Do Mice Eat Roaches

Yes, mice enjoy the protein that comes in the shape of cockroaches.  Apart from roaches, mice will also take bites off centipedes, crickets, and other insects. What you should know is that there is an interdependence between roaches and mice. For survival, they often depend on each other. On the one hand, roaches eat on the droppings of mice. This implies that even if you lack food in your house, roaches will thrive if the mice population is intact. On the other hand, mice feed on roaches. When these pests let themselves into your home, there starts a vicious cycle of cockroach and mice infestation.

If you think that mice can be relied upon to lower the number of cockroaches, you are mistaken. It is a lot of work for mice to chase, catch, and eat the little crawling critters. This is because roaches provide challenges as they are moving targets. You also know that cockroaches move erratically fast. Consequently, the rates of success of a mouse catching a roach are meager. So, you will find mice taking a preference in food scraps rather than chasing roaches. For mice, cockroaches are just snacks that always come once in a while.

For roaches to be a significant food source for mice, there needs to be a cockroach infestation. If several hundreds of roaches move within reach of the mice, they can be easy targets, and the mice can have a cockroach festival.

Cockroach Attraction

The quest of this section is to establish whatever brings cockroaches to your house. Before we make any forward-moving steps, we need to establish that you are not doing anything to bring the cockroaches in. There is no single liquid, sight, food, or smell that is making them choose your home as a target.

Cockroaches are equal-opportunity invaders who are attracted to any space that takes care of their needs. If they find room in your house, they will set up their shop for good if you allow them. But no – you never want to let them do that. So, what are roaches really looking for in your house? Here is a tabulation of all the conditions that need to be in place so that cockroaches survive:

Conditions That Need To Be Met For Roaches To Survive In Your House
Food	When you have much leftover food, roaches are likely to come and scavenge to get something.
Humidity and Water	Cockroaches need to be well hydrated, and if your house provides that, they will stay.
Warmth	If the chinks in your walls are warm, cockroaches can use those spaces to hatch their eggs.
Safety	If your house provides escapes from all predators, the cockroaches are likely to stay there.
Darkness	If many spaces in your house don’t get lit often, roaches will likely find comfort there.

Now, let’s go back to the discussion on mice, roaches, and eating.

Questions Surrounding Mice, Roaches, And Eating

Assuming that you had set some trick traps for the roaches, you may have noticed something odd after checking them. You may see some cockroach legs may have been stuck on the trap. However, the rest of the body may not be near the trap. None of your pets could have eaten the missing roach’s body, so there should be some other critters in your home. So, it begs the question – are mice involved in roach eating?

This question, which is the foundation of this article, has been asked by so many homeowners. If mice feed on roaches, then it is not bad having mice in your house. But, can you allow yourself to live with mice? Both the American and the German varieties of cockroaches are meals for mice. Also, size does not matter. Both big and small roaches usually fall prey to mice. Of the top enemies of cockroaches, mice are listed as number three, next to human beings. The number one enemy of cockroaches is themselves since they love eating their kind.

While mice will always fancy a meal of cockroaches, the rodents should never be relied on if you want pest control anywhere around your home. If you have a cockroach problem and choose mice as the exterminators, they will become a nuisance on your property. Mice are destructive and will nibble on anything and everything. Also, they carry diseases and reproduce quickly. When there is a mice overpopulation, it can become an infestation that will be difficult to control.

If you have cockroaches or mice, or both of them in your home, you should treat them as intruders. Thus, they will need to be eliminated safely, thoroughly, and quickly. Keep going through the lines to learn about the different mice habits.

Apart From Roaches, What Other Things Do Mice Eat?

While this question is essential, I believe the more important question is: what don’t mice eat? This is because the little-tailed creatures who are omnivorous have very little that they don’t eat. Because of having a higher surface area to volume ratio, they have a higher metabolic rate, meaning that their food gets oxidized fast. Thus, the critters require frequent feeding. This is something between 15 and 20 times every day. Their natural diet includes seeds, fruits, insects, and grains. These front-toothed rodents have adapted very well to living close to any human establishment. For the most part, humans have provided mice with a steady supply of various nutrition sources. On top of that, humans give them shelter and water too.

Part of this ‘living with humans’ adaptation comes with its caveats. Mice have overly adapted – they even eat things outside their natural diets and others with no nutritional value, such as clothing, cardboard, bedding, furniture, and other non-food items. Of course, some of the eating is not for consumption but merely instinctual behavior. When mice chew on the various non-food items, they are usually collecting material that they can use to build their nests. Also, they use chewing exercises to ensure that their sharp and long front teeth get filed down.

Like many other rodents like rats, the front teeth of mice grow throughout their lives. This means that the critters have to engage in frequent gnawing. This helps teeth not to become too sharp or too long. So, if mice live in people’s garages and homes, they might chew through electrical wiring, wood, plastic pipes, drywall, or even concrete. While the mice may not be consuming the (non-food) items, it registers in the homeowners’ minds that the mice are eating their homes away. Also, the damages caused by the mice’s instinctual chewing can be both extensive and expensive.

As mentioned previously, mice enjoy eating many insects, including roaches. Even if it is difficult for a mouse to catch a cockroach, the mouse’s effort will be worth it since roaches are excellent sources of fat and proteins, and some macronutrients that mice need to ensure that they survive. Also, roaches have minerals that are important for any mouse’s diet. Some parts of the exoskeleton and the wings can help in the mouse’s digestive processes. This means that if mice have a knack for roaches and you have a roach problem, you may be looking at an incoming mouse problem.

What Is The Speed Of Mice Reproduction?

If you’re worried about a mouse infestation, this question is a critical one to ask. The habits and reproductive acts of mice significantly impact how quickly their nests grow, ushering a full-blown, inevitable infestation. If you’re also asking about the number of mice that one should consider an infestation, the answer is this: a couple of mice, a male, and a female. Although incredible, you only need these couple (of tailed critters) to transform your house into a mouse den.

The female mouse will give birth to about six babies per litter. In her yearlong lifetime, she can deliver as many as ten litters. This means that one female mouse can explode into 60 mice. Like rabbits, mice can get fertilized again after giving birth. Their gestation period goes for about 19 to 21 days. When the baby mice are born, they only require around seven weeks to mature. When this happens, they are ready to reproduce. If you try and do the math, you will find that the number of mice will grow from two to twenty and then fifty in a very short time.

But the infestation cannot be explosive if it is not sustained. Remember that the mice need access to water, food, and shelter. As mentioned elsewhere, mice are well adapted to living with humans indoors. We have well-stocked pantries and multiples water sources, let alone pet food bowls that are always full. The human lifestyle is itself an attraction to mice.

How Dangerous Can A Mouse Be In Relation To A Roach?

Well, the question is pretty fair – after all, a mouse is furry and small, and many pet parents have them in their cages. How bad can mice be? The truth, however, puts mice on the receiving end. Mice are probably worse than roaches since they have better adaptability skills and also, they are super intelligent.

Mice will gnaw through food boxes and get your food contaminated. Also, they can damage the structural integrity of your home and that of your belongings. The worst thing is that they carry and transmit diseases to people and other animals. The diseases include:

1. Tularemia

2. Lymphocytic choriomeningitis

3. Hantavirus

4. The Plague (yes, the one that you are thinking about. If you don’t, here’s the thing: mice and rats transmitted the plague all across Europe during the Middle Ages, killing so many people in the Northern Hemisphere.)

Through their droppings and urine, mice transmit the diseases mentioned above. So, if you have a mice infestation, such disease outbreaks are lurking in the shadows. Besides spreading diseases, mice also carry around ticks or fleas that they can transfer to you or your pets.

If you consider all problems that mice can bring along when they infest and invade our homes, we should not team up with them to engage in the cockroach control business. It doesn’t matter if they can make a difference and dent the roaches’ activities in your home: bringing them in is more of a hindrance than a help, or counterproductive for short.

How To Know If You Have A Mice Or A Cockroach Infestation

If you:

1. spot some brown, small, and cylinder-shaped droppings that are about a quarter-inch long;

2. if you see track markings in dusty areas, such as along cabinet tops;

3. if you sign gnaw signs on furniture legs and baseboards;

There could be a lot of mouse activity going on since those are all indicators.

Another common sign to show that mice are actively living with you is some rustling and squeaking. These sounds, which are made by mice, penetrate from the ceiling or from inside a wall. In those areas, you are likely to find mice nests.

Your pets can also detect rodents. You will see your dog or cat sniffing, scratching, or staring fixedly at random parts of the wall, floor, or ceiling. If this is happening, the chances are that you have a mouse problem at hand.

What about cockroaches? How would you know? Well, the signs of a cockroach invasion are not very different from those of a mice infestation. You will see their droppings, which are brown and small and appear as smears and spots. You will find the excrements in places like the bathroom, the utility room, or the kitchen. To know if there is some roach activity in your house, you should look at cardboard boxes and books that appear bitten and eat. Roaches consume cardboard, glue, and paper, alongside other substances, whether dead or alive.

To eradicate mice, some homeowners have it that you can use some repelling smells. While that claim may be valid, some of the products are hazardous and pose a lot of danger if ingested mistakenly by children or pets, like ammonia. What you need to do to control the infestation is to limit access to shelter, water, and food. This step will make them see your house as an inhabitable place. If that is too much for you, call in a trusted exterminator or a pest-control specialist to handle the infestation.