How To Prevent Flea And Tick Infestation

All pet owners, especially of dogs and cats, face this big challenge: preventing the fleas and ticks.

How To Prevent Flea Infestation

The most simple is to prevent, not to wait until your pet is full of fleas. For every flea you see in the fur of the animal, dozens may still be hidden. Furthermore, if your pet enters the house, fleas may get on carpets, in beds, on furniture, where they breed rapidly. Therefore it is very important to prevent flea infestation in your home, because it is the environment where your pet lives. It is not enough to take care of your pet only, to wash it, to disinfect it, if the environment is ideal for the breeding of these parasites. Prevention should take place during periods of hot weather, starting from spring until frost.

Most veterinarians recommend using products like Frontline or Advantage, which apply once a month on the neck of the animal, directly on the skin. Anti-flea collars are also used, but their efficiency is lower. An effective way of prevention is that after each walk in parks or forests to wash seriously the animal with anti-flea shampoo. Usually, shampoos have but a momentary effect; during the wash, it removes any possible fleas ?received? by the animal during a walk, which otherwise would breed and would be harder to eradicate. Here are some solutions, 100% natural, to prevent fleas.

Did you know that only 5% of fleas live on the animal, and the remaining 95% is in the house in the form of eggs, larvae or pupae, which are very difficult, if not impossible to see with the naked eye?

If you are dealing with a flea infestation in the environment in which your pet lives, your house or your backyard, you should take radical measures.

The following actions are essential to prevent the breeding of fleas and ticks:

1.Clean and disinfect regularly the bedding, including the bedding of your dumb friend; washing and drying at high temperature kills flea larvae. What is high temperature? Well, it depends of course of the fabric, for instance, you can wash cotton at 90 degrees Celsius and something made of synthetic material at 40-50 degrees. If you cannot dry the sheets at high temperature, you can use ironing after drying.

2.Ventilate well the house, use vacuum cleaner to remove all dust, especially in remote areas (behind furniture, in the corners, etc.) These are ideal places for the breeding of the fleas.

3.Once a month, disinfect the floors with specific products that you can buy. An alternative to chemical products is water with vinegar.

4.Couches, carpets and any thick fabric are also excellent places for the growth of a flea colony. You should clean them thoroughly. A natural solution to clean the carpets is the spraying of a mixture of baking soda and salt. The mixture dehydrates the parasites and their eggs. A very important aspect of this method is that the carpet be completely dry before spraying.

5.You can also sprinkle periodically baking soda in the backyard, in the corners and in wet places to remove any possible colony.

How To Prevent Tick Infestation

The prevention and fighting against ticks resembles with the fight against fleas. Likewise, you should operate in two different ways: the animal and its environment, your house.

Low winter temperatures do not kill ticks, deer thick is actually very active then. However, a temperature of -20 degrees Celsius is a redoubtable natural enemy of ticks. To get rid of ticks, you have to destroy their habitat, and a very effective method is to remove dry leaves and mow the grass around the house and the cage. If you have a garden around the house, mow the grass regularly, remove the weeds, cut the bushes, as another measure to prevent ticks. Also, make sure that you cover the trash bins to avoid attracting rodents, possible hosts for these parasites. If you have ticks in the house, a very effective method in controlling them is based directly on their instinct to crawl to higher areas. More specifically, because they cannot fly or jump, you can create a barrier of about 30 centimetres of insecticide, such as an antiparasitic insecticide for ticks and fleas, around the room, where the floor and the wall meet. Any tick that goes to the wall to climb it, will come into contact with the antiparasitic insecticide and will die.

Just as with fleas, there is a large variety of products to control the ticks on your pets, from those that apply once a month on the skin of the animal and continuing with collars, powders, sprays, shampoos, etc.

But remember, any product you would like to use to prevent fleas and ticks, ask the advice of the veterinarian.

If you want to know more about fleas and ticks, about natural ways to remove them or even some great tips about flea and tick prevention, go to http://flea-and-tick-prevention.com