Remove Bats Without Killing Them

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Bats are a species that is often overlooked by home owners because they are flying creatures and are usually active around dusk, so it is easy to miss the fact that you have a bat infestation for a little while. Once you do spot that you have bats roosting in your property, it is important to try and get rid of them, as although they are small creatures they will usually live in colonies of large numbers, meaning they can produce an awful lot of dropping in a relatively short period. The most important thing to note is that you do not need to kill the bats to get rid of them. Indeed, the most effective ways to get rid of bats don’t require you to kill them, in fact it is easier not to.



Can You Trap And Remove Bats?
One of the most distinctive parts of a bat's biology is how it flies and how it navigates and hunts its prey, and it does this by echolocation. Effectively what they do is to make a very high pitched sound, and these high frequency sounds then bounce back towards the bats, and using the way these sound waves bounce back they can identify where their prey is. Because they aren't able to pick up on the walls of a cage trap, they are often confused by why they cannot fly past a particular barrier, and this means that cage trapping will often cause them a great deal of harm, and is not a recommended method for dealing with bats.

Learn more: What is White Nose Syndrome?

Preparing Your Home For Bat Exclusion
The preferred way to get rid of bats is to exclude them from the property so that they will be forced to fly elsewhere and find a new place to roost. The first step to doing this is to prepare the property by carrying out a thorough survey of the attic or roof space where they are nesting to find all of the spots that they are using to get in and out of the property. This can be done internally be looking for the holes from inside the space, while you will often be able to spot the exit points during the evening, when you will see the bats come flying out in numbers.

Installing Bat Exclusion Netting
The first step here is to seal the majority of the access points that the bats use so that there are only one or two ways that the bats can use to get out of the attic or loft space. Once you have done this you can then start to look at putting the exclusion netting over the remaining one or two exit points. Having installed this netting, monitor the bat activity over the coming few nights, and if you have found all of the entrance points, then bat activity should drop quickly one the netting has been installed.

Find out more: What kind of noises and sounds do bats make when they live in your house?

The Benefits Of Having Bat Boxes Nearby
One of the recommendations for many home owners who are carrying out bat exclusion work is to have bat boxes installed in the area near the property ready for the bats to move into once excluded from their current roost. The reason for this is that having bats nearby is actually very useful, as these creatures eat a lot of the airborne pests that are also a nuisance. Bats only eat live prey so they do not scavenge, and most people will feel that having a lower population of mosquitoes, midges and wasps will actually be a very good thing, so installing a bat box actually makes a lot of sense.

For more information, you may want to click on one of these guides that I wrote:
How much does bat removal cost? - get the lowdown on prices.
How to get rid of bats - my main bat removal info guide.
Example bat removal photographs - get do-it-yourself ideas.
Bat job blog - learn from great examples of bat jobs I've done.