Winter damage on a young Texas tree usually shows up at the worst spot: the ground line. You rake back the mulch in February and the bark is gone in a ring around the trunk, chewed clean down to pale wood. The tree was being eaten at ankle height.
Rabbits and voles do this. Green food gets scarce in cold weather, bark turns into a food source, and a young trunk is the easiest meal in the yard. This guide covers how to read the damage, who did it, and the guard that stops it.
What girdling actually does
Bark is not the working layer. The thin, greenish cambium just under the bark is. It builds new wood inward and new food-carrying tissue outward. Leaves send sugar down through that tissue to feed the roots. Chew a strip of bark and cambium off and you cut that line.
A partial chew is a wound the tree can close. Callus rolls in from the edges during the growing season and covers small gaps in a year or two. A complete ring is different. Roots get no food, they weaken and die back, and the top follows. The tree may leaf out in spring on stored energy and still be dead by August, which fools people into blaming summer heat.
Who chewed it: rabbit, vole, or something else
Read the height and the tooth marks. Cottontail rabbits bite clean. Look for a neat ring or patch of missing bark from the ground up to about knee height, with smooth edges, plus low shoots and twigs snipped off at a sharp angle, as if cut with pruners. Rabbit pellets nearby, round and pea sized, confirm it.
Voles work hidden. These small rodents gnaw at and just below the ground line, under mulch, leaf litter, and low groundcover. The marks are rougher: small paired grooves in the wood, an uneven gnawed band, often right where a deep mulch ring touches the trunk. You find vole damage by moving mulch; our mulch volcano guide covers that habit.
Rule out the rest. Deer rubs shred bark at chest height in fall and leave it hanging in strips. Squirrels strip patches higher up, on limbs and the upper trunk. A vertical crack on the southwest side of a young trunk is sunscald, and it splits instead of being chewed. Clean chewing at the ground line in winter belongs to rabbits and voles.
Which trees get hit here
Young and thin-barked, in that order. A tree in its first three winters has bark a rabbit can bite through in minutes, and builder trees in new Melissa, Anna, and Celina subdivisions are planted right along the open field edges where cottontails live. Our builder tree guide covers the rest of what those trees are up against.
Fruit trees top the menu. Peach, plum, pear, and young apple get hit hard. The fruit tree guide covers their year-round load. Redbud, crape myrtle, and young red oaks are also regular targets. A mature post oak with thick, plated bark is mostly ignored. Thick bark is the protection, so the guard years are the young years.
Guards that work, set up right
Use quarter-inch hardware cloth. Cut a length that wraps the trunk with an inch or two of air gap, fasten it into a cylinder, and set it so the top stands 24 to 36 inches above the ground. The height covers a rabbit standing on ice crust in a storm week. Bury the bottom edge an inch into the soil, or bend the last inch outward flat on the ground, so voles cannot duck under it. Stake the cylinder so wind and dogs do not push it against the bark.
Quarter inch is the size that matters: it blocks voles and mice, which wider mesh does not. Keep the cloth off the bark; a guard rubbing the trunk all winter makes its own wound. Check guards after storms and reset any that lean. Pull mulch back so the ground line stays visible and hidden gnawing has nowhere to hide.
Timing: guards go on in fall, before the first hard cold, and stay through the last freeze. Our planting timing guide makes the same point for fall-planted trees: a tree that goes in during October should be caged the same weekend, not after the first chew shows.
What does not work
Chicken wire stops rabbits and nothing smaller. Its wide hex holes pass voles freely, so a tree can be ringed inside a chicken wire cage. Solid plastic tubes help against rabbits, but they hold moisture against thin bark, hide vole damage until it is done, and get outgrown fast.
Sprays and taste repellents wash off in the first rain and need reapplying after every wet spell. Trunk paint does not deter chewing either, and wound paint on a fresh girdle only traps moisture against the wound. Skip both and spend the effort on wire.
Already girdled: first aid and the honest call
Start by measuring the ring with your eyes. Under a third of the way around, on a tree that was healthy going into winter: good odds. Clean up loose bark back to firm edges, guard the trunk that day, water through dry spring spells, and let callus do its work.
Past halfway around, the odds drop fast, and a full ring at the ground line on a small tree is usually the end. Judge it at spring leaf-out and again in June; a tree that leafs thin and stalls is telling you. The check steps in our diagnosis guide help separate girdle decline from drought. A dead one left standing over a walkway is when removal is the right call.
The bottom line
Girdling is a winter problem with a fall fix. Ten minutes of hardware cloth on a young trunk in November beats a dead tree in July. Read the height, name the animal, cage the tree, and pull the mulch back. If the ring already wraps most of the trunk, get it looked at before spring.
\nCommon Questions
Will a girdled tree die?
It depends on how far the chewing wraps. A full ring all the way around starves the roots, and the tree dies over the following season. Damage under about a third of the way around usually closes over. Between a third and a half is a coin flip that spring growth decides.
What kind of guard actually stops rabbits and voles?
A cylinder of quarter-inch hardware cloth, 24 to 36 inches tall, standing an inch or two off the trunk, staked, with the bottom edge buried an inch in the soil or flared outward. Quarter-inch mesh stops voles and mice. Chicken wire stops rabbits but lets voles through.
My tree is already girdled. Can it be saved?
Often, if the ring is partial. Trim loose bark back to where it sits firm, paint nothing on the wound, guard the trunk the same day, and keep the tree watered through spring. A small tree ringed all the way around rarely pays to save. Replacement in the fall planting window is usually the plain answer.
When should guards go on, and when do they come off?
On in fall, before the first hard cold, and checked a couple of times each winter. Leave them until the bark has thickened, which takes a few seasons on most yard trees. Widen or reset any guard that starts to press the trunk. A guard left tight becomes the girdle.