
Do your pets feel miserable because of ticks and fleas? You should go for a flea and tick prevention procedure. On this page, we will guide you towards the prevention procedure mechanism, preventing fleas and ticks on your cats and on your dogs, and our recommended best 5 products for the procedure (after doing a thorough assessment on the products).
These are the best 5 flea treatment solutions according to us. You can click the links to learn about the products or finish reading the article and then choose your best solution.
Fleas and ticks bite, suck blood and cause serious diseases like rocky-mountain spotted fever, heartworm disease, Lyme disease, anemia, dermatitis to pets. Throughout the year these two pests irritate cats and dogs and their attack takes a dangerous turn as soon as summer comes. That is the perfect time to surprise them with a sudden attack.
Flea and tick prevention works. But before we get to know how does it work, we have to understand how your pets get fleas and ticks on them.
Generally, pets get fleas on them from outside your house. Fleas can enter your house through your clothes and shoe. A visiting pet from the neighborhood can bring fleas to your home too. Fleas stick to a lot of furry and scurry animals that visit your yard. They can jump from one host to another. The common method of fleas entering your house is clinging on to the skins of your furry pets.
A matured female flea bites on the skin of your pet and gets it’s blood-meal. Once it has a blood-meal, it lays eggs. Eggs are slippery and they fall from the skin of the pet on the carpets and furniture. The larvae come out of the eggs soon. These limbless lifeforms weave a wall around them called a cocoon.
The cocoons containing the pupae inside them get matured and whenever they sense a suitable host near them, they hatch out from the cocoons and jump on to the host. They sense the host from vibrations of the ground, Carbon Dioxide, thermal energy radiated from the body of the animal. Humans could be hosts too but fleas are tiny insects and the maximum they can jump is up to the ankle of humans. So they prefer smaller mammals and inside your house, your pet is an ideal host for them.
Ticks are ectoparasites (lives on the surface of the hosts) and are found in hot and humid atmospheres. They tend to reside in long grasses, bushes, shrubs. Ticks can approach you and your pets while you along with the pets are roaming around vegetation. Birds may bring ticks and drop them on you and your pets too. Ticks can survive without a meal for almost 3 years and wait for the perfect opportunity.
The perfect opportunity of ticks to attack for blood-meal revolves around a dense population of hosts and a humid climate to keep them hydrated. Ticks cling on to grasses and plants with their third and fourth pairs of legs and once they find a host, they stretch their first pair of legs to pass on to it. Ticks can’t fly or jump. Once they come in contact with the host, they use their mouth to suck blood from the host’s body.
Prevent your Pets From Fleas and Ticks
IPM or Integrated Pest Management tactic is the first step to prevent fleas and ticks from getting on to your pets. It involves identifying and monitoring the pests (from where your pets are getting them), finding the damage caused by them, prevention of the damage and finally eliminating the pests (using pesticides if the removal technique does not work naturally) accordingly.
IPM is a necessary tool, especially for controlling flea and tick infestation on your pets. You should have a bit more knowledge about the pests that can harm you and your pets by learning about their lifecycles so that you can act accordingly. Various products to eliminate fleas and ticks are available in the market in the form of powders, pills, sprays, drops, collars, shampoos, tags, or wipes. You will have to choose the correct product for your problem.
Watch this video to know the essentials for tick and flea control:
Be sure whether your pet has really a flea infection or a tick infection before applying any pest control medication. These products contain highly toxic chemicals that might harm your pet. But there are natural products available on the market too that are milder repellents with no chemical components included.
Do not use too many pest control products all at once (like collars, sprays, lawn treatment, powder all together) as pets may not respond in a healthy way to so many toxins at a time. Applying natural products reduces the risk relatively.
Click here to know about the best flea collars for dogs.
Fleas are tiny pests and identifying them becomes more difficult than the ticks. It is advisable to brush your dog regularly with a flea comb as it’s finer teeth drags fleas out of the dog’s skin. Keep a bowl of hot water mixed with soap to drop the fleas. Ticks, on the other hand, are larger insects than fleas and can be spotted easily.
Move your hands on the body of your dog and if you find bumps on the skin, examine carefully to identify ticks. Ticks stick to ears, feet, neck, and head of dogs. Once you identify them you can brush them off too. Spot-on treatments, collars, tablets are common methods to remove ticks from your dogs. Always consult a veterinarian doctor.
Click here to know about the best tick collars for dogs.
The treatment method for dogs will not work for cats. The pesticides used to prevent fleas and ticks from dogs are chemically stronger and might harm the cats.
Click here to know about the best flea collars for cats.
It is always a better choice to use natural products on cats for removing fleas and ticks as they are milder than harsh chemical products. Essential oils like peppermint oil, lemongrass oil, cinnamon oil, and clove oil are the best products. Cats cannot break down the compounds (decomposition reactions) of these products as easily as humans and dogs can do and at the same time detest chemical products because of their tender anatomy.
Your veterinarian doctor is the perfect person to recommend the perfect tick and flea preventing product for your cat. Cats avoid watery and moist objects and that is why bathing a cat with a flea or tick removing shampoo may not be a suggestable solution. Instead of that, powders, collars, wipes, fine mists or drops could be better alternatives.
Yards and outdoors of your home plays a vital role in flea and tick infestation on to your pets. Cats and dogs roam outside your house as they do inside. Certain things you should keep in mind if you want your pets to be flea and tick free, especially from the outdoors of your house.
Listed below are the assessments of the products that remove fleas and ticks from your dogs. The same products with different versions work for cats too.
Why you should choose this?
This is a spot-on treatment with small cylindrical bottles containing the drops. Place the drops on the neck of the dog once a month and the major ingredients (Imidacloprid, Permethrin, and Pyriproxyfen) are capable of killing ticks and fleas, the eggs and the larvae. This is a strong product and only recommended for dogs who have a regular or a serious earlier problem with ticks and fleas. If you are looking for just prevention, a gentler product is recommended.
Click here and access our exterminator search tool- instantly get free quotes from the authentic house of exterminators in your local area.
Get FREE QuotesProcess Takes About 30 Seconds
Why you should choose this?
It is a natural product, free from toxic chemicals and kills fleas, ticks, and flea eggs. The spray is free from permethrins, pyrethrins or even cedar oil that may cause irritations to some dogs. Apply the spray on the skin of the dog, around your home and yard to get suitable results. It is a good pesticide and an insect repellent but at the same time volatile in nature. So repeated application is recommended.
Click here and access our exterminator search tool- instantly get free quotes from the authentic house of exterminators in your local area.
Get FREE QuotesProcess Takes About 30 Seconds
Why you should choose this?
This product can be compared to topical application products and spot-on treatments. You may forget to apply drops on the neck of your dog every month. Instead of that if you use the collar, the effect is the same. These odorless, non-greasy, water-resistant collars are effectual and work up to 8 months.
Click here and access our exterminator search tool- instantly get free quotes from the authentic house of exterminators in your local area.
Get FREE QuotesProcess Takes About 30 Seconds
Why you should choose this?
The product kills multiple annoying insects when spread on the yards and lawns. It needs to get activated by spraying water. Try avoiding skins to get in touch with the product as it may cause irritations. Make sure the area is dried before applying the product multiple times. Cover your skin properly while applying the product as ticks and fleas may come to your clothes during the process. Clean your clothes before entering the house.
Click here and access our exterminator search tool- instantly get free quotes from the authentic house of exterminators in your local area.
Get FREE QuotesProcess Takes About 30 Seconds
Why you should choose this?
Another natural product in powdered form and can be applied to cats and dogs. The major ingredients include yarrow flower powder, neem leaf powder, and diatomaceous earth. Just sprinkle the powder on furniture, baseboards, bedding, carpets, and floors and clean them on the next day.
If your pet is suffering from a serious flea or tick problem you should not bother whether to use a natural insect repellent or a mild insect remover from the skin of your pet. Just go for Bayer K9 Advantix II Flea, Tick and Mosquito Prevention containing severe chemical components to kill the fleas and ticks. The other products may repel pests for some time from the pets but they keep on coming back. Bayer K9 promises to kill the pests so that they never come back again.
The safety of the pet comes first. As a pet owner, you will definitely not want to apply harsh chemical products on the skin of the animal. You will choose the natural biological products, spend more time with the pet brushing the skin and monitoring its behavior.
If still, it does not work out, it is recommended to opt for the commercial products containing effective chemicals. A singular product can’t perish a tick or flea problem totally. You will have to mix and match different products and apply them. A multi-product approach is the best solution to defend a flea and tick infestation.
Click here and access our exterminator search tool- instantly get free quotes from the authentic house of exterminators in your local area.
Get FREE QuotesProcess Takes About 30 Seconds