Cooking for Cockroaches: How to Identify German Cockroach Hiding Places Just By Cooking

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Although there are around 450 species of cockroach in Australia, the worst of the bunch—by far—is the German cockroach. These nasty little critters breed at a frenetic pace, with females producing 1 egg purse, containing 30-50 eggs, every 6 weeks. In just over 100 days, those barely visible babes will blossom into fully grown, egg-producing adults.

Because they are so adept at hiding out during the day, you may not notice that your kitchen is home to several cockroach colonies until their numbers have exploded out of control. By then, placing glue traps, bait traps, and sprinkling diatomaceous earth or boric acid around haphazardly will likely not work. You need to locate their hiding places to stand any chance of eradicating your roach problem.

What's the best way to locate a cockroach hiding place?

Cockroaches Are Drawn to Cooking Meat

If you love foods such as cheese, bacon, sausages, and foods high in oil or sugar content, then roaches will love you—and your kitchen. However, you can use this fact to your advantage. Many people discover, to their horror, that whenever they fry food in oil, especially meat products, cockroaches suddenly begin to appear around their kitchens, antennae twitching away.

Yes, this is gross, but it is also one of your greatest weapons when eradicating your cockroach problem. The average kitchen contains a myriad of nooks and crannies within which a cockroach colony or two can survive. However, even if you tear your kitchen apart looking for them, you might not discover every hiding place. Your love for oily food, however, will lure these allergy-causing critters out of their hiding places.

Cook, Identify and Attack

If you are sick and tired of seeing cockroaches appearing every time you fry food, make a note of where they appear while you're cooking. The stronger the scent, the better. If, for example, you fry several strips of bacon, your cockroach freeloaders won't be able to keep themselves from crawling out of their hiding places to breathe in the heady scent.

When they do, note where they appear from. Later, you can then direct your attacks at those areas. Sprinkle diatomaceous earth in those areas, which will cut into their bodies as they walk over it, causing them to dehydrate and die. Place glue traps with oily foods like butter and steak in the centre right on their doorsteps. Babies and adults alike, including egg-bearing females, will walk into the glue traps and become stuck.

Using this method will help you to direct your attacks in the most logical manner. If a colony is surrounded by diatomaceous earth, the cockroaches will have no choice but to walk through it when leaving the nest. It is then only a matter of time before they die. This method won't be of any use in the rest of your house however.

If cockroaches have infested your house, call in local pest control services to eradicate these pests once and for all. 

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3 November 2017

Deterring Pests while Protecting Pets

Hello, my name is Mandi, and although I own a number of pets including my dog, two ferrets and a guinea pig, I am utterly afraid of all non-pet creatures in my house. I hold the guinea pigs as I watch TV, and I sleep with my dog, but the idea of a mouse running through the walls makes me incredibly uncomfortable and tense. Since pests are such a trigger issue for me, I have spent a lot of time researching them. I have learned how to get rid of them, but more importantly, how to get rid of them without bothering or putting my pets in danger. If you are trying to balance the wanted and the unwanted creatures in your home, I hope these posts help!