Have you ever tried losing weight by doing a crash diet? It’s an extreme technique and most Doctors would advise against it. Wrestlers and boxers do it all the time trying to make weight and women who want to fit into a gown for an upcoming wedding or gala will also endure this torturous endeavor. Crash diets are a radical change in ones behavior, a drastic measure that requires discipline and sacrifice to be able to reach the goal. In the short term it can work fairly well despite the huge sacrifice and the all consuming mental aspect of giving up what just comes natural 3 times per day. (eating) Unfortunately for most, once the goal as been reached the weight comes back quickly if not more and in the mean time we haven’t done our bodies any good.
In the world of German roaches however, crash diets can be a very good thing. Large infestations can be put under huge stress’s with crash diets and population numbers can DRASTICALLY diminish very quickly. This result can even be achieved without using one drop of a pesticide.
Reducing Food Is Not The Answer
Ask any exterminator and he’ll tell you that eliminating available food for the German cockroach is a very helpful thing. He or she would be exactly right. Having said that, hopefully you’d also get the explanation as to why this task is almost impossible when it comes to the German roach.
German roaches can live about a month without food but this hardly ever occurs because this roach eats just about ANYTHING regardless of nutritional value. Grease, soap,toothpaste, dead mouse carcass, cellulose material like paper and cardboard, glues, unsanitary wastes including their own fecal matter etc. etc. The German roach will even cannibalize each other. It just doesn’t seem to matter. The reason for this is that they have a tiny organism in their body (bacteroides) that manufacture all the essential vitamins they need to live. So in essence, all they need to do is fill their gut with anything handy and they’re basically good to go.
Now given the choice between a pizza box filled with crumbs and dried cheese and say the corner of an old newspaper the preference is obvious–so my advice is to follow your pro’s direction and do your best to eliminate as much as you can.
The Crash Comes With Lack Of Moisture
It’s said that a roach can live without food for about a month but only a week without water. This then by default should be where we concentrate our efforts to have your infestation “crash.” Reducing moisture is probably the #1 thing in any German roach control effort, even before reducing foods and even before spraying.
If you’ll take the time and make the sacrifice of effort you can cause any German roach population to crash in 30 days or less simply by removing their moisture. I tell my clients to do a nightly moisture sweep of their kitchens and bathrooms and it works almost every time.
Take a towel and remove water from the dish strainer, the sink and counter tops, dishwasher or any where else a seemingly harmless drop of water sits. Don’t fill the coffee maker with water the night before and empty and dry that dogs dish. (in fact move them to another room if you have to) Fix that leak under the sink or that drip from the water spout in the refrigerator door. Plants on the kitchen window sill that you’ve watered? Remove them. Anything anywhere that gives them even a smattering of life giving water needs to be dried up or removed and you will soon see your crash diet take hold. This requires an attentive eye and discipline to do this every night or it will not work. Do it 5 days out of 7 and you’ll just stunt the colony a bit but not have near the results. Do it in a drastic manner and you’ll get your drastic decline.
By drastic I mean drastic and I’ve even had folks run a dehumidifier to make the kitchen as dry as possible and get great results. Do a moisture sweep every night, reduce the food where you can for the next 30 days and you can enjoy the fruits of of your German roach crash diet.
