Hear from Our Customers
There’s a specific kind of exhaustion that comes with a bed bug problem. You’re not just tired — you’re second-guessing your own bedroom, checking the mattress before you lie down, and wondering if the spray you bought at the hardware store actually did anything. It didn’t. Store-bought sprays scatter bed bugs deeper into wall voids and furniture joints, which makes the infestation harder to treat, not easier.
What changes when you bring in a professional isn’t just the product — it’s the certainty. You know what’s there, where it is, and what it’s going to take to get rid of it. That clarity alone is worth the call.
For homeowners in Burt, that certainty matters even more. The ranch-style homes that define this area — many built between the 1950s and early 2000s — have older wall cavities, original baseboards, and decades of accumulated hiding spots that bed bugs exploit better than any newer construction. A visual inspection alone misses the majority of what’s actually there. Our K-9 detection program finds live bugs and viable eggs behind walls and inside furniture with 90–98% accuracy, compared to 17–40% for human inspection. That gap is the difference between a treatment that works and one that doesn’t.
First Choice Pest Control was founded on May 31, 2005, which makes 2025 our 20th year serving Michigan families, including homeowners throughout Burt and Taymouth Township. Roger, our owner, has 26 years of hands-on pest control experience — and this is still a family-owned operation, not a franchise with rotating technicians and a regional call center.
We serve homeowners and commercial customers across Saginaw County and the greater Genesee County area. When you book with us, you get the same technician every time — someone who learns your home, your history, and your situation. That’s not a policy we invented to sound good. It’s how we’ve kept customers coming back for two decades.
Our credentials include Integrated Pest Management training, Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor awards, and active MDARD licensing — the state certification required to legally apply pest control treatments in Michigan. We also offer discounts for seniors, veterans, and first responders, because a significant part of the Burt community has earned that.
When you reach out, the first thing we do is listen. You tell us what you’ve noticed — bite marks, dark spots on the mattress seams, bugs you’ve actually seen — and we use that to determine the right starting point. For most Burt homeowners, that starting point is a K-9 inspection.
Our certified detection dog works through your home systematically, identifying the exact locations of live bugs and viable eggs. This step matters more than most people realize. Treating a home without knowing precisely where the infestation is concentrated means you’re guessing — and bed bugs are very good at surviving guesses. Once the inspection confirms what we’re dealing with, we build a treatment plan specific to your home’s layout and infestation level. The older ranch-style construction common in Burt means we often pay close attention to baseboards, electrical outlets, and wall voids that newer builds simply don’t have in the same way.
Treatment is followed by a structured follow-up process. Bed bugs at certain life stages can be resistant to a single application, so we account for that in the timeline rather than treating it as a surprise. You’ll know what to expect after each visit, what signs to watch for, and when we’ll be back. No vague promises — just a clear process with a documented outcome.
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The canine detection program is the clearest differentiator we bring to bed bug control in Burt, MI — and it’s not something most pest control companies can offer. Fewer than 100 companies in the entire United States provide certified K-9 bed bug detection. No other local independent competitor identified in the Saginaw County area offers it. That matters because detection is where most treatments fail before they even start.
Beyond detection, our bed bug pest control services in Burt, MI cover both residential and commercial properties. If you’re a homeowner on Nichols Road dealing with a bedroom infestation, we handle it. If you’re a landlord managing a rental property in Taymouth Township and a tenant has reported a problem, we handle that too — and Michigan law is clear that landlords are required to make a good-faith effort to address bed bug infestations once they’re reported. We document our inspections and treatments, which protects you as a property owner.
We also offer price matching for reasonable competitors’ rates. If you’ve gotten a quote from another provider serving the 48417 area, bring it to us. You shouldn’t have to choose between the most capable bed bug exterminator in the region and a fair price — and with First Choice, you don’t have to.
Yes — and this is one of the most common misconceptions we run into. Bed bugs are entirely indoor pests. They don’t follow seasonal patterns the way mosquitoes or ants do. Inside a heated home in Burt, they stay active and reproductive year-round, regardless of what the temperature is doing outside in Saginaw County.
Michigan’s cold winters don’t help you here. The bugs are living in your mattress seams, your baseboards, and your furniture — all of which stay warm as long as your heat is running. What does affect timing is travel season. Summer months, when Burt residents are more likely to visit hotels near the Birch Run and Frankenmuth corridor, and the holiday travel season in November and December, represent the highest-risk windows for bringing bed bugs home. But once they’re in, the season stops mattering entirely.
The signs people most commonly notice first are bite marks — usually in a line or cluster on the arms, shoulders, or neck — and small dark spots on mattress seams or box spring fabric. Those dark spots are fecal matter, and they don’t wipe off cleanly. You might also notice a faint, musty odor in a heavily infested room, or find shed skins near the bed frame or baseboards.
The challenge is that bites alone aren’t a reliable confirmation. Other insects bite too, and reactions vary widely from person to person. Some people don’t react to bed bug bites at all, which means an infestation can go undetected for months. If you’re in an older ranch-style home in Burt — which describes most of the housing stock in the area — the bugs have more structural hiding spots than you can realistically inspect on your own. A K-9 inspection gives you a definitive answer rather than a guess, and that’s usually the fastest way to know for certain what you’re dealing with.
It’s a legitimate concern, and the honest answer is yes — though the risk depends on what you’re buying and how you handle it when you get home. Bed bugs are hitchhikers. They travel in bags, clothing, and secondhand items. High-traffic retail environments and the hotels adjacent to them along the I-75 corridor near Birch Run see millions of visitors annually, which creates more opportunities for bed bugs to spread than you’d find in a more isolated area.
The higher-risk purchases are used or discounted fabric items — clothing, soft goods, anything that’s been handled extensively. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services specifically recommends inspecting secondhand furniture, mattresses, and bedding before bringing them into your home. If you regularly shop the Birch Run Outlets or bring home thrift or secondhand items, inspecting those items before they enter your bedroom is a simple and effective habit. If you’re already seeing signs of a problem in your Burt home, that’s when you call us.
There’s no single honest answer that applies to every situation, and any company that gives you a flat “one treatment and you’re done” guarantee without seeing your home first is oversimplifying. The number of treatments depends on the size of the infestation, how long it’s been active, and the structure of your home.
In Burt’s older ranch-style housing stock, infestations that have been present for several months often require more than one treatment because bed bug eggs are resistant to most chemical applications. The eggs hatch after the first treatment, and a follow-up is needed to address the newly hatched nymphs before they reach reproductive maturity. We build that timeline into the plan from the start, so you’re not surprised by a second visit — you’re expecting it as part of a process that actually works. After our K-9 detection confirms the scope of the infestation, we’ll give you a realistic treatment timeline before anything starts.
Yes. We offer discounts for seniors, veterans, and first responders. Given that the 48417 ZIP code has a notably large senior population relative to its size, this comes up often — and it’s a real discount, not a footnote.
For seniors in Burt, the discount addresses something practical: pest control is an unplanned expense, and for someone on a fixed income, the cost can feel like a barrier to getting help quickly. Waiting on a bed bug infestation because of cost concerns almost always makes the situation more expensive in the long run — a small infestation treated early is significantly less involved than one that’s had months to spread through a home. If you’re a senior homeowner in Taymouth Township, call us and ask about the discount before you book. We’d rather you know upfront than find out after.
Yes. We hold active licensing through the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development — MDARD — which is the state body that regulates pesticide applicator certification. This isn’t optional. Any company legally applying pest control treatments in Michigan is required to carry this credential, and you should confirm it with any provider you’re considering, not just us.
Beyond the baseline licensing, our technicians carry Integrated Pest Management training — a methodology recognized by the EPA and the National Pest Management Association as the science-based standard for bed bug control. IPM isn’t just about what product gets applied. It’s about minimizing unnecessary chemical exposure while maximizing treatment effectiveness. For Burt homeowners with gardens, well water, or agricultural land nearby — which describes a lot of properties in Taymouth Township — that distinction matters. You want to know the person treating your home understands what they’re using and why.
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