Bat House Forum

[cloudman75]

Last evening I found a dead pup underneath a bat house. This morning there were three more. I have never had this to happen in previous years.
I think it is because of overcrowding. This house has good footing with mesh and has never had pups to fall before. A recent cold spell saw the bats all move into one medium size bat house, not a small one. There are somewhere around 160 little brown bats in it . I have 5 other bat houses but they chose to use just one when the temps at night got down to around 40 F. We are warmer now with temps in the mid 80s and heading up toward 90 soon. It is sad to see the dead pups after all the mothers have been through in hibernation and just trying to survive. I have 4 bats total in other houses but they may be males. One is a tiny bat that is in the largest most ventilated house. It appears to like it cooler than the little browns, and prefers to be alone as it has been here since April or late March.
It is my hope that the warmer weather now will prompt the bats to use other houses and eliminate the problem of too many bats in one house.

Frank

[Terry Lobdell]

Frank, the only time I find downed little browns is under crowded boxes.......big brown pups seem to fall even if they are not crowded......
I have quite a few of my boxes with rough sawn baffles that are full of bats so I am anxious to see they alleviate the falling pup problem......
In recent years I have suspected that my mesh baffle houses that only have mesh on one side of the plywood baffle are not the best for holding pups...........
Another reason why I have switched to one inch rough sawn boards for baffles.......

[cloudman75]

Terry,
I have not had the problem with this house before so I also contribute it to being overcrowded.
I did an exit count last night and counted only 59 bats that flew out with maybe six or 7 left in the house and pups moving around. A check of my other five houses turned up only one bat still there. It appears that more than half of the females left me and took their pups with them. I have seen this before
but they usually come back in a week or so. I fear that the tornadoes in our area a few weeks back also moved the freetails somewhere as I have seen none since then. We did not get a direct hit here, but very stormy weather. It is now hot here but what a crazy streak of unusual weather we have had.
If the bats I have now stay with their pups, I will have over a hundred flying in about six weeks, so not a total loss.They appear to be all little browns
plus just one tiny bat that looks like a LB, but very small and lives alone.

Frank