My animals are infested in fleas! I have tried frontline, advantage etc and nothing seems to work. My home is infested the yard is a sandlot so they are coming in on peoples feet/animals when they go out to potty. I don’t want to use a chemical bomb because I have a 6 week old baby in the home. Please help!
1. Vacuume your home well including cushions, down the sides and back of your furniture, pet bedding areas, any where your pets like to lay, and doorway areas. If they get on the beds vacuume the mattress and box springs, especially near edges and corners where “stuff” seems to collect, and under the bed too. Wash your bedding and pillows-hot water.
2. Treat your yard with something specifically for fleas. Hardware stores sell it. It has nematodes in it that will kill the fleas and their larva.
3. Treat your animals (I use Advantage). Read the package to see how close you retreat. You don’t want to make your pets sick.
4. Wait a day after treating to give a bath (again check the package instructions on the Advantage). Give bath with shampoo that kills fleas. I don’t like using too much insecticide on my dog and she has sensitive skin so I take the shampoo I use and add about 10 drops of Texas Cedarwood essential oil to the whole bottle. You can get it at the health food store and it does cost a bit but will last you a very long time.
5. While bathing pets also be washing their bedding-hot water and detergent and bleach. Do this every time you bathe the pets.
6. Bathe your pets once a week until you get the flea problem under control.
7. Don’t forget to continue to treat the yard as proscribed on the package. Be sure to treat the area around the house well, especially the door for about 1-2 feet out.
8. Keep pets out of the child’s room untill the fleas are nolonger a problem. They will bite your child.
Best of luck
MOVE
Take a bath…gets rid of the fleas and you’ll smell a whole lot better
We are having the same problem I put my 3 cats outside for a while till I get things a little more under controll but now that the cats are outside they are biting us! ugh!!!!! I put a plate of soapy water under a nite light at nite and I got 70 fleas in it I got that idea from the internet. also for the animals feed them brewers yeast ya can get it in pill form at walmart even and garlic powder mix a half a teaspoon of brewers yeast to a quarter of a teaspoon of the garlic powder sprinkle it into some soft canned food like a half a teaspoon of the mixture so far it seems to be working i checked my long haired cat today I diddnt see any fleas! yay!!!!!!Oh yeah crush the brewers yeast pills up I put em in a zip lock and crushed them with a hammer.
I would take your pets to the groomer for flea dips. While they are gone, you should have a professional come in and take care of the flea problem. Stay with a relative or in a hotel for the night so that the problem is resolved when you get back. Diatamaceous earth is great for insects, because it is organic and won’t harm your pets. I would use this in the sandy dirt part of your yard. If you have dogs and small children, I would suggest in not using diazinon. I thought it was taken off the market anyway, due to people being careless with it. Besides, it could kill your pets if it is ingested and that would just create more problems for you. Spend a little more money and have someone take care of this problem for you. Good luck!
Well duh if your house is infested if you treat your animals they’ll just pick up more. You need to have your whole house treated…why is your “yard” a sandlot? Do you live in the ghetto?
Check with your Dr. to see if you can use the flea bombs.They work great!! You let them off in the house and outside.You just have to leave for four hours.And then when you come home open all windows and wipe everything down!!
You might consider getting the yard sprayed a few times ….try to put some sod squares over the sandy bits!!!
Inside if you have carpeting BORAX works very well…Sprinkle it heavy on all floors and leave it for 24hrs before vacuuming it up.
Take care of the yard first…as this will help in the long run…..but in the meantime try the Borax
Good luck….
TRY NATURAL REPELLANTS. CONSULT YOUR VETANARIAN.
ULTRASONIC REPELLANTS MAY WORK, THEY CARRY THESE AT PET STORES OR HARDWARE STORES.
Diatomaceous Earth. You can find it at garden stores and it’s not harmful to pets or people unless you breathe too much of the dust. It can be rubbed on your animals and sprinkled on your carpet, yard, or pet bedding.
Here is some information about it: http://www.biconet.com/crawlers/DE.html
You said: “My home is infested the yard is a sandlot so they are coming in on peoples feet/animals when they go out to potty”
Solution: Stop letting people go into your yard to potty!
Seriously, you’ll have to treat the animals, the house, and the yard all at the same time; otherwise, they’ll just travel to the spot that’s not treated. Also, talk to your vet. He (or she) should know exactly what to do!
there is a spot spray you can spray in your house i can’t remember what it is called my vet told me about it. it works! you can get it at petco or petsmart it is in an aerosol can and it is like $12 or $15. if you use that at the same time as frontline it WILL work! (BTW it kills fleas AND flea EGGS)
also there are outside sprays you can hook up to your hose for your yard you can get at walmart or something for all kinds of bugs INCLUDING fleas and ticks, read the label.
call the vet and see if he/she recommends something
I use Tansy, a herb that grows wild where I live. Heres a link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tansy
It will grow anywhere and keeps the flea and ant population in your yard down. Its kinda pretty too. You can put dried tansy in little sachet bags and toss them into the corners of closets and storage rooms. Tossing the herb (leaves, flowers and all, except roots) into a pot of water and simmering it for about 10 minutes will make a tea that can be sprayed about the house to discourage fleas and ants. Its safer and smells better than flea spray chemicals. See if you can locate some growing in your area (they like roadsides and ditches) or see if you could pick some up at a garden center and grow it in a corner of your yard. Its easy to grow.
CITRUS REPELLENT: Cut a lemon into quarters and place in a pint jug. Cover the lemon with boiling water and let it steep overnight.
Next day you have a flea repellent that you can use in a spray bottle. Spray over your dog remembering especially behind the ears and
around the head generally (careful of eyes), around the base of the tail (once again keep away from delicate bits) and under your dog’s
‘armpits’.
Aromatherapy repellent: Using 10 ml. of sweet almond oil as your base, add 10 drops of lavender and 5 drops of cedar wood. Shake well and use 1 or 2 drops spread over the skin at least twice a week to keep the fleas away.
A flea collar can be made by rubbing a few drops of one of the following into an ordinary webbing or rope collar or even a doggy bandanna: eucalyptus oil, Tea Tree Oil, citronella, lavender or geranium. Don’t forget to do this weekly. We now stock a product that makes this easy for you. Scratch is a combination of Neem & grapeseed oil, Lemon, Grapefruit, Orange, Citronella, Eucalyptus, Cedarwood, Sage, Lavender essential oils.
YOUR HOME: Fleas spend most of their time in your furnishings and only hop onto your dog or you for their next meal. Make sure you wash your dog’s bedding regularly because no flea ever survived a hot wash cycle. If you add eucalyptus oil to the final rinse it will also kill 99% of house dust mites according to research from the University of Sydney, Australia.
You MUST vacuum your carpets on a daily basis if there are fleas on your pets and therefore in your home. This really is a most important line of defence as you will suck up fleas & hopefully their eggs before they have a chance to hatch. Empty the vacuum after use! In addition after a thorough vacuum you can sprinkle a fine layer of ordinary table salt over your upholstery and carpets and leave overnight before vacuuming again. Fleas who get a speck of salt on them will try to remove it and the salt will basically desiccate them!
BATHING: A badly infested dog really needs to be bathed so use your favourite dog shampoo. Rinse the dog off very thoroughly and in the final rinse add a couple of drops of Tea Tree Oil or Lavender oil. An alternative is to make your own herbal flea dip which will also work on ticks. Steep two cups of fresh rosemary in two pints of boiling water for 30 minutes. Strain the liquid, discard the leaves and make it up to one gallon ( 8 pints) with warm water. Pour this mixture over the dog until it’s saturated. Do not rinse off and allow the dog to dry naturally so this is a remedy to use on hot summer days.
INTERNAL FLEA REPELLENTS: Garlic may not be your favourite cologne and it’s not the flea’s favourite smell either. When your dog eats garlic, the smell is excreted through the dog’s skin making your dog less likely to be the flea’s next meal. In case you think you might need to give your dog a breath freshener along with the garlic, my own dogs eat garlic every day and I don’t find their breath smells of garlic.
Brewer’s yeast tablets will also help to make your dog less attractive to fleas because once again the smell is excreted through the skin.
Adding a dessertspoon of apple cider vinegar to the water bowl will make the skin more acidic and unpleasant to fleas and ticks. If your dogs don’t fancy apple cider vinegar in the water bowl, dilute it 50/50 with water and use in a spray bottle instead of the citrus repellent.
Try Terminator – a homoeopathic product made from fleas which should make your pet less attractive to other fleas.
call pest control
Poison Baits. Make sure to put flea medicine and flea collars on your animals.
This problem is bigger than just being on the pets themselves, so…….Spray your yard with diazinone (spelling?) this will kill them in your grass/sand…….and believe it or not…if they are in your carpet (if you have carpet) sprinkle powder detergent (TIDE is best) over the carpet and let it sit there for an hour……vacuum it up. Something in the detergent kills the eggs/fleas and also smells great too. Wash your pets regularly. Hope this helps.