flea control, post poisoning

[Ejc]

HI, in March our dog was extremely ill with some sort of poisoning - neither I nor our vet knew what it was. In past summers we have routinely used advantix for flea/ tick control, we have not this year as we were worried about using such a chemical again, but frequent combing and even diacotomous earch have not completely controlled the situation. Our vet is not certain, so was wondering if vets2U was still around or someone could coment on the use of adavtnix post poisoning - we don't really want to experiment but need to get ri of the fleas. thanks

[Christine Animal]

Try Total France Ejc.   [;-)]    (sorry, should have said French Entrée now).

But it would be interesting if you could come back here to give us the answer.   [:D]

 

[Edward Trunk]

There's a new stuff called Stronghold, worth trying. It's useful to know that sprays to treat the environment will not be effective against the pupal stage of the flea. They will tell you that the stuff kills adult fleas, eggs and larvae, and this is all true, but what they don't tell you is that there is a fourth, pupal stage which is impervious to insecticides.

[Ejc]

Got advice from vet and also the front line manufacturers and so tried it with great success and no ill effects...

[Christine Animal]

What about this diatomaceous earth we keep hearing about.  I'm going to try to get some.  Apparently it has to be the food grade.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgJ68B3AqKw

 

[confused of chalus]

If you find our where to get it, Christine, please let us know. I've been trying to get it for ages to kill flies in my wormery. The local vet says that the company that used to supply it has gone out of business

[Théière]

Shouldn't be a problem:

http://www.bitlessbridle.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=232

Or Amazon or Ebay.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-KG-DIATOMACEOUS-EARTH-PURE-PERU-FOOD-GRADE-/170494840303

[Keni]

Used Frontline, didn't work on the cats - fleas and 'chiggers' still in evidence.

Changed to Stronghold, seems to have done the trick. The Siamese cross has a small scab on her back, which is either her brother biting her (neutered but can't remember what happens after the first bit of grabbing hold of her). We got ours from the vets, six pipettes for around 30 euros. They last a month each pipette. Also got a spray from Carrefour, for textiles (Halte Acariens Fulgator) - kills the little bas***ds eggs etc., on the carpets etc., and as long as you do it when the animals are not in the house (in garden), it has worked well.

[Quillan]

Sorry I missed this thread but your not alone this year. We have had loads of flee problems with our cats and dogs this year and the normal stuff like Frontline etc just didn't work at all but we finally came up with a solution that has and still is working well.

The first big question we had to ask ourselves is do we really need a tick treatment and after a long discussion decided we didn't. In over ten years we have removed about three ticks of all our animals in total. We regularly 'pet' our animals when they sit with us and after a while it becomes natural to inspect them for ticks at the same time. Basically all our animals get inspected for ticks at least twice a week. So taking all that in to account we decided to forgo tick treatment.

Not having carpets are a real advantage especially with animals and flees because it narrows down the places they can live i.e. to soft furnishings, dog and cat beds etc.

If your going down the washing route then you need to wash their bedding and other item that you can wash in a washing machine and you need to wash at 60 deg which will kill any flees (the actual temperature required to kill flees is 50 deg). I know this because I tried it and it's true. One of the cats beds is made of nylon and all the dead flees were stuck to it after washing and it took me a while to shake and brush the dead bodies off.

We bought a couple of 'Bombs' from our local Pharmacy, I cant remember the make to be honest, but basically you place them on a stool or step ladders in the centre of the room, activate them (they are an aerosol type device) and leave the room closed up for about three hours. I was worried that they might damage electronic equipment so I put a sheet over the TV and HiFi. I was also worried about them leaving a residue over all the surfaces but they don't. We were very surprised about the amount of bugs (spiders, ants, flys etc) in general that they killed as well as the flees. Their about 14 Euros each but the do kill everything and they stay killed.

With the animals we found a two pronged attack the best method. The first thing you need to do is kill every flee on them and the best method we have tried that does work 100% is Capstar. This is a table, different sizes for different weight cats and dogs. Amazingly once ingested every flee on the animal is dead within 30 minutes. We have not noticed any side effects with these.

A new treatment we have used on the dogs and the only one which has worked this year is a new treatment from America called Comfortis (its the first ever flee treatment in the US to get FDA approval). Again a table which tastes of beef and is a bit chewy so we have had no problems giving them to the dogs. Unfortunately they don't yet do a version for cats so we went back to basic Frontline that only kills flees and not ticks which seems to have worked on the cats.

You normally need a prescription for Comfortis but I took the empty box to my local pharmacy and they ordered them for me with no prescription. You can of course buy them from your vet if you wish but then you can pay up to 70 Euros for six tablets. My pharmacy charged me 56.91 Euros for six (each of my dogs weigh over 25kg). Compared to Frontline Combo they work out at roughly a Euro more.

I know this is a bit long but it is from personal experience as opposed to second of even third hand experience and it has worked for us.

Edit - In finding the links to the products I mentioned above I find that Comfortis do now produce a version for cats so I am ordering some for them today and will be using them instead of Frontline.