NATURAL FLEA CONTROL FLEA CONTROL TECHNIQUES THAT DO NOT USE INSECTICIDES OR CHEMICALS The most important thing to remember with any flea control program is: Preventing Fleas is Far Easier Than Trying to Get Rid of Them as Adults Remembering that only 1 percent of a potential flea population is in the adult stage, you must interrupt the flea's life cycle at an immature stage to prevent continuous flea infestation. As such, many of the following techniques are designed to prevent the immature stages of the flea from developing into adults. With this in mind, there are a variety of techniques at your disposal that do not require insecticides for effective flea control. These fall into the categories: NUTRITION Pet Grooming Housekeeping Lighted Traps Desiccant Powders Repellents (hopefully natural ) I HAVE FOUND THAT SEVERAL OF THE FOLLOWING TECHNIQUES MUST BE USED IN ORDER TO GAIN FULL RESULTS. NUTRITION The most important part of flea control is your pet's immune system. There are two ways to build up the immune system. #1 is what the animal eats and #2 is homeopathy. Cleansing the body of toxins can be done with herbs also. If I had a flea ridden 3 year old animal to fix, I would start with building the nutrition and using some homeopathics. Sulphur 6c would be my choice if the animal was fully vaccinated (see my up and coming articles on vaccination). I would try giving the animal this sulphur 6c about 3 x per week. In addition I would choose a dog food which was very high on the list of Natural Foods without chemical preservatives. Sometimes people e-mail me and I can recommend a dog food depending upon the breed of dog. Then in addition, I would add raw hamburg (frozen at least over night to kill the bad bacteria), raw organic eggs with the shell, cottage cheese, and plain yogurt. The animal would also receive either a multi-vitamin or some single vitamins depending upon the condition. PET GROOMING Keeping your animal clean is very important. Try using Doctor Bonner's Peppermint soap on your dog and for the cat, I would ask your Veterinarian for a safe non-toxic shampoo. Flea Comb These combs work very well if you are consistant and your dog does not mind the combing. Use gently. Soaking Your Pet Placing your pet underwater for 5 minutes (with its head sticking out, of course) in a tub or sink with shampoo added will drown many of the fleas. After this soaking, fleas still alive will be disoriented and sluggish and should be relatively easy to catch in a flea comb. Some cats will allow their bodies to be held underwater in a sink or bathtub while others won't. If yours will, start training it by holding its body underwater, or sitting with it in the bathtub, for a few minutes at a time and work your way up to about 5 minutes. If you have a young kitten, try holding its body underwater periodically, even if it doesn't have any fleas, to get it used to the feeling of being wet. Many dogs do not mind getting wet and may be held in a bathtub or outdoor pool for 5 minutes at a time with no trouble. During the soaking process, some fleas will crawl to a pet's head to escape a watery grave. These should be physically removed with a flea comb. White Towel Whether you soak or bathe your pet, the use of a white towel can help you catch additional fleas. With your pet's coat dripping wet, place a white towel around its body and hold it in place for about a minute. Remove the towel and inspect it for fleas. If they've jumped onto the towel, they'll be trying to burrow into the fabric to hide. Using a tweezers to crush fleas is the easiest way to catch and kill them on the towel. One word of caution -- don't routinely crush fleas with your fingers. Even the tiny flea can carry its own brand of parasites called mites (it only seems fair!), and these can cause irritation if they get under your fingernails when you crush a flea with your fingers. Towels The best method of killing flea eggs and larvae without using insecticides is to keep a washable surface under your pet when it's resting. Towels placed where your pet sleeps work great. You'll need two sets of towels, because you should remove one set every other day and wash it in order to insure you're trapping flea eggs before they have a chance to hatch. This is birth control for fleas without using chemicals. If you don't change towels every other day, you run the risk of having some (or all) of the eggs hatch. If your towel is made of a rather thick fabric, larvae may stay on the towel in search of food because they can burrow into the fabric to escape light. But I recommend washing towels every other day to catch eggs before they have a chance to hatch. Using two sets of towels will insure your pet's resting areas are covered 100 percent of the time. If your pet rests on your furniture, rug, or wood floor and you don't want to place a towel there, then you'll have to vacuum or wash that area as we'll discuss next. Vacuuming Flea populations in the home are most likely to occur on carpeted and wood floors, rather than linoleum or tile surfaces, as well as on furniture used by your pet. In addition, areas likely to have the most fleas are the living or family rooms, and high traffic areas, such as hallways An excellent control inside the home is to vacuum frequently -- for instance, every other day. You don't need to vacuum the entire house, just those areas and furniture your pet frequents, especially when resting. In addition, vacuum high traffic areas, especially near outside doors where pets tend to be active waiting to be let out. Vacuuming will collect mostly eggs, although you might get lucky and catch an adult flea or two. It's practically impossible to vacuum larvae and cocoons since they're both found deep inside flooring cracks, carpet, and furniture. Washing Floors Since flea eggs and larvae will drown if exposed to enough water, washing uncarpeted floors, especially wood floors, will effectively stop the flea's life cycle. To insure effectiveness, it should be done once a week. Steam Cleaning Steam cleaning rugs and furniture can kill and remove all stages of the flea's life cycle. It's an excellent method to bring heavy flea infestation down to "manageable" levels quickly without using insecticides. Please note: it is possible for cocoons to survive in carpets even during steam cleaning depending upon carpet thickness. Shampooing Shampooing rugs can also effectively kill and remove the egg and larval stages of the flea's life cycle if shampoo and water sufficiently soak the rug's fibers during the cleaning process. However, it is doubtful that shampooing will sufficiently contact cocoons to kill them. LIGHTED TRAPS Although there's nothing like the real thing, a flea can be lured into a trap at night even if there's a live host in the vicinity. A trap consists of a light source and a means to either hold or kill the fleas. Fleas are attracted to light and heat, not as readily as a live host, but you'll be surprised at how many fleas can be caught this way in an active flea environment. The idea for trapping fleas is actually borrowed from the American Indian. Legend has it they would place a lighted candle in a bowl of water at night. This clever trap protected them from fleas as they slept. The modern version of this concept uses an electric light and a sticky surface to hold and trap fleas. There are a variety of commercially sold units and they all work quite well. As the sticky surface becomes soiled with trapped fleas and other insects, you simply replace the card. The best locations for such traps are near your pet's resting and sleeping areas, but undoubtedly they'll catch fleas throughout the carpeted areas of your home. DESICCANT POWDERS These powders work by dehydrating the flea's body. Desiccant powders include diatomaceous earth (also known as DE or Diatom Dust) and silica gel. However, I've found that powdered silica gel is not effective in killing larvae, so I only recommend DE in this category of powders. DE powders can be sprinkled onto carpets and worked down into the fibers. Newly hatched flea larvae contact the powder and die from dehydration. If you apply such powders to your carpet, it is recommended you vacuum your carpet first. Then sprinkle the powder all over the carpet, rubbing it in with a broom. Since DE powder consists of tiny, but hard particles, be aware that they may cause carpet fibers to wear out more quickly in high traffic areas. Also, if you've recently installed a new carpet in your home, you should check the manufacturer's warranty to insure it won't be voided by using a desiccant powder. Although DE powders do not include toxic chemicals, there is one caution to observe while applying them. When handling these materials, be careful that neither you nor your pet inhale the powders. If inhaled into the lungs, DE can produce scaring of lung tissue similar to the effect of asbestos. Therefore, wear a suitable dust respirator when applying. An important thing to know -- the DE to use is a "garden grade" quality sold through plant nurseries as a soil amendment not the swimming pool DE. REPELLENTS Oral Repellents This is a category that is very controversial. Some people swear that oral repellents work great, while most professional authorities argue that they don't. Even the veterinarian authorities who recommend these as food supplements, say they do not work consistently. Oral repellents are dietary supplements that have been recommended for flea control for many years. They include brewer's yeast (a rich source of B vitamins), thiamine, sulfur, garlic, chelated zinc, cod liver oil, vitamin C, as well as small amounts of vinegar added to a pet's drinking water. Of these, yeast and garlic are probably the most popular ingredients in oral repellent products. The idea behind these remedies is that once ingested by an animal, an odor is released through its skin that repels fleas. A real problem with the use of yeast supplements for flea control is the fact that many dogs and cats have an intolerance to yeast. Their digestive systems do not have the enzymes, the intestinal length (and corresponding digestive time), and the proper acid/alkaline balance to properly break down and assimilate yeast. Therefore, gas is a common problem with animals fed yeast. Also, yeast can cause allergies in animals. Symptoms of allergies caused by yeast include: loss of hair, itching, rashes, watery eyes, stuffy nose, nausea, diarrhea, asthma, bronchitis, coughing, sore throat, arthritis, fatigue, eczema and depression (Ref. 17). All in all, yeast supplements for animals can do more harm than good. Herbal and Citrus Extract Repellents There are a variety of botanical-derived oils and chemicals that have demonstrated an ability to repel fleas. These are not controversial like the oral repellents since it's well documented that certain plants and trees possess an inherent ability to repel insects. This class of repellents include citrus extracts, cedarwood oil, pennyroyal oil, eucalyptus oil, walnut oil, peppermint oil, citronella oil, rosemary, and Australian tea tree oil (Ref. 2, 10). Citrus extracts include the chemicals D-limonene and linalool.  New note: We now sell Young Living Essential oils you can put several of these together with a little water and it will kill the fleas safely. I will however admit that if I had a cat with a bad case of fleas and it lived in the house, I might use the topical application from the vet to stop the cycle. But then my main objective would be to boost the immune system. My most classic CURE for fleas on a cat is the following: "Put the cat in a crate on a sheepskin type bedding with a lot of diatomaceous earth on the bed and on the cat. Have the crate big enough for the cat to have a litter pan, his food, and his water and leave him in there for 5 days. This of course will not get rid of the fleas in your carpet. I've tested many of these natural materials and can attest to the fact that they do, indeed, repel fleas. However, they cannot fully protect an animal, and should not be regarded as an alternative to physically removing adult fleas from your pet and removing eggs and larvae with good housekeeping techniques. The bottom line is - repellents will not stop a hungry flea and should not be relied on as the primary defense against fleas. For that reason, I DON'T recommend using repellent sprays on animals. However, I DO recommend using a repellent in a pet shampoo to help remove fleas from a pet's body during bathing or soaking. One word of caution -- many of the above oils can be poisonous if in a pure or concentrated form. Cats are especially sensitive to concentrated herbal oils and citrus extracts. In addition, none of these oils are meant to be ingested by your pet. You'll find some of these materials as ingredients in shampoos, sprays, and dips, and as the active ingredients in natural flea collars. Herbal repellents and citrus extracts are especially useful in shampoos to repel fleas as you're washing or soaking your pet, but like all shampoos, they should be completely rinsed off after bathing. Contact us: Meadow Ridge Kennels Box 108 Sullivan, N.H. 03445 603-847-9034 e-mail