Animal Medical Center & Associates P.C.
Jarvis E. Williams, DVM - "Skip"
Joi Pearson, DVM
Brooke Lewis, DVM
204 W. 75th Street
Kansas City, MO 64114
ph: 816-333-9000
fax: 816-361-5029
Fleas are Dirty Insects
- Eat 15 times their body weight of blood a day! They can kill from blood loss (especially young).
- Lay 40 to 50 eggs a day. (Over 2000 in their lifetime.) These eggs are laid in the pet’s hair and roll off the body into beds, carpet, outdoors, etc. like a salt shaker.
- Carry tapeworms and other diseases (plague, cat scratch fever, typhus, spotted fever, etc.).
- Cause allergic dermatitis: The pet reacts to flea saliva 1 to 72 hours after the bite with redness, itching, self mutilation, hair loss, etc. Dried fleas turn to powder and that substance can cause pulmonary allergy symptoms. (In children too.)
- Vet recommended topical flea killers take 4-24 hours to work. They may last a month, but can lose their strength. (May want to give every 2-3 weeks instead of 4, especially if giving lots of baths.)
- Will take three weeks (absolute minimum—may take more) to eliminate a flea infestation. Immature eggs and other stages live in carpet and outdoors and need to hatch, and then get on the animal to die. (About the time you are convinced the product hasn’t worked, you will maybe start to see results—in about three weeks.)
- By the time you first notice there is a flea problem it has probably been going on for at least 1 to 2 months. So you have all stages.
- Ten adult fleas will produce 1800 offspring in 30 days and 90,000 eggs, larva, and pupa (other stages of the insect) that will hatch later.
- All animals in house have to be treated. Not just the itchy, reacting ones.
- Squirrels, opossums (saw one with over 1000 fleas on it), raccoons, foxes, rabbits, stray cats, etc. carry fleas and keep bringing them to your pet’s environment.
- The only way to break the infestation is to stop them from laying eggs by killing them. Then as the previously laid eggs hatch—kill the newly emerging adults. This takes time. Up to 8 weeks.
- No products repel fleas. In fact, the flea has to get on the pet to die.
- Flea feces (digested and partially digested blood) looks like ground pepper and supplies food for the next generation of flea larva. (It’s dirty nasty stuff all over your house.)
- Strongly consider using environmental pest control, such as foggers, etc. Make sure you use an Insect Growth Regulator to arrest the development of immature stages. Call a pest control company?
- Spray, or use a granular product, in your yard and perimeter to kill those living outdoors, and to prevent more from migrating onto your turf.
- You want these dirty, disease carrying insects in your house? Feeding on your pets and kids and maybe you? Filling your house with their feces? TREAT YOUR PET and TREAT YOUR ENVIRONMENT.
- And vacuum thoroughly, even the hardwood floors and under furniture. And throw the vacuum bag away (things will hatch in there).
- CAPSTAR oral tablets kill fleas on the pet almost instantly. You can give them daily for a while along with a topical flea killer like Frontline. And you can bathe the pet too. And apply environmental pesticides at the same time, as well as treat your yard.
- BE THOROUGH, and AGGRESSIVE, and PERSISTANT, or YOU WON’T STOP THE INFESTATION.
- Your pet may have to have a cortisone shot they are so miserable. And they may have to be treated for tapeworms. (Tapeworms segments fall out of the pet’s anus and are about the size and color of a grain of rice but kind of flat—dried tape worm segments look like sesame seeds stuck in the hair around the anus.)
- Flea collars are worthless as are most topical not vet approved. Total waste of $$.
Copyright 2011 Animal Medical Center & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
204 W. 75th Street
Kansas City, MO 64114
ph: 816-333-9000
fax: 816-361-5029
