Flea Control Treatments

It is important to understand that fleas will persist if you only address one or two locations where they are breeding. Don’t think that treating the pet will keep your home or yard from getting fleas. The same is true about the yard. Follow this general rule, if the pet is an inside animal, you must treat the home and the pet to ensure no fleas. If the pet is an outside animal, you will need to treat the pet as well as the yard area the pet has access to.  If the pet spends a lot of time both inside and out, then consider treating the pet, yard and home. Always remember that flea control is egg control. If you stop the eggs from developing on the pet, in the yard and in the home – you can’t have fleas!

Once infested, a proper treatment will take a few weeks to rid any structure of fleas.  If done correctly, the cycle would be interrupted with the first treatment and once the flea pupae have all hatched out, the flea infestation will cease.  How long it takes to treat your flea infestation depends on how many flea pupae are in your home. It could be resolved with one treatment; it could take three to six weeks of spraying once a week.

Many flea pupae are left in the cycle following the initial treatment. One or two pupae hatching in the days following the first treatment will usually go unnoticed, but a mass hatching will be uncomfortable for those inhabiting the home and re-treatments at that point are suggested.  Remember these important facts about flea pupae for a thorough understanding of what is happening in your home following a treatment.

1) No chemical will kill the pupae consistently. When you do a liquid treatment with an adulticide and a growth regulator, the adulticide kills the adult fleas which are out and about. It will also kill any larva crawling around. The growth regulator acts on the existing eggs and once they are exposed to the regulator, they will not be able to develop normally into adults. However, there remains all the pupae which are still developing. These could take another 4-8 weeks to hatch out. This all depends on temperature, the species of flea and humidity.

2) Since pupae are motivated to hatch out when there is activity around them, be sure to keep people and pets active in the rooms where the flea problem is the worst. Typically, people do the all the wrong things when dealing with a flea problem. Although the eggs may be falling from cats and dogs, the adult fleas are more than happy to live their whole life on the pet. They have no interest in people. The new fleas you are seeing are the pupae cocoons hatching. If you decide to remove a pet from the home or rooms where the flea problem was most prevalent, you will leave the pupae cocoons no choice but to seek the next available blood meal – you!

3)  Do not leave any room empty for any length of time hoping to “starve” the fleas. Flea pupae are motivated by movement and body heat.  They will not hatch out if a room is void of activity. In fact, one way of getting them to hatch out quicker than they are inclined is the use of a vacuum. Daily vacuuming will excite them. In bad cases, some homeowners have sped the hatching process up by walking around in white socks. The white will reflect light and appears hot to a flea. Hot means blood and this will cause the cocoons to hatch. Immediately after walking around for a while, vacuum. The effect of vacuuming and the spray in the carpet will knockdown that many more fleas which will not be able to bite. Do this every day until you can do so without seeing any fleas. Flea cocoons can wait for over a year for a target.

Since the flea cycle can be completed on the pet, it is important to gain egg control on their fur. To maintain the pet, shampoo will kill some adult fleas, but do nothing for flea eggs.