The importance of year-round flea control

December 20, 2023

The thought of fleas can make you feel itchy and knowing they could be in your house is not pleasant! They can bite humans and cause irritation and they can make your pet very itchy, then lead to sore red skin and losing fur from it. But sometimes it is not that obvious when your furry friend may be carrying unwanted passengers…

How to find fleas

You can use a flea comb to go through your pets’ fur to see if you can spot either fleas or the faeces left behind by them. Using a wet paper towel and combing onto it can be an easier way to look for them. While mud starts black or brown and stays that way on wet paper, flea dirt will go from black or brown to bright red. There are various types of fleas with the most common found on both dogs and cats being the cat flea.

Flea lifecycle

Fleas bite the skin of your pet (or yourself!) and ingest blood. Understanding the lifecycle of the flea helps us to work out why year-long flea control is important.

Adult fleas can lay 40-50 eggs per day, these turn into larvae & then pupae before becoming adults again. The whole life cycle can take as little as two weeks or up to months to complete, depending on the environmental conditions. Adults will lay the eggs within 24 hours of being on your pet and these will then fall into the environment. Then the immature stages (larvae) will live in carpets, cracks and crevices in both homes and outside, only emerging as adults from their pupae when conditions are right. This shows how within days there can be hundreds if not thousands of fleas, so it is important to prevent them.

The aims of Flea control:

–  Kill fleas on your pet (relief from itching)

–  Remove infestation in environment

–  Prevention of future fleas

Diseases

Fleas can cause several diseases in your pet dogs and cats. They can cause anaemia (a reduced red blood cell count) leading to weakness and collapse, especially in young kittens and puppies. They can transmit diseases between animals through feeding on blood and can also carry tapeworm larvae within them, passing tapeworm onto pets as well.

How to control them

It takes time for any flea products to kill adult fleas on your pet and some products will prevent the eggs developing as well. So, targeting two areas at once means a quicker resolution to any flea problems. Remember that all flea infestations will have a problem either in the house or outside, so it can take weeks, or months, to get on top of things and truly stop them.

All cats and dogs in the house must be treated to get rid of fleas as if one has fleas, all of them probably do – even if infestation is only apparent on one animal.

Effective products exist as medicated collars, oral tablets (given into mouth) and topical liquids (applied onto skin) to treat fleas. Some need to be re-applied monthly, whereas others last for 3 months, or even (for one particular collar) 7+ months. Treating the environment is also important with hoovering, washing bedding/soft furnishings (including cat baskets!) at 60C. Often a suitable household spray may be required to treat things that cannot be washed, and these have specific instructions for use that should be followed closely.

There are a variety of products available for both prevention and treatment of fleas in dogs and cats and it is important to come and see your vet for further advice on the most appropriate product for your pet. Finding the best product for your pet will involve knowing their lifestyle, age, weight and any other health issues. If your pet is suffering from sore skin then a physical examination by your vet is advised encase further treatment is required, so please contact us for more advice. This video can help to explain things in more details  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gsr_NDBRc9U

Don’t fleas go away in the winter?

Not any more! Many years ago, we rarely saw fleas in the winter months. However, a combination of milder winters, different lifestyles and, above all, central heating means that the environmental conditions required for the fleas to complete their life cycle are now met in most houses 365 days a year!

As a result, you cannot assume that there’s a “down season” for fleas.

Always talk to one of our vets for a personalised flea control plan for your pets!

References

https://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/pets/general/fleas

https://www.cdc.gov/fleas/getting_rid.html