Conditions Fleas?

[schuksudoon]

I was cleaning the cage today and I noticed a couple gross little bugs jumping around. I'm afraid that they're probably fleas. I have eight pigs who live in that cage, so if they are what I think they are, all of them have been exposed. I figured firstly do baths all around, but what else can I do? Is there a specific medication I should be buying?

As far as the area, I've taken the fleece to the garbage outside, I'm disinfecting the coroplast base, and I've vacuumed the entire room.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[Beth Pearson]

I personally would not have thrown the fleece away; rather thrown it into the washer with HOT water and dawn dish liquid and vinegar, but that's just me. As for fleas on guineas, I'm not sure but maybe [MENTION=13820]bpatters[/MENTION] or [MENTION=27623]Melissa123[/MENTION] would know...

 

[schuksudoon]

I would have, but I live in an apartment without a washing machine. I would have had to drive to the laundromat, and I would be nervous to take it in my car.

 

[RubyRain]

You need to act fast because fleas are HORRID to get rid of in a house and take a lot of work!

The good news is that vacuuming gets rid of 95% of them so vacuum a few times a day in your whole place!
Put a moth ball in the vacuum bag to kill the ones in there otherwise, you need change the vacuum bag after vacuuming because they can escape.

For the pigs, I had to get Advantage for kittens and the dosage was per lb so you will have weigh them or convert grams to lbs.
You can NOT use any flea meds on piggies, some are deadly. I think Advantage was the main one suggested as safe. check guinealynx.com for info
I only had to do one dose because we got the house under control.

As for your house, you can use a surface spray or fogger but you will need get the pigs out of there for a few hours while you do that.

They can lay eggs quickly in the carpet, furniture, etc. and takes 21 days to hatch. So you need to be vigilant for about a month to be sure you got rid of them all.

The really crazy thing is we don't even have cats or dogs, the darn fleas came from our yard where a possum was living! GRRRRR! When we found the possum den we found a disgustingly large number of fleas-stuff horror flicks are made of

 

[RubyRain]

There are some natural methods such as baking soda in the carpet to dehydrate the eggs and such, but honestly, success is variable and takes longer. I tried some natural stuff but after a few days i caved and got the chemicals because I couldn't stand finding them on my pigs or kids! In just a matter of 3 days my poor 4 yr old had bites all over her legs and torso-I shudder just to think about it.

 

[schuksudoon]

Thank you so much for the advice! This was definitely not how I wanted to spend my day off, haha.

But one question, as I'm doing baths, I've been doing them individually so I can really get a good look, and so far, I haven't see a single thing on any of the guineas. I've only seen the few I noticed on the coroplast, but I've spent about five minutes checking each girl before she goes in the water. From pictures I've seen, they're not too hard to miss on them, are they? Especially considering I had two of my white/lighter colored guineas out, I assumed it'd be easy to see little black bugs on them.

 

[aspecht]

You can use Dawn dish soap on them in the bathtub. You have to leave it on for awhile though. You will see the fleas start to come to the surface because they are suffocating. It does not totally kill them, so be sure to run the water In the tub for awhile to get them flushed out. I get the tub nice and toasty and place a small space heater in the bathroom so they don't get cold once they're wet.

 

[Melissa123]

You need to act fast because fleas are HORRID to get rid of in a house and take a lot of work!

The good news is that vacuuming gets rid of 95% of them so vacuum a few times a day in your whole place!
Put a moth ball in the vacuum bag to kill the ones in there otherwise, you need change the vacuum bag after vacuuming because they can escape.

For the pigs, I had to get Advantage for kittens and the dosage was per lb so you will have weigh them or convert grams to lbs.
You can NOT use any flea meds on piggies, some are deadly. I think Advantage was the main one suggested as safe. check guinealynx.com for info
I only had to do one dose because we got the house under control.

As for your house, you can use a surface spray or fogger but you will need get the pigs out of there for a few hours while you do that.

They can lay eggs quickly in the carpet, furniture, etc. and takes 21 days to hatch. So you need to be vigilant for about a month to be sure you got rid of them all.

The really crazy thing is we don't even have cats or dogs, the darn fleas came from our yard where a possum was living! GRRRRR! When we found the possum den we found a disgustingly large number of fleas-stuff horror flicks are made of

Advantage is no longer safe to use on pigs. Revolution for cats is safe, however you need to get it from a vet and they will give you a dose for it.


You not only have to worry about treating your pigs, but your house as well. There is where I am not sure what will be safe to use as I know chemicals are harmful to the piglets. I have heard Borax can work with carpets but not sure how or how often to use it. [MENTION=13820]bpatters[/MENTION], I believe is the one that mentioned this.