In-depth Occasionally, we lack space in the newspaper to run stories their full length. We have reserved this spot to display longer versions of those articles. Gophers tend to cause the most problems for producers. Since they are rodents, they have ever-growing teeth and need to continuously gnaw, he says. Gophers have been documented to cause a decrease in yields of up to 17 percent in irrigated alfalfa and up to 35 percent in dryland alfalfa.
Gophers require a lot of energy and don t hibernate.
Therefore, they can even cause problems in the winter. They generally don t cause problems in the corn and soybean fields because there aren t deep root systems to feed on. That s why they take over alfalfa fields, McMurtry says. A gopher s life span is two to seven years. They will have one to two litters of three to four babies per year.