Fleas Tips
Read these 5 Fleas Tips tips to make your life smarter, better, faster and wiser. Each tip is approved by our Editors and created by expert writers so great we call them Gurus. LifeTips is the place to go when you need to know about Fleas tips and hundreds of other topics.
I've killed the adults, but they keep coming back!
A flea only spends about 15% of his life as an adult. The rest of the time, he is an egg, a larva, or a pupa, just waiting to hatch into a biting adult.
You must use an Insect Growth Regulator (IGR) to stop the eggs and larvae from hatching. It is truly the secret to stopping fleas for good.
An Insect Growth Regulator (IGR) breaks the flea lifecycle by preventing a young flea from growing normally, into the next phase -- a biting, breeding adult.
- The first IGR to come out was Precor. It did a wonderful job of interrupting the flea life cycle in the house, but it breaks down rapidly in sunlight. So it didn't complete the job of getting rid of fleas in the whole environment.
- The Lufenuron in Program pills for dogs and cats is technically an IGR. The chemical in the pet's bloodstream stops the baby fleas from being able to hatch out of the egg. This, however, is its downfall. With Program, the flea has to bite the pet, AND CONTINUE TO CHEW ON THE PET for the rest of its life, to be effective.
- Archer and Flea Fix are third generation IGR's that work in the environment. There is no need to feed chemicals to the pets, and these don't easily break down in sunlight. This is true Long-Term control. No flea eggs can develop on your property for months at a time either indoors or outdoors. We use Archer because it is so much more economical, but if you have just a small area, then FleaFix is just as good of a choice.
For lots more info on Insect Growth
Regulators, click here!
Which insecticide should I use?
There are lots of insecticides on the market that will kill fleas. There are important things to take into consideration when choosing an insecticide:
* How toxic is it to fleas?
* How toxic is it to mammals? (that's us and our pets)
* How toxic is it to the environment?
It is best to get an insecticide that is tightly targeted to the insects that you are trying to eliminate. The best out now, like Conquer are just as deadly to fleas as the old Dursban
I can't emphasize how important this is. If we kill ourselves or our pets off, just to get rid of the fleas, then we are not being wise.
Conquer is a new Residual Insecticide Concentrate with the active ingredient of Esfenvalerate. It controls numerous pests in and around structures. It is recommended for Commercial and Industrial use. It is great for use in and around the home and food and non-food areas of: Schools, Office Buildings, Kennels, Food Processing Plants. It is specifically for use on Lawns to Kill Fleas AND Ticks.
- Kills fleas
- Kills ticks including the deer ticks that carry and transmit Lyme Disease
- One 16 ounce bottle treats 48,000 square feet of yard
- Use 1 ounce per 3,000 square feet
- Easy to use, just add "Archer" (the best Insect Growth Regulator) for COMPLETE outdoor control of fleas!
I don't see many fleas
If you have seen one flea on your dog or cat, he has fleas. In almost all cases, there are many more fleas on the pets than you actually see.
Here are some other ways to check if you have fleas:
- You can check for flea dirt, which is actually tiny specks of dried blood left by fleas when they bite your pet. Comb through your pet's coat onto a wet piece of paper towel. If the specks falling onto the paper turn red, your pet has fleas!
- Another test to see if a particular room is infested is: Wear white socks into a room that you suspect has fleas, that the pets have not been into for awhile. Since fleas are attracted to vibrations, your footsteps will cause them to jump toward you looking for a host. With white socks, you will see the tiny (usually newly hatched) fleas that gather. This is not designed for flea control, but if you find more than about five fleas in a single room, you probably have a MAJOR infestation to deal with. The adult fleas that you find are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the flea population!
- Don't forget that a flea only spends about 15% of his life as an adult. The other 85% are the eggs, larvae and pupae, just waiting to hatch out into a biting adult.
Insecticides?
Insecticides only kill of the adult fleas. The vast majority of any flea population consists of eggs, larvae and pupae, just waiting to hatch out into adults. That is why an insecticide does not do the job. It only kills 15% of the population. Check out the Life Cycle of the flea here.
To stop the juvenile fleas from developing you must use an Insect Growth Regulator. It does not kill the adult fleas (there are lots ofinsecticides to do that) but it does break the cycle and put an honest end to flea infestations.
If insecticides don't do it, what does?
It is true that insecticides only kill the 15% of fleas that are currently in the adult stage. To get the eggs and larvae, you need an Insect Growth Regulator.
An IGR is non-toxic -- it doesn't even kill fleas -- but it is the secret to true flea control. When the juvenile fleas cannot mature and change into the next phase, they simply die as eggs and larvae, stages of the flea that we never even see.
