For Release June 18, 2006

Bats Are All Around Us!

 

AGRI-VIEWS

by Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent


There’s probably going to be a few people that will have wished they hadn’t read this column! Bats are everywhere around us. Because they are small, relatively quiet and mainly active at night, most local residents aren’t aware how many there really are. Which is probably a good thing. Bats, along with snakes, have really gotten an undeserved bad reputation over the years.

 

Bats are incredibly beneficial to mankind. For starters they eat insects; small insects. They eat the kind of insects that really annoy humans, things like flies and mosquitoes. In fact, this time of year, while they are trying to raise young, bats will often have to eat half their weight in insects every day to stay alive. Okay, one fourth to one half ounce of insects may not sound like a lot, but have you ever thought about how many mosquitoes there are to the ounce?

            

There are at least 15 species of bats known to be in Kansas, with at least a half dozen species in Geary County. Far and away, most people come into contact with either the Little Brown Myotis or the Big Brown Bat. Either one of these bats are not big with body length of the Big Brown Bat being four to five inches long and three to four inches long for the Little Brown Myotis. But if they are flying around inside your house, I’m sure they look quite a bit bigger!

            

All bats in Kansas are insectivores. They do not feed on blood and they don’t try to attack you. In fact all the bat wants to do is to stay away from you. A bat will only bite you if it feels threatened, and that will usually only occur if you grab it. So if you find you have bats around, you don’t need to worry that they are going to swoop at you and attack you. It may seem that way, but that’s simply because of the rather floppy flight style that they have.

            

By mid to late June, most bats in our area are busy raising their young. In some species, the young bat stays in the nursery while the parent is out foraging for food, in other species, the young may actually stay with the female. Remember, bats are mammals. They are born young and usually hairless and for the first few weeks they feed on milk provided by their mother. The nursing mother will be very busy eating so that she can continue to produce milk for her baby or babies. The young bats can be very noisy and this is what often alerts homeowners to their presence.

            

Bats are a protected species in Kansas. You should not harass or injure bats or their young. Dealing with bats in a building can be a very big challenge. There are no repellents or toxicants that are licensed for use. Most of the home remedies you hear about simply aren’t effective either. Ultimately, all of our control efforts revolve around excluding them from the building. But that is not something that you want to try to do in the early summer. More than one homeowner has waited for the bats to leave their house and then plug the hole. The problem then is that you have the anxious parents on the outside of the building and dying young bats inside the building. Not a good situation.

            

Take the time now to determine where they are getting into the building. Then in late summer you can use some techniques that allow the bats out of the building but not back in. Or you can wait until fall when they leave for the winter and then take steps to seal the entrance. Bats are small and can gain access through a very small opening. If you have a big colony of bats, you may even have to hire a specialist. Bats are all around us and I’m glad they are. Don’t be scare of them, just appreciate them and leave them alone!

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