Bat Exclusions and Clean Outs:

As you may already know, bats are
extremely beneficial to have in your
neighborhood and many property owners
spend a lot of effort trying to attract bats
to their area by providing artificial roosts
for them. If you have bats in your home
you are half‐way to experiencing the
benefits of these insect‐eating mammals
without having to share your living space.
The first step is already done; you have
the bats interested in your location. The
second step involves providing these bats
with alternative roosting options that
allows them to remain on the property
without having access to your home.
Finally, after a successful exclusion, the
bats you saved will have a good chance of
staying nearby. Why should you care if
they stay? A single bat can eat 1,000 or
more mosquito‐sized insects in one hour
and the equivalent of the bat’s own body
weight per night. As that is just a single
bat, you can imagine what a colony of 20
to 100 bats can eat in one night.
Bats will NOT attack you while you are
enjoying an evening on your porch.
Instead, they are enjoyable to view as
they capture 100’s and 1,000’s of insect
pests that would normally be interrupting
your relaxing night outside. They conduct
this service to you for free. You simply
need to provide these bats with an
alternative place to live that is not in your
home. Like bird houses, a bat house is
relatively easy to build yourself,
inexpensive to purchase, and readily
available from a variety of organizations.
Let’s get started with the process.
First of all, timing is important when
excluding bats from the home. Do not
attempt to exclude bats during the
summer months when the colony is
established and the young are unable to
fly, unless you do a partial exclusion that does not seal out the mother bat. Exclusions occurring during this time
period could separate mothers from their
pups, leaving the pups to die of starvation.
Frantic mothers, searching for an opening
to reach their pups, may enter your living
space and be more difficult to deal with
than what you started with. By trapping
the flightless young inside, you may also
have created another unexpected
problem. The smell of dead animals. Bat Specialists of Michigan will not trap pups in. We instead seal off all but one opening so that the mother can still find and feed her young. We will monitor the bats until we see the pups are all flying on their own. At that time we will finish the exclusion by sealing the last opening and puttin in the one way doors to allow the bats to fly out freely but not be able to get back in.