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Everything You Need to Know About Bat Maternity Season

Whether your home has a history with wildlife infestations or a clean wild animal record, you’ve probably heard about bat maternity season. It’s the time of year when homeowners aren’t legally entitled to remove or exterminate bats nesting indoors — and here are all of the details you need to prepare for it.

The three most common species of colonizing bats in the United States are the Little Brown Bat (myotis), the Big Brown Bat, and the Mexican or Brazilian Free-Tail bat. For these critters, their maternity season happens from late May through the middle of August. What does this mean for you? Well, if you have bats in your attic during this time, there should be no bat exclusion practices performed at this time. If you do, the flightless baby bats will remain trapped in your home after their parents leave, and eventually, perish. Not only is this detrimental to bats and your home, but it is also illegal as well.

What Is Bat Maternity Season?

During bat maternity season, any of these creatures you find in your home will be mothers who are either pregnant or who have just given birth to their pups. Generally, bats that you find in your home will be female, as they are the only ones who build colonies, often in your attic as it makes a great place to birth their young.

When is Bat Maternity Season?

When is Bat Maternity Season?Running in Florida from April 15-August 15, bat maternity season is the time of year when bat relocation practices are prohibited. If a bat colony settles in your residence during this time, you won’t be able to have them removed until the season is over. Bat maternity season is in full swing already, but you can still take proactive steps to protect your home if it’s currently free of bats.

Remove Current Pests

Bat maternity season waits for no one, so now’s the best time to remove any unwanted dwellers from your attic, chimney, or another pest hideout. You can’t take any action against bat infestations specifically, but you’ll want to have any other pests professionally removed in order to fully protect your home.

Keep Pests from Entering

If your home is already vacant of critters, you’ll want to take some preventative measures to keep it that way. Check your home and other buildings on your property, and make sure that there are no openings for bats to enter.

Preserve Natural Roosting Spots

Bats are a vital player in environmental pest control, and they’ve only become a pest to residents because there are fewer natural places to roost. If you want to help preserve Florida wildlife while giving bats a place to roost that isn’t in your home, consider preserving natural roost sites. Trees with cavities and peeling bark are perfect candidates for bat entry. Similarly, you can make an environmental difference and put up a bat house. This will provide a safe and comfortable spot for bats to reside that’s away from your home.

Guaranteed Protection

If you want professional assistance in protecting your home during the bat maternity season, contact the team at Critter Control® of Orlando. Our licensed wildlife specialists can seal off your home’s potential entry points to protect it from infestation, even after the season passes. We can also remove any other unwanted pests that may currently be bothering your home. Call us 407-295-7194 for help with bat removal services.

Why is Exclusion Prohibited at this Time?

For the first few months of their lives, baby bats are unable to fly, which is why it is so dangerous to practice exclusion techniques during that time. For this reason, bat exclusion during the maternity season is prohibited by law.

In the event that a homeowner attempts to exclude the bats or fumigate them, the mature bats leave the attic not to return, leaving the flightless pups behind. As a result, the pups will crawl into the cracks and crevices of your walls to escape danger, where they inevitably perish. This leads to foul odors and creates more work for you in the form of removal and repairs.

Not only is it illegal to relocate a bat colony during this time, but it is also extremely complicated to do effectively. These critters are also protected in many areas because of their importance to the ecosystem, so to avoid any potential legal issues, always use a professional bat removal service like Critter Control of Orlando.

Why Are Bats Roosting in My Home?

If you have bats in your home, they are probably female. Female bats typically enter local homes in search of a safe place to birth their bat pups. While each female bat only has one baby, these adult bats like to spend maternity season in colonies. Depending on how many decide to gather in your home, you could end up with somewhere near 40 bat moms and pups at one time.

Bat pups may even enter homes on accident, calling their mothers in afterward. These babies are unable to fly for their first few months, so they are left alone while the mothers go out and gather the food. The time from birth up until the point when baby bats can fly, feed, and protect themselves is known as bat maternity season — the time of year in which Florida law protects each bat species in the state.

How Should I Prepare for Bat Maternity Season?

The best way to tackle bat maternity season is to spend time from late March to mid-April preparing for it. Bat maternity season in Florida officially runs from April 15 through August 15, which means you can’t legally remove bats, practice bat exclusion, or exterminate bats on your property during this time. Instead of waiting around and hoping that an issue doesn’t arise during the season, consider getting a proactive wildlife inspection.

Even if you don’t have an existing infestation, you can use this time to safely and legally repair entry points to keep bats and other wild animals out of your home. That way, you can avoid the costs, health risks, and legal liability of an infestation occurring any time during the maternity season.

When Can I Remove Bats From My Home?

Bat maternity season isn’t up until mid-August. So what can you do in the meantime if you already have an infestation? While you are waiting for the maternity season to be over, you can do your best to prepare for the removal. By calling your local wildlife management provider, you can set up a legal, safe, and secure system to exclude bats as soon as the season ends.

A wildlife manager will start by inspecting your home to uncover bat entry and exit points. Because they only need 3/8 of an inch of space to squeeze through, it takes a trained eye to find all of the entrances they could use around your home. From there, your wildlife partner will create a systematic wildlife removal and prevention plan that fits your personal budget and your state’s bat maternity laws.

The Right Way to Handle Bat Maternity Season

Proper timing and exclusion are critical for long-term bat control and safety. That’s why the licensed animal experts at Critter Control® of Orlando want to protect your property before the season starts. But even if you end up with an infestation that starts after the season does, you can still count on our wildlife removal technicians for an effective after-season exclusion strategy. To schedule your free consultation, call us at 407-295-7194.

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