Bats in Your Home
Hearing scratching in the attic or spotting a bat swoop through your living room is unsettling, but before you call anyone to "get rid of them," it helps to know that timing isn't optional in Iowa — it's the law.
Iowa is home to seven bat species listed as endangered or threatened under state wildlife protections, and removing bats the wrong way, or at the wrong time of year, can mean real legal trouble. It can also mean a much bigger mess in your attic. If you're dealing with bats right now, reach out and we'll walk you through what's happening in your home and what your timeline looks like.
Why Timing Matters So Much
Bat removal isn't like handling ants or mice. The only humane and legal method is exclusion — installing one-way devices that let bats fly out to feed at night but stop them from getting back in. That only works when every bat in the colony can actually leave on its own.
From roughly June through late July or August, Iowa is in bat maternity season. Pups are born hairless, blind, and unable to fly for six to eight weeks. If exclusion devices go up during this window, adult bats leave to feed and simply can't get back to their pups — who then die in your walls or attic. Beyond the animal welfare issue, that's exactly the outcome you're trying to avoid: odor, contamination, and a far worse problem than you started with.
The Safe Window: September and October
The Iowa DNR recommends exclusion work in September and October, once young bats born that summer are old enough to fly and leave with the colony. This is when we do the vast majority of our bat exclusions, and it's worth planning around if you know bats are present. Curious whether your attic's activity means you're dealing with a maternity colony or just a few bats passing through? An inspection now can tell us exactly where you stand before fall arrives.
Early spring, before the maternity season begins, can also work — but it's a narrower and less predictable window, since it depends on when bats return from hibernation and when the colony starts settling in for the season. Fall gives us the most reliable timeline.
What Removal Actually Involves
Once we're in a safe window, the process looks like this:
An inspection first. We find every entry and exit point, not just the obvious one, and confirm whether pups are present.
One-way exclusion devices go up over the active entry points, letting bats leave to feed but not return.
We wait it out. Bats need a few days to a couple weeks to fully vacate, depending on colony size.
Once the structure is confirmed empty, we seal every entry point — not just the main one — so bats (or anything else) can't move back in next season.
If your home has had bats before, or you're hearing activity now, it's worth getting ahead of it. Give us a call 712-297-4711 and we'll get an inspection on the books, so when the safe window opens, you're first in line rather than starting from scratch.
