Voles
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The Meadow Vole, sometimes called the Field Mouse or Meadow Mouse, is a small North American Vole found across Canada, Alaska and the northern United States.
Meadow Voles are active year-round, usually at night. It digs underground burrows where it stores food for the winter and females give birth to their young. Although these animals tend to live close together, they are aggressive towards one other. This is particularly evident in males during the breeding season and can cause damage to fruit trees, garden plants and commercial grain crops.
The Meadow Vole is a herbivore feeding mainly on the grasses that are abundant in its environment. When grass is not readily available, such as during the winter months, the meadow vole may often gnaw on tree bark as a source of nourishment. They will often eat nuts and seeds when available. In captivity, they will frequently feed on lettuce and sunflower seeds as a supplement to their diet.
The meadow vole can reproduce multiple times each year. Average females have between one and five litters in a year, producing about five pups in each litter. They become reproductively active only during a specific time of the year based on the length of the photoperiod. Meadow voles experience the greatest degree of reproductive activity during times when they are exposed to a long photo period of fourteen hours of light to ten hours of darkness. Their reproductive rates can also be reduced if they are deprived of food for long periods of time.
