This little bug loves to devour all kinds of dead and decaying material in your garden and other moist places. In addition to this, they also love to eat emerging seedlings.
They love emerging seedlings so much that they can eat through an entire bed in just one night. Gardens with leaf litter or compost will get eaten even faster.
Other things rolly pollies like to eat include:. This is because there is so much wet, dead, organic material here. Rolly pollies tend to live anywhere from 2 to 3 years as long as they are in the right conditions. Like mentioned before, rolly polly bugs thrive in warm, wet, and damp weather. These are the perfect conditions for them. On the other hand, rolly pollies will die when they try and survive in hot and dry conditions. If you notice it starting to get try, you can pour a little water on it with the garden hose.
Like mentioned above, rolly pollies can eat through an entire bed of emerging seedlings in just one night. In addition to this, they also can eat holes through your growing fruits and vegetables.
Although rolly polly bugs can do quite a bit of damage to your garden, they also have some benefits as well. If you intend to keep these critters as pets, then make sure that the food is rotten before putting it in their habitat. Although, as much as these critters survive of decaying matter, moldy food poses a danger to their lives.
Strangely enough, rolly pollies cannot safely process moldy food and often die off when exposed to such sources of sustenance. As crustaceans, these critters have gills that allow them to get the water they need from the moisture within their habitat.
That is why open water sources pose a danger to these little buggers. Any open water source is a potential drowning hazard for rolly pollies. For that reason, rolly pollies do not live in ponds or swimming pools; they live in moist environments such as mulch beds and damp soil.
They can typically be found curled up under fallen vegetation, wood, and rocks. As we mentioned, some people actually keep them as pets. If you are, however, not one of those people, then you can view them as pests to some extent. The main reason for this is that, although rolly pollies typically feed on decaying matter, come winter time when their food runs out, they can turn on the roots of your plants.
If you are a farmer, this is not something you want hanging around your property. Anything that can turn plant roots into a meal is bad for business. Additionally, rolly pollies will easily snack on vegetables and fruits growing in your garden. Avid gardeners do not take this sort of thing lightly, especially when they begin to destroy entire orchards just to survive.
That being said, rolly pollies can also be a major ally when it comes to managing stink bugs. These bugs tend to damage plants by feeding on their juices both internally and externally. Rolly pollies, on the other hand, feed on stink bug eggs thus keeping their population down and saving your plants in the long run. Rolly pollies also take dead matter and decompose it thus providing invaluable nutrients to the soil around their habitats.
In reality, rolly pollies do more good than they do harm. Pill bugs do have some rather peculiar feeding habits since they are known to eat their own feces, as well as feces from other animals. Additionally, sometimes pill bugs will feed on decomposing animal flesh. Pill bugs are also known to consume heavy metal deposits during their feeding activities in the soil, and during this process they may help remove soil deposits of metals such as copper, lead and zinc.
A number of other critters such as birds, toads, spiders, some wasp species, centipedes and millipedes prey upon pill bugs to help support their nutritional needs. Pill bugs are important to the ecosystem as they are as decomposers that add to the overall quality of their habitat, as well as the remarkable bodily gymnastics they perform by rolling themselves into small, grey balls.
Call Residential Commercial. Use a tight-fitting screen lid to keep the roly-polies inside, and unauthorized hands and pets outside. It is not necessary or advised to provide supplemental lighting for captive roly-polies. In the wild, roly-polies live in dark places and tend to avoid brightly lit areas. Similarly, by living in locations sheltered from the sun, roly-polies are adapted to living at relatively cool temperatures.
Typically, room temperature suits roly-polies well. Place 1 or 2 inches of organic potting soil in the bottom of the cage. Press the soil down lightly, but do not compact it too much. On top of the soil, place about 1 inch of leaf litter -- you can collect leaf litter from under a hardwood tree in your back yard as long as pesticides have not been used near it.
On top of the leaf litter, add a few pieces of flat bark, under which the roly-polies can hide. Rocks can easily crush the tiny critters, so avoid using them with your roly-polies.
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