* Strong chemicals only weaken your companion’s health in the long run, making her more susceptible to fleas and other diseases.

Diligence rather than toxic chemicals is our best ally. These chemicals also kill other life forms and end up in our drinking water, foods, and mother’s milk. DDT is still ubiquitous, even though its usage in the United States was stopped years ago. We now know that these chemicals can also affect us, even if they are applied to our companion animals, so the gain is not worth the risk in my opinion.

Two main realms of Flea control

Use non-toxic materials for control of adults fleas on your companion. Shampoos can drastically reduce adults fleas and will interface with egg laying even if the fleas are not all kicked. Most shampoos kill fleas if you lather well to avoid irritating and drying the skin, You usually do not need to use a chemical flea shampoo.

Herbal rinses that can  repel fleas;

Once you catch the fleas on the comb, drop them into soapy water (otherwise they sit on the surface and can jump out of the container) and flush this down the toilet. You can also use alcohol to collect the fleas. Flea combs are fine-toothed combs that will mechanically removes fleas. They also disrupt feeding and egg laying. These work well on short haired animals. You can comb first with a wide-toothed comb to make it easier for the fleas on the comb, to get through the coat.

Diaomaceous earth is somewhat effective on the animal as well as in the house. It mechanically damages the flea’s intestines and respiratory apparatus, killing the flea.

Supplements such as brewer’s yeast and garlic help 20 to 25 percent of animals repel fleas, though some animals are allergic to yeast and may develop diarrhea or skin problems.

We do not recommend the following types of agents:

Shampoos and steam cleaners add moisture to carpets and thus may initiate hatching of fleas. This can be good if you follow closely with thorough vacuuming. For household control, diligent cleanliness is the most important part of the equation. Concentrate under furniture and where your companions spend the majority of their time.

Vacuum daily at first, then taper to weekly. If you need to apply a flea-killing agent, boron compounds are fairy effective and very safe.

Some Effective brand:

How to use effectively:

• Maximum effectiveness is reached about two weeks after application, so be patient if you still see fleas after a few days.

You can buy it in most grocery stores.

As a last resort, you can use a natural pyrethrin such as a powder of pyrethrum flowers to get a quick handle on the household infestation if it is servere.

Some measures that help outside control

• Clipping to minimize protected areas and keep the yard cut short (remember that heat and low humidity as well as freezing will kill fleas).

• Treat dog houses or areas where animals sleep with diatomaceous earth, and use cedar shaving or black walnut leaves.

• There is a nematode (worm) that parasitizes fleas and kills them; this can be applied during flea season (warm, humid weather) to reduce the flea burden in the yard.

• They are also available through the catalog “Garden Alive,” which specializes in nontoxic gardening.  Many garden and hardware stores sell these nematodes.

• There is little that homeopathy has to offer for flea control other than constitutional treatment to improve health and resistant to fleas.

• Pulex irritans is a remedy made from the human flea, and some feel that it can improve resistance.

• Sulphur is the remedy most often associated with flea infestation, though it is by no means the only remedy for this. Spray made of 30C Sulphur in water will repel fleas.

• Ledum palustre is the big remedy for insect bites and puncture wounds and thus is recommended by some for the reaction of the flea bite.

• Caladium is a remedy for insect bites that sting and burn excessively. It may help some animals who are especially sensirive to flea bites.

Background Information

Cleanliness is important here, but healthy animals generally stay clean. If you are sitting on the edge of your seat for this one, sit back and relax, as there are no easy answers to the flea problem..

In general, given the same environment, healthier animals suffer less from fleas. It all comes back to good food, lots of love, and minimal stress. The most important measure you can take is similar to that with any illness, and that is to strengthen the overall health of the animal

The life cycle is similar to that of the butterfly with egg, larva, cocoon, and adult stages. Success against flea infestations depends heavily upon control of the flea life cycle off of the animal.

            Larvae are clear to white with a reddish-brown steak of blood pigment in their intestines; you may see the larvae where your companion sleeps. Although fleas live on the skin of dogs they lay eggs that fall off and hatch in the environment rather than of the animal. These eggs hatch into small (one-fourth inch long), wormlike larvae after two or five days at 70 to 80 percent humidity. If the humidity is less than 30 to 40 percent, the eggs will not hatch.

The larvae must eat adult flea faces to develop further. Larvae are very susceptible to heat and drying; they will die if the relative humidity drops below 50 percent. Continued temperatures above 95 F (35) will also kill the larvae. They develop at the base of carpet pile or grasses, under furniture, and porches. For these and other reasons, the larvae shy way from light and tend to travel downward.

Takes one to three weeks to make this transition, but these pre-emerged adults do not issue from the cocoon until an external stimulus triggers them to hatch. After one two to weeks, the larvae spins a cocoon, where development continues as it transforms into a “pre-emerge adult.”  They may sit patiently in the cocoon for up to 140 days, waiting for a host arrive. While in the cocoon, the flea can break out of the cocoon and leap onto the host in less than one second. There is virtually no exposure, even to residual insecticides.

Heat is the primary agent, but vibration, moisture, physical pressure, and carbon dioxide will also incite hatching-essentially, anything that tells the flea that a warm-blooded animas is available.

What stimuli entices these pre-emerge adults to emerge?. A vacuum cleaner with a better bar can sometimes trick the flea into emerging, thus we can use this to our advantage.

The big concentration of eggs, larvae, and cocoons will be where the animal spends the majority of its time. Adult fleas must live on the animal, though they can survive for one to two weeks before finding a host. The adult life span may exceed one hundred days. Eggs are laid on the animal and drop onto the floor or ground.  Once they feed, however, they can only survive for up to four days, and most will die after two days.

Although this may not sound like a lot of blood relative to the host, with large numbers of fleas on puppies and kittens the impact can be severe, even fatal. The female flea must feed constantly to lay eggs, as she may lay up to twice her body weight daily eggs. This amounts to as many as forty-six eggs per day in the first week of life, and over two thousand eggs over a one-hundred-day life span. In order to accomplish this feat she will consume fifteen times her weight in blood every day.

Additionally, other host species such as raccoons and opossums may host these fleas. Squirrels do not host this species of flea, however. Although freezing temperatures can kill fleas in the winter, they survive in houses and in protected spaces like piles of leave and yard waste, and in crawl spaces under houses.