Stay Clean!

Today I just wanted to emphasize the importance of keeping your home clean of clutter and food. The main reason why bugs enter your home is to find food and water. Most insects that enter your home are actually called Accidental Invaders. Accidental invaders do not puropsely try to enter your home, they just accidentally end up there. They need to scour the area to find food, and what better place to find food than in your home or trash.

The best way to keep bugs from coming in your home is to keep your home free of food and debris. Ants are notorious in finding foods and bringing in more of their friends. They release a pheromone in a trail that leads the rest to the food source. If you see ants, then that means you have a good food source for them to be there. Keeping the area clean will help prevent them from wanting to be there. Remember that even the smallest crumb can feed multiple insects.

The next thing you might want to to is limit the hiding places for the insects. Insects love tiny cracks and crevices. They will find anywhere that is tight to protect them from dangerous creatures. If you have lots of clutter on the floor or in the basement, this is just a ample place for bugs to live. It is difficult to spray within our limits if where the bugs are hiding are in your boxes of food or clothes. The best thing we recommend is organzing what you need to keep into plastic sealed containers. This will help keep the bugs from hiding in the boxes and allow us to get a safer, better spray in your home.

Just remember that food and hiding places are the main reason why bugs come into your home. Keeping your home free of food crumbs and clutter will limit the number of bugs and the ability for them to survive.

Pest of the Week-Cockroaches

Cockroaches are found worldwide, especially in the Des Moines area. Cockroaches are nasty and very difficult to control. If you have cockroaches the best thing you can do is call a professional to help you eradicate this problem from your home. Most often these bugs travel into your home as stowaways. Cockroaches hitch a ride in to your home in a grocery bag, or in with cardboard boxes. Once they are in your home they are very difficult to control.

What makes these pests so difficult to get rid of is their ability reproduce and survive. They crawl into the smallest little spaces and hide themselves. Often they are very good at hiding and do not come out in daylight. Proper treatment depends on a thorough inspection and accurate identification. Once it is known where the roaches are hiding and feeding they can be treated.

The only way to eliminate a cockroach infestation is to use an integrated approach to pest management. There must be multiple methods taken and the home owner must work with our Downs Pest Control technicians to eliminate the roach infestation. Sanitation combined with baits, insect growth regulators, insecticides and knowledge of different cockroaches and their eggs cycle can eradicate these nasty infestations.

Cockroaches are nasty and can carry a disease into your food. The best thing to do is to eradicate them as soon as possible! Call Downs Pest Control today for a free quote- (515) 309-2089!

Mice!

Mice

Mice are the most common rodent found in homes, hotels, hospitals, schools, and restaurants. Mice are very resourceful and adaptable to any environment. Because of this adaptability mice are able to live almost anywhere. There are two types of mice that are commonly found in Iowa, the house mice and our native deer mice. Deer mice are slightly larger than house mice, and weigh about ½ to one ounce.

Mice may be smaller than a tennis ball, but the damage they can cause is insurmountable. Mice can cause over $2 billion in damage worldwide every year. They can contaminate food and water and weaken structures with their gnawing.

Mice have very bad eyesight so their other senses are very strong. Mice are also very nimble; they can fit through small holes that are only ¼ inch wide. An unknown attribute about mice is their ability to jump. Mice can jump over a foot in height, and mice can jump off a wall and use it as a springboard to jump up even higher. Mice can also run straight up a wall and scamper across small electrical wires easily.

DIET

Mice like to eat grains like cereal. They are herbivores, meaning they do not eat meat. They are very good scavengers and will eat any scraps that are left on the ground.  With their expert gnawing skills, they can easily gnaw their way through a cardboard box containing foods.

REPRODUCTION

Mice breed year round in the house, producing around 50 young ones every year. They produce around 6 young per litter, and between 8-10 litters every year. Newborn mice are hairless, pink and their eyes are usually closed. By the time mice are three weeks old they are covered in fur and making trips away from the nest by themselves. They can reach sexual maturity 4-5 weeks old.

A family of 5 mice in your home has the ability to reproduce to 25 within a couple of months and it can increase exponentially from there if it's not controlled properly and rapidly.

CONTROL

The three best ways to control mice is prevention, prevention, and some more prevention. If you don't allow your home to be suitable for mice, they will not come in.  Here are some easy steps you can take to prevent rodents.

• Seal all cracks and holes inside and outside of your home
• Block or fill the opening around water pipes or wires
• Use screens in air vents and other holes that may be too large to fill
• Make sure that the door’s bottom edge is flush to the floor
• Keep the food out to a minimum
• Keep pet food sealed in plastic containers

 

Pest of the Week-Millipedes

What is a Millipede?

A millipede is a part of the arthropods family. They have 2 pairs of legs on every segment in their body(except the first two or three segments-the head has no appendages, and the next few segments only have one pair). Even though millipede in Latin literally means "one-thousand foot",  species on average only have between 36 and 200 legs. There is a rare species that can have up to 750 legs!

Common Defense Mechanism of Most Millipedes

They typically are dark brown or reddish in color and around 1-2 inches in length. Although, the largest of this family, the African Millipede, can grow to be 11 inches long.

Behavior

Millipedes will eat almost any type of soil. They especially love to eat damp leaves or decaying organic matter. Most are only herbivores, but there are some species that are omnivorous, meaning they eat both vegetation and small insects.

Millipedes may have a bunch of legs, but that doesn't make them faster. In fact, it only slows them down. Millipedes are slow, but very powerful in burrowing into the ground. They also seem to reinforce the tunnels they create with other objects.

When threatened, millipedes curl up into a ball to protect the soft under belly of their bodies.

Reproduction

Millipede females can lay between ten and three hundred eggs per laying. This varies depending on the type of species. Within a couple of weeks, the eggs will hatch. They are not hatched with all the segments of their bodies, as they get older and molt, more and more segments will be added every molt.

Types of Millipedes

There are many types of millipedes, over 10,000 different species worldwide. These are the most common species you might find near your home.

1. Black Millipedes-Larger of the species (60 mm), usually shiny black.
2. Bristly Millipedes-Completely covered in bristly hairs, brownish in color, only grows to be about 2 mm.
3. Flat-backed Millipedes-Flattened bodies, about 20-40 mm in length, and can vary from brownish to a pale color.
4. Pill Millipedes- Commonly known as a pill bug or roly poly, only 20 mm.
5. Spotter Millipedes-Commonly found in the gardens with potatoes, corn, or bulbs. These are thin and pale with red spots on the side.

Get rid of other bugs!

50309, 50310, 50311, 50312, 50313, 50314, 50315, 50316, 50317, 50318, 50319, 50320, 50321, 50327, 50391, and 50392. Downs Pest Control is family owned and operated pest control company that serves Des Moines and surrounding areas. We are dedicated to helping residents and businesses in Altoona, Ankeny, Bondurant, Carlisle, Clive, Grimes, Johnston, Norwalk, Perry, Urbandale, Waukee, West Des Moines, and Windsor Heights prevent and remove pest infestations. We are dedicated to safety and high quality customer service. Downs Pest Control