You could not agree more if the majority of babies in the kingdom of Animalia are cute and adorable. However, what do you think about a baby cockroach? Most people would think that cockroaches are gross and disturbing.
In some cases, the appearance of cockroaches could be creepy sometimes, especially when they start to fly around the house. Nevertheless, the scarier moment is when you start discovering baby roaches in your home.
The presence of baby roaches could indicate that you have a cockroach nest around the house. Unfortunately, the nest could be somewhere you cannot see obviously.
If dealing with a cockroach invasion is something you have never done before, it is common to wonder how a baby or roach looks like and what the best methods to do to remove them from your house comprehensively.
How Baby Roaches Look Like
Similar to the other animals out there, a baby cockroach is like a miniature version of its adult species. Aside from size, what makes a baby cockroach different from an adult one is the presence of wings. A baby cockroach has not developed any wings yet.
When it comes to color, you may figure out that an adult cockroach has a darker color than the baby does. However, if you find the baby of the German cockroach, it would typically have a darker color than the adult ones.
In terms of shape, adult cockroaches have a flat, oval body that seems oily. The tiny head of a cockroach is concealed by a pronotum and its mouth is toward the rear, aimed at the down.
Thanks to its long and spiny legs, a cockroach is capable to skitter across any surfaces rapidly. It also possesses special tiny pads at its tarsi, allowing this critter to walk up walls and across the ceilings.
Several species of roach have wings, but some of them do not use the wings to fly. A cockroach’s wings typically lay horizontally against its back.
When a female baby roach is growing up, it tends to be larger than the male roach. Then, the female roaches sometimes do not possess wings while the males do in several species.
Do you need a better idea of both the baby and the adult roach looks like? Check out these following descriptions of some popular roach species.
- Baby German cockroaches: This species possesses a dark brown color and is 13–16 mm in length.
- Baby Pennsylvania wood cockroaches: In terms of color, this roach species are tan and four to seven mm longer than German cockroaches when it comes to the length.
- Baby Oriental cockroaches: This cockroach species is black and generally bigger than the German species.
- Baby American roaches: This species typically has a reddish-brown body and sizes around 40 mm in length.
How Baby Roaches Multiply
Seeing other insects around your place may not make you fear it like hell, but figuring out that there is a baby roach inside your house is something you could be alarmed. This is because the presence of baby cockroaches means there are more of them around you.
A baby roach will not get out from its nest all of a sudden and roam around the neighborhood before deciding to settle in a certain house. They tend to come in manifold numbers, sometimes even greatly multiple.
Indeed, a baby roach could be possibly brought to your house by accident. For example, it could be transported through your delivery boxes. However, it is a rare scenario when you suddenly see a baby roach inside the house.
How to Identify Baby Roach Eggs
Well, discovering a small roach inside your home could indicate that there is a nest of this animal around the building. Understanding how cockroach eggs look like must be useful since you would be able to classify a nest, especially when you want to get rid of the problem from its root.
For a female cockroach to reproduce itself, there is something called an ootheca which is an egg case. One ootheca is enough to hold a huge number of roach eggs and each of them is covered in a protein core.
This core will harden in due course, creating a protective casing for the roach eggs. Some species of female roaches will drop their ootheca while others might hold it along with them, waiting for the eggs to be ready to give forth.
Depending on the roach species, they might have dissimilar egg characteristics. So, read on to learn the different traits of each popular roach.
The Characteristic of German Cockroach Eggs
Female German roaches will generate brown ootheca that is six to nine mm in length. This is one of the roach species to carry its eggs until they are set to hatch.
Each ootheca of female German cockroaches is capable to hold up to 50 eggs. From egg to maturity, a German cockroach normally needs approximately 103 days to develop.
Considering the huge number of eggs in a single ootheca, the populations of this roach species are possible to grow bigger very rapidly.
Since German cockroaches are the most frequent species to invade your living spaces, you should deal with this problem before the infestation of this insect getting more severe.
The Characteristic of Oriental Roach Eggs
Different from German roaches’ eggs, Oriental cockroaches generate a bigger egg case with a dark reddish-brown color. The egg case of German cockroaches is between eight to ten mm in length.
Furthermore, this species’ egg case also has a somewhat swollen look and contains around 16 eggs only. Throughout their lifetimes, a female Oriental roach will be able to produce 1 to 18 egg cases.
It takes approximately 600 days for a nymph of Oriental roach to reach its full maturity. However, the length of their growth is mostly influenced by the circumstances.
The Characteristic of American Cockroach Eggs
Unlike an Oriental cockroach, a female American roach is capable to produce between 6 and 90 oothecae during its lifetime. Meanwhile, the ootheca is usually 8mm long with dark brown color.
A female American roach will carry its ootheca anywhere it goes for several hours and days. Then, she will deposit its ootheca in a hidden spot when ready.
Each egg case of this species contains approximately 15 embryos. Moreover, a baby cockroach of this species will come out from the egg case between 24 and 38 days.
The Characteristics of Brown-Banded Cockroach Eggs
The ootheca of brown-banded cockroach species has a light reddish-brown color with a body length of around 5 mm. The female species of brown-banded roaches are capable to produce up to 20 egg cases throughout their life.
Each egg case of this roach species could hold between 10 to 18 embryos. You could easily identify the nymphs since they possess a special yellow band across their upper tummy. For a nymph to develop into an adult, a brown-banded roach requires three to six months.
Hong Many Days a Baby Roach Will Stay a Baby?
Just like other insects out there, a baby cockroach will need some molting processes at diverse phases in its life before reaching its adulthood. It takes around 20 to 60 days for a nymph to hatch from its eggs.
After that, a baby roach will grow wings and finish a cycle of molts until it becomes an adult. For your information, each molt is separated by a transitional stage called an instar.
A baby roach tends to get through six to seven instars before its complete adulthood phase. It takes around 40 to 160 days for the process to go on. However, the process is typically dependent on the roach species and the environment’s temperature.
The Threats of Having Baby Cockroaches in Your Home
Having cockroaches inside the home is every homeowner’s nightmare. We could not deny that many people consider roaches as a gross and annoying insect. However, are there any health risks of having this insect around your home?
Unfortunately, the answer to the above question is yes. If you also wonder whether baby roaches could cause health problems or damage to your environment, the answer is also yes.
Both baby and grown-up cockroaches could transmit diseases to you. The bad news is that the disease may spread rapidly inside your home if you do not do anything to treat it.
Considering what cockroaches usually eat and where they breed, baby roaches are prone to carry bacteria and viruses on their bodies. Once they are seen around your home, the germs could be spread throughout the building.
In some points, baby roaches may also contaminate your food or its surfaces without you realize it. Just imagine how gross it is since roaches normally feed on rubbish and breed in sewage.
For your information, cockroaches could even bring more than 30 types of bacteria species that can cause various health problems including viral diseases, diarrhea, cholera, leprosy, plague, typhoid fever, dysentery, and other diseases.
Aside from the mentioned health issues, a baby cockroach may also influence those of you who have particular respiratory problems, such as asthma and allergies.
If you happen to suffer from this condition, the existence of baby roaches inside your home may cause you to sneeze and cough even more. It could happen because a kind of protein produced by cockroaches may trigger an allergic response in humans.
Both baby and mature cockroaches could cause these symptoms. The roaches’ molted shells are considered as the main reason why these insects could affect you that way.
When it comes to baby cockroaches, they tend to leave behind a huge number of shells when they carry out each molting phase throughout their lifetimes. When being left around the house, the shells could cause allergic reactions anywhere and anytime inside the house.
Not only the shells but also waste and saliva of cockroaches could trigger such symptoms. In some cases, particular people may even experience asthma attacks following contact with roaches’ waste, saliva, or dead bodies.
Then, once you take care of the baby cockroach alone, it does not mean that the problem has been stopped. You should be aware if there is a severe infestation of roaches in your home in the future.
Indeed, cockroaches will not necessarily discontinue its reproduction process just because you request them to do so. You have to deal with the problem from the root if preventing a serious invasion of cockroaches is your goal.
Therefore, you should not wait to see any damage or health problems appear to start dealing with baby cockroaches around your home. Make sure to get rid of the cockroaches shortly after seeing them so that a severe infestation could be avoided.
The Behaviors of Baby Cockroaches
You should not stop by simply knowing some risk of allowing cockroaches to hang around your house. It would be better to continue taking steps to remove the cockroaches. In this case, understanding how cockroaches behave may help.
Cockroaches Settle in Crowd but Aren’t Social
Roaches are not a type of social creature even though they like living in groups better than alone. Cockroaches will determine where to reside in as a crowd and will adapt their number depending on the available spaces.
For instance, when they find a space that is not big enough, a cluster of cockroaches will split themselves into smaller groups. As a result, they could fit into the space conveniently.
Cockroaches Probably Have Shared Intelligence
A study shows the chances of cockroaches to have communal intelligence that is rooted in an individual’s decisions. In Europe, some researchers developed a cockroach robot to mimic this insect’s behavior.
The robot was armed by pheromones to make it accepted by the other roaches. The result of this research is that the roach robot could manipulate the behavior of the entire group. For example, the robot could convince the other roaches to move from lighter to darker spaces.
The researchers believe that the result of this study could be used to manage roach populations.
How to Keep Baby Cockroaches Away from Your Home
Similar to the methods of keeping adult roaches away from your home, you could use these following ways effectively to execute and eradicate baby roaches in the bathroom, bedroom, or kitchen.
Seal Up Cracks and Holes
You can take advantage of caulk and foam to prevent baby roaches from entering your home. If the roaches have not resided and created a nest yet, caulking is indeed the most suitable way to remove them.
You should first locate any possible entrance points for cockroaches around the house. These may include areas with some gaps or cracks that allow the insects to crawl.
Pay attention to your interior pipes, walls, floors, roofs, doors, baseboards, decks, steps, porches, windows, and exterior pipes for possible cracks. You can use a tooth comb to search for the holes or cracks.
After that, you could use either foam or caulk to fill the cracks or gaps. For gaps that are less than 0.5 inches and areas that could easily be visible, you are recommended to use caulk. Caulk would be a better option for areas that need a flexible seal-like joint as well.
Meanwhile, you should take advantage of foam for bigger gaps and dry areas with less moisture. Foam is also useful to fill cavities that you could not reach easily.
Clean Your Home
After sealing up all the gaps and cracks, you should now organize the home. Keeping your place dirt-free is another crucial method to keep baby and adult cockroaches away from your home.
Water, food, and shelter are the three main reasons why cockroaches enter your home. Note the following points to avoid inviting cockroaches to your home.
- Never leave food without any coverage. You should make sure all opened boxes and bags of your foods in sealed. Consider using Ziploc bags or airtight containers for this case.
- Since cockroaches like to linger around garbage, remove your trash frequently.
- Rinse any dirty dishes soon and never leave any leftover meals on your plate. Always make sure to scrape the plates into the garbage.
- Do thorough cleaning behind and underneath your appliances as well.
- Wipe down your kitchen counters regularly, especially after preparing some meals. Do not forget to sweep and clean the floor too.
Take Advantage of Natural Cockroach Repellent
If you do not like the idea of spreading powder or spraying poison to get rid of cockroaches, consider using natural roach repellents like bay leaves and catnip.
Cineole or eucalyptol in bay leaves is considered helpful to keep cockroaches away. Moreover, you could take advantage of Osage orange oil that also works properly for getting rid of cockroaches.
However, you may need to try other methods when dealing with a big infestation of cockroaches. Natural repellents would only work best to keep cockroaches out of the house.
The Final Thought
In conclusion, the existence of baby cockroaches is considered a sign of a bigger roach infestation around your home. Considering how fast cockroaches could multiply themselves, it is important to get rid of the problem as soon as possible.
You could try to keep baby and adult cockroaches away by regularly cleaning your home and appliances. If the problem persists, you may need to hire a professional exterminator to help you get rid of a baby cockroach and its friends.