Knowing how to get rid of maggots in your home can be a really vital skill for a homeowner. It might be hard to consider where in your home they might be, or might come from, but if you do find yourself with something of an infestation, then you need to get it sorted out. Make no mistake – maggots are dangerous.
Maggot Infestation
A maggot infestation is generally considered to be something that is defined based on the person experiencing it. Do you feel like the maggots in your space are overwhelming your ability to deal with them? If so, then you’ve got a proper infestation on your hands. If you’ve got one or two at the bottom of your garden, it might be less serious.
The thing we want to make abundantly clear, here, is that maggot eggs hatch into maggots, before turning into flies. This is common knowledge, but spelling it out never hurts. Essentially, what we mean by this is that maggot eggs might be much easier to deal with than maggots themselves. And maggots will definitely be easier to deal with than flies!
Kill Maggots
To kill maggots in your home is vital. Because of their nature, they will land upon, burrow through, and eat, nearly anything. From pet food to something in trash cans, they will be happy with any food source that they might be able to find. For that reason, it’s vital to stop them, by killing them totally, to get rid of maggots.
Throughout this article, we’re going to talk about a number of different ways that you can kill maggots. Perhaps the easiest way to certainly make this happen is to use salt. All living creatures need water, and salt is a cheap, simple way to draw water out of nearly anything in the world.
Kill Maggots
Several maggot infestations in one spot can be something very tricky to manage. The reason for this is that maggots exhibit cannibalistic tendencies, meaning that they will eat each other quite happily. If there are more maggots in any one spot, the maggots may eat one another in an attempt to live a little longer.
In those situations, it can become very easily to get totally overwhelmed by the things that you’re dealing with. The little pests stop being simple fly larvae and start being grotesque and scary. In that case, it may be worth reaching out to a professional exterminator to ensure that the maggots are properly and totally dealt with.
Salt Kill Maggots
Salt certainly does kill maggots. There are a number of ways to kill maggots since they’re not particularly strong creatures. From boiling water to baking soda, there is a range of different treatments designed to kill, maim, or otherwise deter maggots in your home.
One treatment that you can easily do which may work very well for you is to create a saltwater mixture. On the stove, add salt to boiling water, creating a salty liquid that’s far too salty to be hydrating. In that situation, you can decant the salt water into a spray bottle, and spray it across a lot of maggots at once.
You may need to use this treatment several times over to be sure that it works properly, but it will work eventually – maggots need water, so exposing them to salt water will prevent them from having enough water to live.
Killing maggots naturally
It’s perfectly reasonable to want to kill maggots naturally. If you’ve got pets in your home, for example, you might not love the idea of a pest control system that depends upon intense and aggressive chemicals. In that situation, a hot water and salt solution will work well.
Salting a region will make it totally inhospitable for maggots, meaning that they will either die if they’re in that space or stay away if they’re not. Salty spaces also aren’t great for any household pets that you might have, since they tend to enjoy the flavour but be unable to process the volume of salt. Thankfully, though, salt isn’t fatal to pets – ensure they stay away until you’ve had a chance to mop up with a pet-safe cleaner, and you’ll be good to go to let them go wherever might be ideal for them.
What do maggots look like?
Maggots are, quite simply, a bit revolting. This isn’t the most professional opinion to have, but we would argue that it’s entirely true.
They’re small, white creatures, shaped similarly to a worm. They’re typically no more than a centimetre long, with a slightly segmented body that is the same creamy white colour all the way from top to tail.
Maggots typically have one end that has what appears to be a small brown dot on it – this is the end of a maggot that contains sensory organs. Maggots can be quite hard to spot, at the outset. The reason for this is that they’re very small and generic-looking: they are more commonly noticed by their behaviour.
How to check for maggots?
The best way to check for maggots is a visual inspection. The small, white creatures will show up brightly under the light of a powerful torch, so opting for that method is for the best. We would suggest simply moving items in your home around to make it easier to see behind cabinets, under trash bins, etc, and then shining a bright light on that region.
Their white flesh will stand out well among the detritus that they tend to live in, meaning that you can commonly spot them fairly easily.
Treatment
When you’ve got maggots in your home, you need to know how to get rid of maggots. The easiest method to use with something that you’ve already got in your home is to use salt. Maggots abhor salt and will be killed through exposure to it, similar to slugs.
You can either pour granulated salt directly onto maggots, or you can create a table salt solution that can be poured or sprayed across food waste or a garbage bin. Try this system with hot water, if you pour boiling water across something, maggots will try to escape the heat, and come to the surface. Then, you can sprinkle salt on them to ensure they die.
Prevention
An ounce of prevention is worth a point of cure, and as such, preventing maggots is utterly vital in the home.
The best way to prevent maggots is to always throw out food that might be sitting on the side, whether it’s food scraps from a meal you’ve just cooked or rotting food that’s been on the counter for a long time. Either way, rotting food, be it rotting flesh or rotting vegetables, is something that flies will swarm to. Then, adult flies lay eggs in the food, which hatch into fly larvae, or maggots.
How do you get maggots?
The most common way to get maggots is to have food waste in your trash can that flies are attracted to. If a fly lands within a trash can and lays eggs on rotting materials, those eggs will hatch to eat the food that they’re living in. If there’s anywhere in your home where rotting food is likely to be, it’s the trash can.
Frustratingly, there’s no real food that maggots prefer over others. They’ll happily eat any kind of edible item from your trash can, whether vegetable or meat.
Scarily, you can sometimes can maggots in food that’s left out on counters. If food is left out for a while, a fly could lay eggs within it, which could hatch into larvae, or sit as eggs. Then, if you eat the food, you’re liable to get bacterial poisoning from the maggots themselves. This can be very dangerous indeed.
When to call a professional exterminator for maggots
The best time to call a pest control expert to get rid of maggots is as soon as you think you cannot handle the problem. If you allow maggots to exist in your home for any length of time, then they will settle in very easily and very well, leading to the infested area only growing with time.
What are maggots?
Maggots are the larvae of the common housefly. A fly will buzz through your home, land on something edible, and lay eggs within it. Then, those eggs will hatch into larvae, which is precisely what maggots are.
Identification
The identification of maggots is a vital step to getting rid of maggots in your home. A pest control expert will perform a visual inspection, typically looking at a small portion of the infestation to see if they can see baby flies within the item. They may also attempt to trap flies, as flies will be a good indicator of whether or not there are maggots in your home.
Once the identification process has been totally completed, a pest control expert will move on to the next step – extermination. At that point, they may use any number of different methods to get rid of the maggots, but it’s most certainly worth doing. It will discourage flies going forward in your home, but it will also prevent you, or any member of your family, from getting sick due to contact with flies.
Inspections
Inspections of your home may be required at certain different times to ensure that the problem we’re dealing with is totally a maggot problem. The reason for this is that maggots can be more active in warmer, more humid conditions. You may need to have an inspection during a warmer time of day to be sure that the creature you’re dealing with is a maggot.
How long does a maggot infestation last?
A maggot infestation will, if left to its own devices, typically last for around a month. That is the rough window of time that a fly needs to gestate for within the rotting food that it is born into, and it will then become a fully-fledged fly, and fly in your home.
The problem comes when those flies lay further eggs in your home. The problem becomes self-sustaining, with more and more maggots being born every day.
Are maggots dangerous to humans?
Yes, maggots are dangerous to humans. The main way in which they’re dangerous is that they’re full of different kinds of bacteria and microbes that are toxic to humans. If a human consumes a maggot, they can get very sick, and potentially even die.
Maggots can also be dangerous to humans since they thrive on rotting meat. If more and more maggots are in a home, they’ll likely spread the bacteria from the rotting meat to other surfaces and foods, leading to a completely different type of, totally dangerous, infection for the human involved.
Knowing how to get rid of maggots is vital to ensure that your home is as safe as possible. They’re certainly not pleasant creatures to manage on your own, so it might be wise to reach out to a pest management company that will be able to help with your maggot infestation.
