So You Seen A Roach?
You’ve seen a cockroach before but not one like this—not one carrying a strange protrusion like a brown bean or a tiny purse behind it. That “purse” is an egg sac carrying precious cargo: dozens of roach eggs!
Do Cockroaches Make You Sick?
A German cockroach goes through 3 stages of life:
- Egg
- Nymph
- Adult
In the right conditions, a roach could sprint through these stages in just 100 days
The oothecae is a tiny, purse-or bean-shaped capsule that contains as many as fifty eggs. The larger the egg case, the more eggs it contains.
A female roach produces one egg sac at a time but could tally ten or more over her lifetime.
You’ll know you’ve found a pregnant roach if it appears to have a pill-shaped protrusion sticking out like a fat, ribbed tail. This extends further as more eggs develop inside it.
The “pregnant” female carries her egg case for about 1 month until the eggs are ready to hatch. She might continue to carry it; otherwise, she’ll deposit it in a safe and hidden location, usually deep in a wall crevice, under a heavy appliance or deep in a cluttered cardboard box.
Within a day or two—provided it stays hidden and moist—the eggs will hatch.
How fast does a cockroach infestation grow?
The truth is in the numbers!
One female German roach produces approx 40 eggs. Let’s say it’s an even split between males and females. A month later, the 20 females each produce 40 offspring. If that pattern continued, in just 4 months you could have 16,000 roaches running around in your home!
It depends on the species, the environment and a few other factors but it’s not hard to imagine one pregnant roach becoming thousands, if not ten-thousands, within 6 months. Numerous studies have shown that German roaches can achieve 20 times their population in just 3 months.
The exact number of zeroes hardly matters; it’s too many cockroaches, and a huge safety risk.
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