Hear from Our Customers
You step outside and actually stay there. No swatting. No retreating inside after ten minutes. That’s what a properly treated yard feels like — and it’s not a luxury, it’s just what works when the job is done right.
Here’s what makes Ovid different from a lot of other places: the mosquito pressure here doesn’t just come from your backyard. It comes from the drainage ditches running through the farmland that surrounds the city on every side, from the Little Maple River corridor that feeds into Lake Ovid, and from the shallow, vegetation-lined margins of that 410-acre reservoir sitting inside Sleepy Hollow State Park. You can eliminate every puddle on your property and still get eaten alive, because the source is bigger than your yard.
That’s why a professional barrier program matters here more than most people realize. When we apply treatments consistently — every 21 days throughout the season — mosquito activity on your property drops dramatically. Kids can use the backyard. The dog can be outside without you watching every second. You can sit on the porch in the evening without it becoming a fight. That’s the outcome. Everything else is just details.
We’ve been doing this since May 31, 2005. That’s 20 years of Michigan mosquito seasons — 20 years of learning exactly how mid-Michigan’s agricultural landscape, river corridors, and compressed summers create the kind of pest pressure that generic treatments just don’t address. For homeowners in Ovid and the surrounding Clinton County area, that experience means we understand your specific situation.
Roger Chinault, our owner, has 26 years of hands-on pest control experience. He’s not a franchise coordinator. He built this company himself, and the people who work for us are trained professionals — not seasonal hires or part-time workers filling a summer schedule. When someone comes to your home in Ovid, they know what they’re doing, and they’ll be the same person next visit.
First Choice holds Integrated Pest Management (IPM) certification, has earned recognition through Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor, and carries a 4.7-star rating from over 363 verified customers across mid-Michigan. We offer discounts for seniors, veterans, and first responders — and in a community with one of the highest concentrations of Vietnam-era veterans in the region, that’s not a line item. It’s something that actually matters here.
It starts with a call. You tell us what you’re dealing with — how bad the mosquitoes are, where on the property they seem worst, whether you have kids or pets we need to factor in. From there, we schedule your first treatment and show up when we say we will.
When our technician arrives, they walk the property before touching anything. In Ovid, that walkthrough matters because the conditions here are specific. Properties near the Sleepy Hollow State Park boundary or along the M-21 corridor backing up to agricultural land often have very different pressure points than a yard in a more urban area. Your technician identifies where mosquitoes are resting — in shaded vegetation, along fence lines, under decks, in dense shrub areas — and treats those zones directly using EPA-registered products applied at the right rates for your property size and layout.
From there, treatments repeat every 21 days throughout the active season, which in Ovid runs May through September. You don’t have to manage a schedule or remember to call — we stay on it. And because the same technician returns each visit, they already know your yard by the second treatment. The flea and tick treatment is included in your mosquito program at no extra charge, because those pests share the same habitat and it makes no sense to treat one without the other.
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Most mosquito control programs treat mosquitoes. That’s it. We include flea and tick treatment in every mosquito program at no additional cost — because in a community surrounded by agricultural land, wooded park edges, and open fields, you’re not just dealing with one pest. Ticks and fleas use the same tall grass, brushy edges, and shaded vegetation that mosquitoes rest in. Treating one without the other leaves a gap that you’ll feel by mid-June.
The program runs on a 21-day treatment cycle from May through September. Each visit covers the areas where mosquitoes actually live and rest — not just a perimeter spray and out the door. Vegetation, shaded zones, fence lines, the underside of decks, the edges of your property where your yard meets the field or treeline. In Ovid, that edge habitat is often where the pressure is heaviest, especially for properties near the Sleepy Hollow State Park boundary or the Little Maple River corridor.
First Choice is licensed through the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and holds the Category 7F Mosquito Management certification — a specific credential that not every pest control company in Clinton County carries. If you find a lower rate from a legitimate competitor, we’ll match it. You shouldn’t have to trade quality for a fair price, and with us, you don’t have to.
Lake Ovid is a 410-acre, shallow reservoir with an average depth of around 10 feet. Shallow, warm water with aquatic vegetation along the margins is exactly the kind of environment mosquitoes breed in most aggressively. Add the Little Maple River corridor running through the park — with its associated floodplain wetlands and backwater areas — and you have a large, persistent breeding source that doesn’t dry up even in a dry summer.
What that means for residents near the park’s boundary is that your mosquito problem isn’t coming from your yard. It’s migrating in from a 2,678-acre state park that you have no control over. That’s precisely why removing standing water from your own property, while still a good habit, doesn’t solve the problem on its own. A consistent professional barrier program intercepts mosquitoes before they reach your porch, your deck, and your family — and it needs to be maintained throughout the season to stay effective.
For a seasonal program to hold up, treatments need to happen every 21 days. That’s not an arbitrary number — it’s based on the residual life of the barrier treatment and the mosquito’s reproductive cycle. If you go longer than 21 days between applications, the barrier starts to thin out and populations begin recovering before your next visit.
In Ovid, the active mosquito season runs from May through September. That typically works out to around five to six treatment visits across the season, depending on when you start and how the fall plays out. Because we keep the same technician on your property all season, by the second or third visit they already know exactly where your pressure points are — the shaded areas, the vegetation lines, the spots along your property edge that tend to hold more activity. That consistency makes each visit more effective than the last.
Yes — when it’s applied correctly by a licensed technician using EPA-registered products. The products we use are approved for residential use and applied at rates that are effective against mosquitoes without posing a risk to people or pets once dry. Our technician will let you know the appropriate window to keep kids and pets off treated areas — typically a short period after application while the product dries.
It’s worth noting that the DIY sprays and foggers available at hardware stores often use the same active ingredients as professional products, but without the training, calibration, or application method that makes them work properly. A professional application puts the right product in the right places at the right concentration. That’s a meaningful difference, especially if you have young children or dogs who spend a lot of time in the yard during summer.
This is one of the most common concerns we hear from homeowners in the Ovid area, and it’s a fair one. Ovid is surrounded by active agricultural land on all sides — grain fields, dairy operations, and the kind of open, low-lying terrain that holds standing water after rain events and feeds mosquito populations for weeks. When you’re living on the edge of that landscape, the pressure is constant and it comes from outside your property line.
What a professional barrier program does in that situation is create a treated zone around your home that mosquitoes have to pass through to reach you. It won’t eliminate every mosquito in Clinton County, but it dramatically reduces the population that makes it to your yard, your porch, and your family. Consistent 21-day treatments throughout the season are what make it work — one application won’t hold up against that kind of sustained pressure. A seasonal program will.
Mosquito abatement typically refers to large-scale, government-contracted programs aimed at reducing mosquito populations across wide geographic areas — often using aerial larvicide treatments over woodland floodwater habitat. There are actually companies based right here in the Ovid area that contract with county mosquito abatement commissions for that kind of work. It’s a public health measure, and it covers thousands of acres at a time.
Residential mosquito control is different. It’s focused on your specific property — treating the areas where mosquitoes rest, feeding into your yard, and creating a barrier that protects the space where your family actually spends time. County abatement programs don’t treat your backyard, your deck, or the vegetation along your fence line. That’s what our residential program does. The two approaches aren’t competing — they’re just operating at completely different scales, and one doesn’t replace the need for the other.
Yes. We offer discounts for seniors, veterans, and first responders. Ovid has one of the highest concentrations of Vietnam-era veterans of any community in mid-Michigan — significantly above the national average — and that’s a population that has earned the right to enjoy their yard without paying a premium to do it. The discount is straightforward: if you or someone in your household qualifies, mention it when you call and we’ll apply it to your program.
The same goes for seniors and first responders. These aren’t complicated programs with conditions buried in the fine print. First Choice is a family-owned company that has been operating in Michigan for 20 years, and taking care of the people who have taken care of this community is part of how Roger built the business. If you’re not sure whether you qualify, just ask when you call. It takes about ten seconds to find out.
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