Noticing the first signs of a roach infestation can make all the difference between dealing with a large-scale and often expensive road and quickly finding out how to get rid of roaches.
Still, anything from spare droppings to terrible odors can let you know you already have unexpected guests.
You may notice some of the following signs of a roach infestation:
- Egg husks in the area
- Feces present nearby
- Damage to your property
- You see cockroaches
- A potent smell that reeks throughout your home
- Shedding skin
You can determine a roach infestation in many ways, so let us dive deeper so you can start taking action to get rid of your roach problem.
Sign 1: There Are Signs of Cockroach Eggs
The first sign of most large infestations typically comes from noticing the eggs or, at the very least, their remnants. These husks let you know the roach species are breeding and that there are more on the way.
Roaches multiply very quickly, with a bit of variety depending on the unique kind of cockroach you are dealing with.
Still, on average, an adult roach can lay up to eight egg capsules in a lifetime, equating to roughly four hundred or so offspring, meaning things can get out of hand extremely fast.
It is easy to understand how a cockroach population can explode overnight. Roaches are incredibly destructive with their nesting and eating habits.
In that case, your home can get into a state of sheer anarchy in no time, with the calling card to this event being a simple egg.
Read More: What Does a Pregnant Cockroach Look Like?
Sign 2: Cockroach Droppings Are Everywhere
Cockroach droppings are characterized by little dark pebbles appearing very similar to ground coffee or black pepper. However, starting your day with this is sure to ruin your morning.
Roaches consume just about anything, and with an open-ended diet, you can trust that they will need to release their bowels constantly. While this is an expected facet of life, multiplying it by the hundreds makes this situation messy and hazardous.
Any excrement will have an unpleasant odor, as you might imagine. Still, the issue can worsen because roaches, unlike humans, do not wipe after relieving themselves and allow nature to run its course, creating smear marks everywhere they travel.
Focusing your cleaning and extermination efforts on areas where you see concentrated amounts of droppings is imperative to getting your cockroach problem taken care of. It also helps in developing a plan to rid yourself of them and also narrows down where the roaches enter from.
Sign 3: There is Property Damage
One of the more obvious signs that you have a roach infestation is damaged property.
You might find multiple holes inside and outside any item. For example, if you have cardboard boxes as storage, cockroaches may have eaten through them.
Another instance is your pet food being infiltrated by these pests, with them often resorting to chewing directly through the bag.
Even things you wouldn’t consider on the menu, like wallpaper paste, make a delicious snack for these incredibly resourceful pests.
If you have leather gear or furniture, they will gladly snack on your favorite chair or the book you left on the nightstand if food is scarce.
Overall, very few things are off-limits to a roach. You can pay the price in the long run if you don’t respect this understanding.
Sign 4: You See Cockroaches
If you wake up for a late midnight snack and happen to see a cockroach on those dirty dishes, then you might want to search for more. You might want to look for where cockroach nests are in the area, with sightings increasing as you get closer to where roaches eat.
However, keeping your home dirty attracts roaches and ensures you have all the incentive you need to clean up your home.
You can attract roaches with the thought of an easy meal or a lovely leaky faucet, primarily because obtaining food and moisture drives a vast majority of their existence. As such, you’ll notice them most often around the areas they feed.
Sign 5: You Smell an Odor
If you smell a strong, musty odor, or even something vaguely reminiscent of mildew, you could be very close to the source of your roach problem.
These odors usually become incredibly potent when they gather in clusters or utilize a particular area as a highway. A strong odor from your kitchen can indicate roaches are eating food off your dirty dishes, then hiding and waiting for their next meal.
If you can track down the primary source of the smell, you would be wise to put a few roach traps in the area and attempt to kill whatever roaches you see in the room.
With what you have on hand, a generic insect spray would make for a simple go-to, but dealing with the cockroaches permanently will require a more dedicated approach.
Sign 6: Shed Skin
Roaches naturally shed their skin as nymphs, leaving their old and smaller exoskeletons behind to become more extensive and more annoying problems to deal with. These insects will blanket an area with their old remnants and give you more evidence that you have an infestation on your hands.
Finding the shed skin is not rare, but you will not find them constantly because roaches will eat them to absorb all the protein they possibly can and fuel their existence even more adamantly.
This dedication to survival shows why getting in contact with a professional exterminator or cockroach control experts can prove imperative when dealing with them.
Roaches have to go through a growing period before they are considered adults, and more giant cockroaches will have to molt or shed skin multiple times to achieve this maturity while racing toward their final form.
These skins can tell you where roaches prefer to gather or where they feel safe, allowing you to strategize an attack.
Do Roaches Live in the Walls?
Yes, roaches can live in walls, and they do not require a massive hole in the wall to get there. Cockroaches will sneak in through doorways, small cracks between floorboards, and even electrical sockets to achieve this goal.
Some roaches will prefer to hide inside the walls of your home as you obviously won’t be able to kill them directly.
In contrast, other cockroaches will hide within the drains of your sink and shower or occasionally inside forgotten boxes. But make no mistake, in an entire infestation, they will be in the walls of your home.
Killing roaches on your own here will be quite a chore. While you can lay glue traps along the wall and hope for a miracle, your best course would probably be sprinkling diatomaceous earth (DE) along the edges of your home and all cracks you can find.
Diatomaceous earth will kill adult roaches on contact by dehydrating them, so even if they do make it back behind the walls, they will inevitably die there.
However, dead roaches can potentially become food for other roaches and repeat that cycle for quite some time.
How to Tell If I Have Cockroaches in the Walls
You can tell if you have cockroaches in the walls by smear marks, lingering smell, and feces by holes.
If the smear marks appear to be one-sided and do not have patterns leading back in a different direction, the roaches probably sneak into a crevice or crack in the wall and lay dormant on the other side. Their feces caking the exterior of a crack or opening in the wall is a dead giveaway that roaches are within your walls.
Finding ootheca along the floorboards accompanied by the smears or observing roaches entering these cracks will let you know immediately.
Carefully inspecting horizontal surfaces beneath cracks will allow you to get a better view of any specks that may have fallen from the wall or eggs that may have met the same fate.
One of the final hints that you have roaches inhabiting your walls would be the lingering musk that comes from roaches’ feces. If you notice this particular aroma seeping out of noticeable cracks within your home, you can be confident they are hiding on the other side.
Where Else Do Cockroaches Live in Your Home?
Cockroaches live in your home anywhere that produces moisture. For example, you can expect roaches to be nearby sinks, shower drains, basements that have leaks, or even leaky faucets can make an entire wall the perfect area to live.
Read More: Get Rid Of Basement Cockroaches
The best way to prevent cockroaches from taking up residency in your home would be to monitor places where they would come to inhabit, given the right circumstances.
Most of these locations boil down to being cramped, out of sight, and within a certain proximity to a source of moisture.
Roaches will also take refuge under large kitchen appliances like the stove and your refrigerator because they provide shelter and can grant them access to food sources like crumbs that fall while cooking or retrieving food from storage.
Read More: Get Rid Of Fridge Roaches
These additional food sources can even be in your pantry, or if you or your children eat in your rooms often or have unique places for storing snacks, you can also find roaches feasting there.
How Does a Cockroach Infestation Start?
An average cockroach infestation starts when roaches have access to food and water to regulate their digestive systems.
Anything like standing water remaining unbothered outside your home to leaving a door or window open too long can be all the incentive required to let roaches come in. The most infestation prone are German cockroaches.
Read More: Getting Rid Of German Cockroaches
How Long Does it Take to Get Rid of Roaches?
It takes roughly two to eight weeks to get rid of roaches. However, that entirely depends on if you use a professional or do it yourself.
The amount of time also boils down to the size of the home, the severity of the infestation, and the method utilized in killing and removing the roaches afterward.
If you go with a professional exterminator, the timeline would be roughly two to eight weeks for all of the roaches to be dead and the remaining roach eggs to be disposed of. The exterminator will also implement a method to repel insects from coming back.
What Do You Do If You Have a Roach Infestation?
If you have a roach infestation, the first thing to do is going to be to kill roaches that you find. You can use boric acid for best results. You can also use glue traps or another method of getting their numbers down, including insect growth regulators.
Still, the most prominent solution is to eradicate their food sources and methods of getting water.
Adult roaches require moisture and food to survive. They will eat anything, as we’ve already gone over, so cleaning up your kitchen, fixing leaky pipes, and managing to avoid leaving pet food out would prove imperative to getting things under control.
Read More: Can Roaches Livee For Long Without Food?
Take some time to clean under odd places like large appliances to reduce the chances of them taking shelter in such areas.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Cockroaches Live in a Refrigerator?
Yes, cockroaches can live in a refrigerator and can do so for over two months if temperatures remain constant.
Moreover, a new brood will rise if you kill roaches that live inside a fridge without dealing with the eggs they left behind.
Is There a Queen Roach?
No, there is not a queen roach. Roaches don’t often communicate with one another and certainly don’t have any social hierarchy. As such, there is no queen or king roach from which a group answers or takes orders.
How Likely Is It to Bring Roaches with You When You Move?
It is very likely to bring roaches with you when you move, especially if you are not very detailed about inspecting your belongings when you have a roach problem.
