Many people want to know if mice eat roaches, and we understand why. It would certainly be convenient if one pest in your home took care of the other!
But is it realistic to expect this to work?
This resource will help you understand if mice eat cockroaches as well as the relationship between these two pests.
Table of Contents
Do Mice Eat Roaches?
As a homeowner, there’s almost no way to avoid having to deal with some kind of pest. Mice, rats, ants, termites and cockroaches are all potential visitors to your home, and in many cases, you may be dealing with more than one of them.
Believe it or not, mice and cockroaches are a fairly common pest combination. For reasons that we will discuss later, it seems that where there are roaches, there are often mice (and vice versa). Mice and roaches can be found inside and outside of your home and are usually quite difficult to get rid of. Both of these household pests can carry diseases and be fairly destructive to your property, so homeowners often feel frustrated and overwhelmed.
So, do mice eat roaches?
Mice will eat just about everything, from pantry items and crumbs on the floor to pet food and fruit. They’ll also eat insects if the conditions are right, so cockroaches are often a part of a mouse’s diet. In fact, mice will eat roaches both in the wild and in your home.
Will Mice Reduce The Number Of Roaches In Your Home?
Since you know that mice eat cockroaches, it makes sense to wonder if the mice you may have in your home will actually help take care of your roach problem.
Unfortunately, it’s not quite as easy as that.
While it’s true that mice will eat roaches if given the right opportunity, most mice wouldn’t rate a cockroach as their snack of choice. Given the option between something that’s just sitting there, such as a piece of cereal, and a scurrying cockroach, the mouse is probably going to pick the food that’s the easiest to obtain. In other words, it’s usually just too much work for a mouse to chase down a fleeing roach.
On the other hand, if you’re dealing with a large roach population in your home, the chances are that mice may be more apt to try to catch them. More roaches can make it easier for the mice to eat them, and they may be tempted by the sheer number of available roaches. That being said, mice are not going to be able to eat enough roaches to keep the cockroach population at bay.
So if you have mice in your home, and you were hoping that they would be able to reduce the number of roaches that you have around, it’s simply not going to happen. So what can you do? Since both mice and roaches are notoriously difficult to get rid of, we suggest calling in a pest control specialist. A pest control professional has the training and ability to set up a treatment plan that can really work.
Do Mice Eat Dead Cockroaches?
Do mice eat dead roaches? Yes, a mouse will definitely eat a dead cockroach if it finds one.
Eating a dead one is a whole lot easier than chasing down a live roach, and the mouse will still be able to benefit from the protein that a dead cockroach provides. We’re not saying that a dead roach would be a mouse’s first choice, but they will eat one if it’s convenient.
If you’d like to find out if you may also be dealing with a mouse issue in your home, dead cockroaches can actually give you a clue as to whether or not you may be facing an issue with mice as well. Let’s take a look at how this works.
A common treatment for roaches is to place sticky pads in areas where roaches are often found. The idea is that once the roaches step onto the glue of the trap, they’ll become stuck there. Not only will the roaches eventually die, but you’ll have a chance to see how many roaches you’re dealing with. Many pest control companies use glue pads, and it’s a method that you can try on your own as well.
When these kinds of glue traps are first put down, it’s often recommended that they be checked on a weekly basis. After checking the traps, many people are surprised to discover that some parts of the dead roaches are missing.
If you check your roach traps and find that the heads, legs and antennae of the dead roaches are the only things that are left on the glue pad, then there is a decent chance that you may also have mice around. Mice are known to eat roaches that are stuck in glue traps, but they will leave the hard to digest antennae, legs and heads behind.
If you’re still not sure, then you can examine the sticky pad for small hairs. Often, a mouse will lose some hairs from its chest area because small hairs get stuck to the glue as the mouse bends down to pull the roach from the glue pad. So if you find dismembered cockroaches and tiny tufts of hair stuck to the glue trap, you can be pretty sure that you may have a few mice hanging out nearby.
Although these signs likely point to a potential mouse infestation, only a pest control professional can make a real diagnosis. It’s going to be important to disturb the glue pad as little as possible, so that the exterminator can observe the trap in the way you found it.
Will Mice Keep Cockroaches Away?
So, can mice be used to keep cockroaches away? The answer is that it’s pretty unlikely that mice will even make a small dent in your roach problem (despite the fact that they’ll eat these insects).
Let’s take a look at another reason why relying on mice eating cockroaches as a form of control is not a great idea.
Interestingly enough, mice and roaches can actually benefit each other. Mice will eat the occasional roach, either alive or dead, and roaches appear to be very partial to the taste of mouse droppings. That’s right, cockroaches eat mouse droppings, and as long as there are mice around that are leaving piles of droppings, you’ll most likely have cockroaches that are happy to eat them.
Even if your home is completely roach proof, and you never leave even a crumb around, you still might attract them to your home as long as you have a mouse infestation. Cockroaches are fine with using mouse droppings as a food source and can live on them for a long time.
Mice are not, and never will be, a reliable type of roach control. While mice will eat a few cockroaches and grab some from glue traps, they are not going to keep roaches away from your home. You’d need to have a whole house full of mice eating cockroaches in order to keep roaches away, and that would obviously cause a number of other problems.
Your main priority should be to get rid of both the roaches and the mice. If a more all-natural approach is what you want, then there are plenty of methods that can be used, but letting mice and roaches hang around in the hope that mice are going to eat all of your roaches shouldn’t be one of them.
Your best bet, and we’ve mentioned before, is to get a pest control company to come to your home and evaluate the situation. They may be able to suggest more natural options that can be used along with their treatment plan.
Conclusion
Mice do eat roaches, and will happily scarf down these insects if it’s convenient. However, this isn’t something you can rely on if you’re hoping to deal with these pesky insects.
If you have any questions about mice eating cockroaches or the interactions between these two pests, send us a message. We’ll help you out as soon as we can!
