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Ground hogs or is calmly called woodchucks is one of the most famous animals in North America, the woodchucksor groundhogs supposedly emerges from its bourough on February 2 every year, this is become known as Groundhog Day. However is known that in many areas groundhog does not emerge until later in the year when the weather is warmer. Groundhogs spend their winter hibernating deep in their holes well bellow the surface of the ground.
Groundhogs are rodents and dig extensive systems of chambers and tunnels with multiple openings that provide excellent habitat and safety. Often times a groundhog or woodchuck is seen grazing above the Earth’s surface eating clover and other grasses that compose 90% of the groundhogs diet. Groundhogs depend on fat reserves built up through the year to make it through the winter as often times snow-covered grounds and the grasses revent them from eating until well into the month of May or until the ground unthaws and th elush grasses the groundhog loves to eat starts to grow.
Groundhogs have many ways in which they avoid predators and one very unique way a groundhog avoids predators is by climbing a tree. This is a very weird looking situation as groundhogs are really large animals and looks really strange in a tree. Groundhogs are one of the largest members of the rodent family weighing anywhere between 8 and 15 pounds and measuring about 24 to 35 inches. Groundhogs will go into their reproductive cycle right after they emerge from hibernation, they have anywhere between 2 to 6 babies in the spring of the year. The babies can be seen outside the borough after approximately 4 to 6 weeks. These animals will become totally dependent upon grasses for their survival after the age of eight weeks.
Groundhogs can become a nuisance in several different ways some of the major ways that groundhogs can become a nuisance wildlife animal will be listed below.
Groundhogs under porch
groundhogs gain access under your porch for several reasons, as their natural habitat is replaced by homes and buildings the groundhogs have very little alternative where to build their homes. The most common place that we find groundhogs are between the front steps of your home and the porch. This offer is a very well structured corner for the animals to start digging there are borough. After the animal has done the pulmonary hole under the steps the front porch area is usually hollow and offers the ground called a wonderful, large spacious place to reside for most of the winter. Great care should be took not to fill in the holes where the groundhogs have done without in fact removing the groundhogs. If you fill the holes and with concrete or another hardening substance this will fax traffic the groundhog under the porch and it will die if he cannot dig itself out. This will create another problem as the animal starts to decay the smell will be really bad.
Groundhog under my building
another very common call that we get every fall and early spring is for groundhogs under the building. Groundhogs will find a safe and secure place in which to dig their maze of holes and tunnels and no other place is more secure than under your building or out shed.
This is a more difficult problem to handle than the previous mentioned groundhog under the porch problem as with the ground called been under your shed we cannot gain access to the specific hole in which the groundhog has dug. This forces the trapper to trap the animal outside of the shed. This makes the job more difficult the calls of the groundhogs diet. Groundhogs typically only eat grasses as explained in the previous paragraph and the bait selection for groundhogs is very limited. Once the groundhog is removed from underneath your building or shed you should immediately fix the areas in which they gain access to underneath your shed. Fixing these areas include but not limited to screening around the bottom of the shed with either hardware cloth or lattice, filling the holes in which the groundhogs have dug with concrete, or simply dropping the shed down to grounds level so it is impossible for groundhogs to go underneath the shed anymore.To find a complete list of professional groundhog trappers you can click here.
Some of the areas we service for groundhogs are as follows: Reston, Fairfax Station, Lorton, Woodbridge, Manassas, Dumphries, Arlington, Annandale and all other Parts of Northern Virginia