Tips for managing a cockroach infestation? 

Ah, those pesky cockroaches can be infuriating. It’s hard to find any redeeming value related to cockroaches in the home. To most people, the very sight of them elicits a range of emotions from fear to disgust and everything in between. If you are being victimized by a cockroach infestation, there are a couple of things on which you should be focusing. First, you need to figure out how you and your family might be accountable for the infestation. Second, you need to act fast because cockroaches can reproduce and grow at an alarming rate so the cockroach extermination can be done. 

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Your Accountability

Cockroaches need food and water to survive. They also prefer a warmer, darker, and dryer environment, which is why they are always looking for indoor passages. It’s your job to make sure your home is not an environment they would appreciate. 

To protect your house from a cockroach infestation, you have to start will getting into the habit of cleanliness. If you keep your food safely put away in sealed containers or the fridge, it would cut off a cockroach’s food supply. Also, you want to keep your floors and countertops wiped down and dry. Remember, a little bit of water can be a lot of water to the little cockroach. By the way, be on the lookout for plumbing leaks. That leaking water is a viable water supply for these little pests. 

Finally, you can do yourself a big favor by keeping your outdoor areas clean and garbage-free. If a cockroach doesn’t get the invitation of your trash and outdoor facet water, they will keep on marching to the next house.

Act Fast

The appearance of one cockroach in your home should set off alarms. Where there is one, there will surely be more in short order. Remember, cockroaches can reproduce very quickly. They lay 25 to 50 eggs a batch per female. The eggs of most species will hatch within a month. At that point, they are mobile and can quickly become a nuisance in mass. 

After hatching, it can take a cockroach 2 to 15 months to reach reproduction capability, depending on the species. Given the math, you can see that your window of opportunity to act could be short. If you see a couple of cockroaches over a day or two, eggs have likely been laid and you are weeks away from dozens of little critters running throughout your house, preparing to create more. 

Tips for managing a cockroach infestation

Your goal is to get rid of your cockroach problem as fast as possible. How? The following five tips offer you enough alternatives that you should be able to find at least one that best suits your needs

1. Home Remedies for Cockroach Extermination

Most home remedies include the use of household goods that act as poisons to cockroaches. Caution is warranted because some of these same chemicals can be poisonous to humans. 

An old standard is baking soda. The smell of chopped onions and baking soda is quite appealing to cockroaches. Unfortunately for them, ingesting the baking soda creates enough tummy gasses to cause a cockroach to internally explode and die.

If you use Borax as a laundry product, you are already armed with a lethal weapon in the eyes of a cockroach. Ingesting Borax mixed with water causes them to dehydrate and die within minutes. 

Another clever cockroach deterrent is lemon oil. They absolutely hate the very smell that humans love so much. If you get in the habit of using cleaning products containing lemon oil, they will quickly move on to other locations.

2. Cockroach Bait Hotels

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Bait traps or hotels offer a very fast remedy for a cockroach infestation. They can be either circular or tubular devices with an entrance and an embedded odor that cockroaches love. These devices also contain poisons that cockroaches will eat and carry back with them to their home base in your home. After passing the poison on to other members of the nest, you get to kill multiple roaches at the same time. 

3. Glue Strips

Glue strips work for flies and mice. Why not cockroaches? You can purchase glue strips specifically designed for cockroaches with an embedded odor that draws them to the strip. Once they take that fatal step onto the strip, escape becomes impossible. They will struggle and eventually die from dehydration and lack of food. You can strategically place glue strips around appliances and plumbing fixtures for the best and fastest results.

4. Seal Entry Points to Help with Cockroach Extermination

Before and after an infestation, you should be diligent about checking your home for entry points for all kinds of pests. Every three months, take a tour of your home for potential issues. You can prevent initial entry by cockroaches if you can identify and seal off potential entry points with good caulking products. Places to look would include window/door gaps, cracked weather-stripping, and flooring/wall gaps and cracks. You might also want to check around built-in light fixtures.

5. Call a Pest Control Professional for Cockroach Extermination

If progress is slow and the potential for an infestation is increasing, it might be time to call a professional cockroach exterminator. Remember, a good cockroach exterminator can handle a current cockroach extermination problem, identify entry point issues, and advise you on how to protect your home in the future. The best result you can hope for is to say goodbye to cockroaches forever.  

Exterminateurs Associés is a top exterminators Montreal service provider. They can provide a wide range of professional pest extermination services, including cockroach extermination. If prevention is your goal, this is one of the best exterminators Montreal has to offer for quarterly prevention services.