How to Keep Unwanted Animals Out of Your Yard

Even if you’re an animal lover, you may have to face the plight of unwanted critters. Tiny animals seeking shelter can squeeze their way into your house through the smallest of holes and make themselves right at home. It can be difficult to catch pests since scavenging hours are late at night for many. Find out how to keep unwanted animals out of your yard and make them stay away.

Note: Although these tricks are beneficial for repelling wildlife, consider hiring a local animal removal service if you’re continually facing serious issues with animals. 

1. Utilize Fences

Fences are useful for keeping almost any critter away from your home. You can choose to fence off specific areas of your home, or you can install a fence around the entirety of your property. To determine which fence is ideal for your home and properly execute the installation, you’ll want to hire a professional fence installer.

Typically, the cost to install fencing falls somewhere between $1,850 and $4,700, with the total cost depending on factors such as the materials you use, your location, and the amount of space you’re fencing off.

Note: If you’re dealing with deer munching on your garden, fences should be at least 8 feet tall.

2. Remove Food

Whether you enjoy dinners on the patio or don’t always close the garbage can lid, you could be attracting critter visitors. Unsurprisingly, food messes will attract many types of animals. Mice, in particular, tend to be attracted to fruits and vegetables.

Clean up any food from your yard or patio as quickly as possible to ward off peeping critters. Additionally, if you’re growing crops, aim to pick your produce as soon as possible to prevent luring wildlife.

3. Buy Animal Repellents

There are many animal repellents for your yard that are safe to use around your property and won’t harm the animals. All you need to do is sprinkle, spray, or place your repellent around the affected areas, and you should see fewer critters roaming around your house. Just be sure to do your research and use these only as directed.

4. Try Wind Chimes

Some animals may be frightened by noise, so adding a windchime or similar noisy lawn ornament to your space may scare them off. However, just note that you’ll hear whatever the animal hears—and so will your neighbors. If you don’t find the noise of chimes very soothing or live near others, this may not be the solution for you.

5. Clean Up Your Yard Regularly

Animals are smarter than we think and, more often than not, are seeking shelter where they can safely reside. Creatures often burrow or hide in piles of wood, overgrown weeds, or accumulated debris where they can nest, hole, and ultimately make into living spaces.

Cleaning up your yard regularly is not only a way to maintain your home’s exterior, but it can also discourage critters from hanging out around your home.

6. Eliminate Bird Feeders

Although bird feeders can be fun home decor, they may be attracting other small animals to your house. Also, if you live somewhere with strong winds, the seeds will regularly disperse, instantly attracting squirrels and mice. If you’ve had a few unwelcome visitors in your garden, it may be time to toss the bird feeder.

7. Find and Seal Up Access Holes

While neighborhood critters may be cute at first glance, you’ll surely think differently when you find them inside your home. It’s essential to find and seal any points of access, like holes in your siding or attic, to prevent unwanted visitors.

Even if these spots seem absurdly small to you, animals such as mice, squirrels, and rats can usually squeeze in. You can be proactive by periodically looking for these holes and sealing them as soon as possible.

8. Use Natural Repellents

There are many homemade animal repellents to keep critters out of your yard. You should try a few methods and see what works best for you. For one, you can try spreading dehydrated garlic around your yard, or you can make garlic water to spray around your property.

Make a Garlic Spray

To make the garlic spray, blend five cloves of unpeeled garlic. Add 2 cups of water and three drops of dish soap and blend for a few minutes. Then, strain the mixture through a cheesecloth or strainer, and put it into a sprayer. This spray works to deter unwanted animals and also pesky bugs like mosquitos, aphids, ants, and more.

Make Pepper Spray

You can also make a homemade repellent with a few items: hot pepper, water, and dish soap.

All you need to do is combine hot pepper sauce (or ground hot pepper), a few drops of soap, and a couple of cups of water. Use a food processor or blender to mix the ingredients thoroughly in a well-ventilated area, and then transfer your mixture into a spray bottle. We recommend spraying your repellant at least once a week on critter-friendly areas of your home.

Sprinkle Mint

If you don’t have any pets that hang out in your yard, you can try sprinkling mint, powdered cinnamon, and black pepper to discourage critters from digging. Mint is toxic to pets, so avoid that if you have furry family members.

While hot chili peppers, cinnamon, and black pepper are not necessarily toxic, your pet might experience irritation if they ingest or inhale large quantities of them. And when it comes to hot peppers, take care that your pets don’t eat any seeds because that part of the pepper is toxic to them.

Keep a keen eye out to be sure pets don’t ingest these repellants or consider alternative solutions.

How to Identify Unwanted Animals in Your Yard

Critters may make themselves known to you by leaving behind damage to your yard or rummaging through your trash. But if you don’t get a good look at them, it can be tough to identify these unwanted visitors. 

Below, we shared some traits of the most common critters so you can connect the dots and figure out how to prevent them from setting up shop near you.

Deer

Deer are one of the most common animal guests, and they’re easy to identify, even if you never lay eyes on them. Here are a few things to look for:

• Matted plants and grass: Deer like to sleep underneath trees, so the surrounding grass gets pressed down as a result. They’ll also stomp through gardens and flowerbeds without care. Since they’re larger than most neighborhood critters, you’ll notice the size of their imprints.

• Large bites in plants and leaves: Even though deer are notorious grazers, they don’t leave a lot of food on their dinner plates, especially compared to smaller mammals. Look for flowers with heads taken off or branches and stems missing entire leaves, particularly ones a few feet off the ground but not higher than 6 feet.

• Marble-sized scat: If you need help distinguishing animal scat, a quick internet search helps clear things up.

• Bark missing from trees: Deer like to nuzzle against trees, which can weather and strip the bark over time.

• Deer tracks: These recognizable markings involve two oval-shaped impressions that look like an upside-down heart shape.

Raccoons

Whether you live in a rural, suburban, or urban area, raccoons will dig through your trash every so often. If there are recurring issues, however, you may have a raccoon living under your house or porch or even in an attic or chimney. The good news is you can get raccoons humanely removed. Signs of a raccoon problem include:

• Garbage: Raccoons always leave a mess of garbage strewn about or trash cans knocked over.

• 4-inch-long tracks: Raccoons have five fingers and five toes, so their prints bear a vague but miniature resemblance to human handprints and footprints. 

• Nesting materials: Look for twigs, insulation, and leaves.

• Empty bird feeders: Raccoons eat more than garbage and often go for left-out bird seed.

• Noises: Listen for scratching, rustling, and squeaking sounds at night. You may even see scratches on trees in your yard. 

Rabbits

Despite being cute and fluffy, rabbits can be a nuisance if they grow fond of your yard or garden. You may see them in broad daylight. However, they’re most active at dawn and dusk. If you don’t see them firsthand, here are some telltale signs of rabbits:

• Damaged vegetable garden: While rabbits eat a variety of food, including hay and grass, ransacked vegetables are easy to spot.

• Clean-cut bite marks: Instead of uneven nibbles (common among mice and voles), rabbits leave straight bite marks, almost as if the plants were cut with scissors.

• Tufts of fur: Rabbits shed their fur in the spring and fall, and it often gets caught in fences and netting.

• Nests or holes: Rabbits like to conceal their hiding spots with small plants and fur, but it’s not uncommon to find a nest in the middle of the yard.

• Pea-sized scat: Anyone who’s had a pet rabbit knows that rabbit droppings spring up in a hurry. For wild rabbits, scat is usually found near their nests or feeding spots.

Groundhogs 

Groundhogs can be difficult to eradicate. As prolific diggers, they can easily get under fences and into your yard. If you suspect a groundhog problem but aren’t sure, here are a few ways to confirm it:

• Holes and mounds in the yard: Groundhog burrows are about 10 to 12 inches wide and easy to spot since they have a large mound of dirt encircling them.

• Marks on logs and trees: Groundhogs sharpen their teeth on wood, so scratches on a tree trunk or fallen branch might indicate their presence. 

• Groundhog tracks: These fluffy rodents have four digits on their front paws and five digits on their back paws. The distance between the front and back tracks ranges from 4 to 12 inches.  

Moles

These pesky subterranean animals often mess up yards while digging for ground-based insects like worms and grubs. By sight, they can be mistaken for voles, but here are a few key indicators that moles are visiting your yard:

• Dirt mounds: Small hills of dirt or even long dirt ridges often pop up after moles dig their tunnels. Another sign is if the ridges crisscross each other. 

• Drainage problems: If standing water is collecting in your yard, it could be a sign of moles. Their tunnels make it more difficult for water to drain naturally.

• Patches of dead grass: This is another sign that mole tunnels are affecting things aboveground.

• Excess weed growth: The disruption of root systems when moles are present leads to weed overgrowth.

Squirrels 

Squirrels are common in most states, so seeing one or two isn’t cause for alarm. However, here are a few ways to tell if these bushy-tailed critters are a problem:

• Large nests: Squirrels make haphazard nests from leaves and twigs, commonly located in attics or even the abandoned dens of other animals. 

• Empty bird feeder: Squirrels are excellent tree climbers and love eating bird seed, so it's common for them to steal food from your bird feeders.

• Noises in the walls and ceiling: If squirrels are an issue in your yard, you might notice scratching and squeaking sounds. You’ll likely hear squirrels during the day because other pests, like rats and raccoons, are nocturnal. 

• Chewed roofing material: Squirrels will chew through roofs, including joists, siding, and shingles, to make their nests.

• Foul smells: A bad odor in your home could be caused by urine or droppings from squirrels. It’s also possible a squirrel carcass is caught between the walls. 

How to Keep Animals Out of Your Yard Each Season

Depending on the time of year, you’ll want to focus on different strategies to keep critters out of your yard. Here are some tips to help you out no matter what season it is.

• Fall/winter: Seal all entry points, trim shrubs and trees, store firewood away from the house, and get your fireplace and chimney cleaned.

• Spring: Install row covers on your vegetable garden, put gravel in empty burrows, plant anti-critter plants like daffodils, lavender, and bleeding heart, and check your fences for holes.

• Summer: Do yard work regularly, drain any standing water, and clean up any clutter.

DIY vs. Hire a Pro

If you want to keep critters out of your yard and don’t mind putting in the time and effort, a DIY job can be very affordable. For example, spreading a natural anti-critter repellent like crushed red peppers will only cost you $2 to $6, while a chemical-based repellent costs $17 to $34.

How Much Does Animal Removal Cost?

If your DIY efforts aren’t working, then you should hire a professional animal removal company near you to help you get the job done. You should never try to remove an animal on your own. If you hire a pro, you won’t have to worry about accidentally harming the wildlife (or yourself) in your attempt to move them. The pros will also help you prevent future problems.

The cost of professional wildlife removal ranges depending on the animal in question—it’s usually $190 to $615, with raccoons being the most expensive to remove.