Bat House Forum

[PHair]

Greetings,

I am writing from a rural village in Southeastern Senegal, West Africa. I am interested in putting up several bat houses in hopes of attracting insectivorous bats to take up residency and hopefully assist in pest control in farm fields. I have found a great ammount of information regarding bat houses, what to build, species to expect, regional considerations etc. for the US and North America, but have found little information on Africa and West Africa more specifically.

My assumption is that bat houses would attract bats here as well, but I have found little info to help me know where to start. Is anyone even attempting to put up houses in Africa?

Furthermore, I have found most of the bat house designs incorporate a fair amount of plywood into their construction and, relative to the US, plywood, or any sheets of wood for that matter, is harder to come by here and much more expensive. Could I potentially use other materials that are available locally? We've got a lot of bamboo and there are people here who are very talented (artisans really) when is comes to working with mud and clay. Could any of these materials be easily incorporated into a design in place of plywood? I want to have a good shot at building a house that attracts bats, but these are some of the considerations I am working with.

Any info on bats or bat houses in West Africa, or any plywood alternatives people have worked with would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

PHair

[Joe Spencer]

Hi! As long as you're sure you have crevice roosting bats and a water source in nearby a bat house is viable. As for the materials you can use virtually anything but the bat house wood can't be smooth and must be rough on the interior partitions. Mud and clay could work and you might want to experiment with that and get something up.

[Emersombiguns]

I was wondering if a "stucco" type material would be available. Like Joe said, keep the crevice area on the inside coarse, 1/2" between and up at least 5 meters to bottom. I would put it on the edge of a forest area to try. In S. USA I have little brown bats and some big brown bats...If you found this site, should be able to find what species are in your area...Randy in Lousisiana

[Dave Miller]

If lumber is scarce, how about taking apart wooden pallets? Those seem to be pretty common everywhere and are often given away for free. Also they usually have a rough surface. I would not use pieces that were stained with liquids (e.g. chemicals), since the chemicals will "outgas" inside the bat house on warm days. Old unpainted wooden fencing is also a great bat house material.

Here is a google search to try for finding out about your bats: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=in ... rican+bats
As in business, for bat houses it is very important to "know your customer" :-)

Keep us posted on your progress and lessons learned.

Dave

[Terry Lobdell]

I was just going to suggest the same thing as Dave........pallets..........that would be the first thing I would consider.......they can often be had free and the wood they are constructed of is of favorable dimensions to work with........