Raccoons might be cute, but they’re no good for your garden: here are tips on how to remove them from your yard.
Keep Raccoons Away from Your Crops
How to Identify Raccoons
Raccoons are small mammals 2 to 3 feet in length and weighing about 10 to 30 pounds. Raccoons have distinct black 鈥渕asks鈥 on their faces, which often characterizes them as bandits. They have fluffy, ringed tails, and their bodies are varying shades of gray, with hints of light brown. The forepaws of raccoons resemble tiny human hands with five toes, which makes raccoons very dexterous.
Raccoons are nocturnal creatures, meaning that they feed at night. This might make it hard for you to identify them, as you might only see the damage they cause. Looking for raccoon tracks near the damage might also help you to identify them. Learn more about identifying animal tracks.
Photo Credit: M. Sorrentino, University of Vermont. After a rainy night, five-toed tracks might appear in the mud around your garden. These raccoon tracks are easily distinguished from most other four-toed mammals.
Raccoon Damage
If your lawn has a lot of holes in it, or your mulch pile has a lot of holes, you probably have a nightly visitor. Raccoons will dig up lawns and mulch piles looking for insects to eat. They will also empty bird feeders, so keep an eye on your feeders to see if you have a raccoon problem. Additionally, raccoons are known to raid chicken coops, stealing eggs and even killing chickens.
Of course, if you have corn, there鈥檚 nothing more infuriating than finding stalks toppled and ears ripped open and half eaten. (Even more frustrating is the idea, offered by animal researchers, that raccoons are wasteful because they don鈥檛 really like sweet corn all that much; in fact, they seem to prefer sunflower seeds, dog food, and sardines.)
How to Get Rid of Raccoons
The persistence and proliferation of raccoons have inspired many solutions; one of them is bound to work for you. Here are tips from all our readers and staff! See what works for you.
- If your raccoon problem is persistent, you can set live raccoon traps in your garden and release the animal at least three miles away (check local and state laws first). Raccoons will eat virtually anything; try fish-flavored dry cat food, chicken necks, ears of corn, or whole peanuts for bait.
- To keep raccoons at a distance, try scattering blood meal around corn plants. Also, try sprinkling wood ashes around your plants.
- Grind up garlic, mix it with an equal portion of chili powder, and spread it around the garden. Frequent applications are needed.
- One reader says, 鈥淗ang shoes and clothes that smell of human perspiration around your garden or corn patch.鈥 Similarly, 鈥淵ou can try to repel raccoons by putting dog hair or human hair around the garden.鈥
- Tune a radio to a rock station and set it in the middle of your garden and/or corn patch. Leave it on all night. The noise will scare away the raccoons.
- Put lights in the garden. A bright lantern will sometimes keep Sun-shy raccoons away.
- Plant enough corn for man and beast alike.
- Add some pinwheels and streamers to your garden to scare the creatures.
- Folk wisdom suggests that you spread newspapers around the perimeter of the garden.
How to Prevent Raccoons
- Build a good fence around your garden. Beware though, raccoons are agile and intelligent; make sure your fence will keep them out. You may need to install an electric fence. This is a good measure. A two-wire fence, with one wire four to six inches above the ground and the other at 12 inches, should be effective.
- If your home is near your garden, remove any possible food sources from the area, including pet food and bird seed. Buy garbage cans with locking lids and keep garbage inside if possible. Keep pet doors sealed shut between dusk and dawn. Cap your chimneys. Seal any holes or gaps in attics and roofs.
- Grow tall varieties of corn such as 鈥楽ilver Queen鈥, 鈥楰andy Korn鈥, and 鈥楲ancelot鈥. Taller plants bear their ears higher, causing raccoons trouble getting leverage to topple stalks and ravage them. They prefer shorter plants.
- You can also plant squash around your corn or other plants to deter raccoons; they don鈥檛 like walking on the prickly squash vines.
Do you have any more tips for getting rid of a raccoon? Let us know below!
Catherine Boeckmann
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I have 3 that comes around my house and even on top of my house,they are now digging up my rose bushes
GUN
Never saw a raccoon before until a couple of weeks ago when I spotted a complete family in my small garden.
I've found sitting in a lawn chair late at night and covered with deet, along with a good accurate cal. .22 rimfire, sound suppressor and a gen II night vision scope to be very effective. I haven't seen a coon for weeks now. Oh, unlike Vietnam, the Coons don't shoot back.
I live in a rural area. Thanks a lot for dumping your spare raccoons, dogs, cats garbage, whatever, out here. You are just passing your problem on for someone else to deal with. This place may look empty but it isn't. It is already chuck full of wild animals and plenty of rowdy raccoons I have to contend with.
Raccoon's are dangerous and killed my cat...ripped to to shreds...Do not feed or try to befriend. The opened my screen door to my porch with their claws and I had Mother Father and 5 babies on my porch.
I have one in my yard now and I am calling animal control to get it and all pets are quarantined until it is gone. They are wild animals and can spread disease and death to you and your pets...BEWARE
That was really informative.Even though we live in a fairly urban area we have a beautiful garden in our home and I have seen wild raccoons in our garden because gardens are an easy source of food. I didn't take any measures to get rid of them until my cat got killed by them :( Finally, with the help of Remove the wild, wild life removal service in Canada we removed all the raccoons in our area.
there are so many animal removal services you can call to trap raccoons and other such pest animals and release it somewhere less populated.
Can, unfortunately, be very frustrating. You're very lucky if the animal control people in your area do their job and remove the pesky wildlife. We had a bear that kept trashing the dumpster in our area, and my husband called Fish and Game, and they just blew him off. He finally had to threaten to "take care" of the matter himself before they would finally come out and do what the taxpayers who pay their salaries pay them to do. We live in a rural area, and local residents use the common dumpster all the time, and there are kids around. You'd think these animal control folks would be more conscientious, and you wouldn't have to BEG them to do their jobs!
Really informative. We used to have frequent visits from raccoons at our home in Toronto till a few months back. They used to dig up my plants and sprawl mud all over the place. My natural remedies did not work on them so I had to call a raccoon removal service called A1 checkmate for the job. They got rid of the problem once and for all and I haven't had any trouble from raccoons till date.
I called animal control and they told me they couldn't take care of the coons or could not get rid of them for me, I don't know who to call but take care of it myself I guess with a 22, I don't know what to put out to make them leave
