GRAIN MOTHS

[chickiebaby]

We get these every few summers it seems, but never like this before! I have wasted so much food - well, not wasted, since I fed much of it to birds - but over and over I have cleaned out everything I can find, and still on and on they come, lke Roman soldiers.

Larvae, dust, moths, nest sacs, more larvae. I have HAD IT! We've used numerous pheremone traps. All full and still they come! Tonight bleaching all the cabinets. But I did that almost a month ago!

Bite me! I am furious!

PLEASE - ANY IDEAS!?

 

[redhen]

..moth balls...sorry..wish i knew how to help ya out..Wendy

 

[goldensunriseranch]

When I had 2 parrots I wound up with these in my den. They were in a batch of parrot food that I bought. Even after all food was disposed of and even the parrots were moved out (had to go because of biting my toddlers), still I had moths. Seemed like they would appear out of nowhere and definitely in spurts. It took me months for them to be mostly gone and still I get a couple here and there. I have no idea where they come from or what they can possibly be living off of. We did put the traps out and it seemed to help but you have to give it quite a while and suck up as many as you can with the vacuum. And kill every moth fluttering that you see. The traps only catch the males. I do know they like to build cocoons in the crease where the walls meet the ceiling. And I would use the vacuum attachment on them if you see any.
HATE THEM!

 

[chickiebaby]

hope its not rude to bump this but I realy need advice. Anyone?

 

[d.k]

* I've only found one thing that works. Somebody taught me long ago to freeze any/all grain products at least overnight and store them in airtight containers immediately after. It's a pain with limited freezer space but has worked the vast majority of the time.

 

[justusnak]

Are you talking large amounts of grain? When I buy corn...I sometimes get those....what I do is as I pour the cracked corn into the container...I put in a layer about 2 inches high, then a layer of DE....then more corn...then DE....it has worked WONDERFULL on eliminateing the moths! I always sprinkle some DE in the feed bins...in case there are other buggies that want a free meal.

 

[onthespot]

I had an explosion of these in my living room this summer. I tried keeping the cage bird feed in the freezer, figured it would kill the larvae and the residual adults will only have access to small amounts of food for short periods of time. It has cut it down quite a bit. I would need a chest freezer to hold all my chicken food and cage bird food. I breed lovebirds, cockatiels, and parrot finches and parrotlets, so one bad bag can just snowball in a few weeks and I find the pheromone traps worthless.

 

[AngieChick]

We've had a couple of bouts with them. The only thing that worked was making sure everything that was even questionable got tossed, and everything else got sealed up tight. Then I scrubbed down all the cabinets as you have done. If I see a moth, I smoosh it immediately. It's aggravating, but making sure absolutely everything is sealed up is the only thing that we could do to get rid of them.

Good luck.

 

[Jenski]

I found some nice, lock-top plastic garbage bins at Home Depot ($24), and they have worked wonderfully for feed storage. The handles lock the top down airtight, and the plastic does not get any condensation inside the bin. Maybe a combination of a food-grade DE sprinkle with super-tight bins would work??

Good luck!

 

[Jilara]

Freezing is about the only way to really get rid of grain moths. I've opened sealed tins that I had to PRY open, and found grain moth larvae! And I've even seen the darned things fluttering around at work (I work at a high-tech company).

Remember when we didn't have this problem? I remember the first time I opened a package of nuts (from K-mart), sometime in the '80's, and found it had been colonized by grain moths (Indian meal moths). Just another immigrant that came in with the global economy...

Watch out, it used to be just grain moths, but this year I'm finding a whole host of little black beetles about the size of fleas, in literally every grain product in the house! I don't know how they made it in, but they're even eating my spaghetti. One good thing is that the chickens think they're very tasty!