08/02/2023
Battling Fleas:
The fleas you see only account for 1-3% of the fleas in your home.
Each adult female flea lays 40 eggs a day. It’s quite likely the first flea entered your home more than a month ago. Then, every subsequent female flea that hatched and fed, also laid 40 eggs a day until your dog was itchy enough for you to notice them.
There are now thousands of flea eggs, larvae, and pupae in your home. The eggs will be found scattered wherever the pets spend time, as well as hitching rides on people traveling from room to room. The larvae move away from light, and then pupate into an impenetrable shell, and sprays/bombs won’t kill them. Read this paragraph again, it will be important later.
The baby fleas hatch out when triggered by heat, vibration or flashes of light - all things that happen when a warm tasty mammal is nearby. They can lie in wait for up to a year before hatching.
Bathing with Dawn very effectively kills the fleas on your pet, but it’s efficacy ends the minute you rinse it off.
As soon as your pet walks away, it’s heat and movement trigger a new baby flea to hatch, jump on your pet, and feed. It continues to lay 40 eggs a day until the next bath.
This becomes a work intensive and very frustrating cycle.
Otc flea collars are useless!!! The Seresto collar is the only good flea collar burst can't be used in kittens.
Many topical treatments are the same. They become more effective when combined with an Insect growth regulator- Pyripoxyfen is a common one, and is found in topicals like frontline plus.
The Fipronil in Frontline kills the adults, and the insect growth regulator Pyripoxyfen prevents the eggs and larvae from developing into adult fleas, effectively breaking the life cycle.
Now, you still have the pupae that are already developed to account for, and it takes THREE CONSECUTIVE MONTHS of treatment, at minimum, to break the flea life cycle because of these pupae which will continue to hatch and hop on your cats until the medication kills all of them.
The newer products, such as Advantage are even more effective. They kill the fleas faster, preventing them from laying eggs at all. It can still take several weeks or months for your pets to trigger all the pupae to hatch.
Regardless of which product you use, you will still need to use it for a MINIMUM of 3 months.
You’re probably grossed out now, and want to go buy every chemical ever made to coat your house, but this isn’t an effective strategy.
Remember those pupae are impervious to chemicals. So bombs and insecticides will kill flea eggs and larvae, but not the pupae.
The most effective secondary treatment is vacuuming. Vacuuming is work, so we want to make sure that effort is put to good use.
Now going back to the flea life cycle. Eggs will be anywhere your dog goes. Everywhere he walks, plays or sleeps. If you have bedding that can go through the wash, go ahead and wash it.
Think of every place your pets go, and vacuum thoroughly. Hallways, couches, bedding, under and behind furniture. Don’t miss anything.
Then we go after the larvae/pupae. The larvae don’t like light, so they will be under and behind furniture, under couch cushions, along floorboards, and other places you might not hit with normal vacuuming.
Thorough vacuuming with the life cycle in mind is extremely effective, and can reduce the flea population in your home by 80%.
Capstar works very rapidly but is only effective for a few hours. It has no residual.
Written by a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine
