the rainy season. This is because it is washed off whenever it rains.

• Introduce Actual Predators

The application of predator urine was meant to scare shrews into thinking that such predators were around.

While this is effective, you can escalate the situation by introducing real predators. Shrew predators are almost endless. And this includes your pets. Dogs and cats are predators that will prove useful.

These pets will patrol your yard and surroundings effectively when released. For shrews, this is a situation they would rather avoid. What more? These mammals (shrews) are territorial.

In other words, they want to be the only occupants of their immediate surroundings. This makes them feel unsafe, thereby pushing them to seek safer locations.

• Watering Your Garden Should be Regulated

Gardens and lawns need to be watered. But you must apply just the right amount of water. This shouldn’t be done excessively as it attracts insect pests. These pests are irresistible to shrews and attract them. Excess water also provides shrews with the needed moisture their bodies need for metabolism.

In the absence of such conditions, shrews will hardly thrive within your environment. You may also want to remove low-lying and stagnant water around.

By taking such actions, you will be directly impacting your surroundings to become less inviting.

• Treat Your Garden for Bugs

Insects are bound to be found in outdoor environments. But these can be controlled using either natural or chemical measures.

We recommend treating your garden of grubs and insects whenever they appear to be increasing. Shrews rely on these to survive. Their voracious appetite won’t be satisfied when there are fewer insects to feed on.

• Shrew Repellents

If you’ve wondered if there are repellents for shrews, the answer is certainly yes! Lots of repellent products and poisons have been developed to combat shrew presence. Most of these also work on rodents. So, while treating a shrew problem, you’d also be getting rid of rodents.

We recommend that you go for repellents that are non-toxic and environmentally safe. Consider that your pets may stroll around and will certainly pick up things including killing shrews.

Environmentally safe and non-toxic shrew repellents. These may come in granule or liquid form. Whatever it is, apply as instructed and see your shrew problem vanish.

Shrews are unable to withstand its smell and have to avoid affected areas.

• Vibrating Repellents

These are electronic repellents that are driven into the ground. They scare away shrews by the vibrations they make.

Get as many of these to cover affected areas. Shrews dislike external disturbances and are scared by such vibrations. You won’t spend a fortune applying this strategy as they are considerably pocket-friendly.

These are some of the ways to get rid of shrews. You don’t have to tolerate the problem as it may become worse.

Choose any of the above to reclaim full control of your surroundings. You will also be saving yourself and your family as well as pets from venomous shrew bites.