Hear from Our Customers
Most pest problems in Ortonville aren’t random. They’re predictable — and they’re tied directly to where you live. The wooded terrain around Hadley Hills pushes carpenter ants into older wood-frame homes every spring. The standing water along Bald Eagle Lake and Lake Louise breeds mosquitoes from May through September. And when October hits, mice start looking for warmth, and the homes around Brandon Township — many of them built before 1972 — give them plenty of ways in.
What changes when you get ahead of it is simple: you stop reacting and start preventing. Your yard becomes usable again in summer. You stop finding mouse droppings in the garage every fall. You stop wondering whether that line of ants in the window sill means something worse is happening inside the wall. That shift — from chasing the problem to staying ahead of it — is what a well-run pest control program actually delivers.
For families with kids and pets, that also means knowing the treatments used in your home are chosen with your household in mind, not just whatever’s fastest to apply. We use Integrated Pest Management — the least invasive approach that actually works — so you’re not trading one problem for another.
We founded First Choice Pest Control in 2005 — which makes 2025 our 20th year serving homeowners and businesses across Ortonville, Brandon Township, and northern Oakland County. Roger, who leads the company, has 26 years of hands-on pest control experience. This isn’t a franchise. There’s no rotating cast of technicians dispatched from a regional call center. When you call us, you get a real company with real accountability.
One thing that sets us apart from most pest control companies in the Ortonville area: we keep the same technician assigned to your home year after year. That matters more than it sounds. A technician who’s been to your property before already knows where the carpenter ants found their way in last spring, which corners of your basement stay damp, and how your lot sits relative to the tree line. That kind of continuity produces better results — and it’s something no national brand can replicate.
We’re also Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor award winners, IPM-certified, and BBB Accredited. We offer discounts for seniors, veterans, and first responders — because those things matter to us, and they reflect the kind of community Ortonville actually is.
It starts with a real conversation. When you reach out, we ask about what you’re seeing, where you’re seeing it, and how long it’s been happening. For homeowners near the Ortonville Recreation Area or along the lake roads off M-15, that context matters — the pest pressures on a wooded half-acre lot near Hadley Hills are different from a village property on a smaller lot downtown, and we treat them accordingly.
From there, we do a thorough inspection of your home — inside and out. We’re looking at entry points, moisture conditions, signs of existing activity, and anything structural that’s making your home easier to get into. Older homes in Brandon Township and the surrounding areas often have settling foundations, aging sill plates, and decades of accumulated gaps. We find them. We document them. And we explain what we’re seeing in plain language before we do anything.
Treatment follows the IPM framework — meaning we start with the least invasive approach that addresses the root cause, not just the visible symptom. After the initial treatment, we schedule follow-ups based on what your property actually needs, not a one-size-fits-all calendar. If something comes back between visits, we come back too — that’s part of the guarantee, not an asterisk.
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We handle the full range of pest problems that come with living in northern Oakland County — ants, mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, rodents, stinging insects, bed bugs, and more. But a few things are worth calling out specifically, because they’re genuinely different from what most companies offer.
Our mosquito control program includes flea and tick treatment at no extra charge. For families spending time outdoors near the Ortonville Recreation Area trails or in lake-area yards along Bald Eagle Lake and Lake Louise, that’s not a small thing. Deer ticks — the species responsible for Lyme disease — are a real and growing concern in the wooded terrain of northern Oakland County. Most companies bill for tick treatment separately. We include it, because the outdoor pest problem here doesn’t stop at mosquitoes.
We’re also one of fewer than 100 companies in the entire United States offering certified canine bed bug detection. Trained detection dogs find infestations with 95–98% accuracy, compared to roughly 50% for a standard visual inspection. Michigan ranks second in the nation for bed bug infestations, and Ortonville isn’t exempt from that. If you have bed bugs, we’ll find them. If you don’t, you’ll have documented proof — not just someone’s best guess. We also offer price matching for reasonable competitors’ rates, so you don’t have to choose between the most qualified option and a fair price.
The pest profile in Ortonville is shaped heavily by the surrounding environment. Carpenter ants are one of the most consistent problems — the dense tree canopy throughout Brandon Township, combined with the high number of older wood-frame homes in the area, gives them exactly what they need: moisture, decaying wood, and easy access points through aging sill plates and foundation gaps. If you’re seeing large black ants in your home in spring, especially near windows or door frames, that’s usually the starting point of a larger colony issue inside the wall.
Mosquitoes and ticks are the other major concern, particularly for homes near Bald Eagle Lake, Lake Louise, Perry Lake, or the Ortonville Recreation Area. Blacklegged ticks — the species that carries Lyme disease — are most active in the brushy, wooded terrain that surrounds much of the village and township. Rodents become the dominant issue in fall, when dropping temperatures push mice into homes through gaps that most homeowners don’t know exist. Stinging insects, overwintering cluster flies, and bed bugs round out the list of what we see regularly in this area.
Yes — and the way we get there matters. We use Integrated Pest Management, which means we don’t default to the heaviest available treatment just because it’s fast. We assess what’s actually happening in your home, identify the source of the problem, and apply the least invasive approach that will genuinely resolve it. That framework is EPA-recognized and specifically designed to reduce unnecessary chemical exposure inside living spaces.
For families in Ortonville — where many households have children and pets that spend time on trails near the recreation area — this isn’t an abstract concern. We’ll walk you through exactly what’s being applied, where, and what any re-entry or precautionary guidance looks like before we leave. If you have specific sensitivities or concerns about a particular product, tell us upfront. We’d rather adjust the approach than have you second-guessing the treatment after the fact.
Not with us. Our mosquito control program includes flea and tick treatment at no additional charge — which is genuinely different from how most pest control companies structure their outdoor programs. The reason we include it is straightforward: if you’re dealing with mosquitoes in your yard near the Ortonville Recreation Area or along one of the lake roads off M-15, you’re almost certainly in tick habitat too. Treating one without the other doesn’t make sense for the environment here.
The treatment targets the areas where ticks are most likely to harbor and transfer — tall grass, leaf litter, brush lines, and the transition zones between your lawn and the wooded edges of your property. For Ortonville homeowners whose yards back up to wooded lots or who live near the Hadley Hills terrain of the recreation area, those transition zones are exactly where blacklegged tick exposure is highest. The program runs through the active season, and the timing is calibrated to when tick populations are most active in northern Oakland County.
Because your home has entry points you probably haven’t found yet — and that’s not a knock on the home, it’s just the reality of older construction in Ortonville. Our housing stock skews older, with a median construction year around 1972 and a significant portion of homes built before 1940. Decades of settling, aging foundation materials, and the natural movement of wood-frame construction create gaps at the sill plate, around utility penetrations, and along the rim joist that mice can exploit with very little effort. A mouse can fit through a gap the size of a dime.
What makes fall in northern Oakland County particularly predictable for rodent activity is the combination of dropping temperatures and the wooded, rural-adjacent landscape surrounding Ortonville and Brandon Township. Mice don’t travel far — they move from the field edge or the wood line to the nearest warm structure, and they find the same entry points year after year unless those points are sealed. A proper rodent control program addresses both sides: eliminating the active population inside and identifying the structural vulnerabilities that let them in. Treating only one side of that equation is why the problem keeps coming back.
A standard visual inspection for bed bugs depends entirely on what a technician can see — and bed bugs are exceptionally good at hiding. They tuck into mattress seams, behind outlet covers, inside furniture joints, and along baseboards in places a flashlight and a trained eye can miss. The detection rate for visual inspections alone is roughly 50%, which means there’s a real chance an infestation gets missed or underestimated before it spreads further.
Trained detection dogs work differently. They’re certified to identify the specific scent of live bed bugs and viable eggs, and they can cover a room in a fraction of the time it takes for a visual inspection — with a 95–98% accuracy rate. We’re one of fewer than 100 companies in the entire United States with this service. Michigan ranks second nationally for bed bug infestations. If you’ve had recent houseguests, traveled, or purchased secondhand furniture, canine detection gives you a definitive answer either way. That documented result — whether it confirms an infestation or clears the home — is something a visual inspection simply cannot provide.
Yes. We offer discounts for senior residents, military veterans, and first responders. Ortonville and the surrounding Brandon Township community have a strong tradition of local service — the kind of place where people look out for each other. Offering these discounts is a reflection of that, not a promotional tactic. If you or someone in your household qualifies, just mention it when you call and we’ll apply it to your service.
We also price match reasonable competitors’ rates. So if you’ve already gotten a quote from another pest control company serving the Ortonville area and you’re trying to decide whether the difference in experience and approach is worth it, reach out. We’ll have a straightforward conversation about it. The goal is to make sure you feel confident in the decision — not pressured into it.
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