Fleas!! Should it really take this long?!

Retro82

Council were going to charge us £125 for what (so far as I could tell) was the same thing, and they said they wouldn't come back again for free if it hadn't fixed the problem!

scaredy_cat

flea eggs can actually hibernate for about 3 years. in this hot weather, it might be that the stuff the pest guy used works on the adult fleas, so it is getting them as they come out of the egg/larve stage.

fluffnutter

You need to wait a few more weeks and let the insecticide do its thing. The life cycle of a flea is about four weeks from laying to hatching so what you're seeing is the eggs hatching every day (insecticide can't kill eggs). As they hatch the fleas will die but it will take a few weeks for every egg to hatch.

If you don't see an improvement in three or four weeks, call the guy back.

krlyr

foolofbeans wrote: »

Surprisingly I found one of the most effective flea killers was shake n vac.
We spent a fortune on fumiagting the house and weeks later we were still getting bitten.
We liberally doesed the carpets with shake n vac and that seemed to do the trick.
I think it's partly because carpet people don't actually recommend using it on carpets as it sinks into the pile and doesn't totally hoover out. So I think it suffocated the fleas. Might be worth a harmless try before you consider more chemicals.

Be careful with Shake N Vac, I've heard of many animals having an adverse reaction to it - and like said, it's very hard to hoover out of carpet so hard to get rid of if your pet is reacting to it.

Jennifer_Jane

I agree with fluffnutter and scaredy-cat. I lived for years in Cape Town and fleas are endemic there. We would take our dogs to huge troughs filled with insecticide (outside the vets), and let them swim through that!

Anyway, we always said that any treatment had to be done initially and again in 6 weeks to get the newly-hatched fleas. The treatments are doubtless better these days, but I thought his comment of waiting a week didn't really cover the problem of the eggs.

Just my view, but I acknowledge it's 13 years since I lived there.

Oh, and some powder in the vacuum cleaner too.

chris_n_tj

Please remember to clean out your Vacuum cleaner, the eggs can get in the filters and cause more problems. x

meritaten

if its really bad I recommend a smoke bomb and evacuating the house for the recommended time!

Acclaim is also good (about £13 a can which will do a small three bed house) and again vacating the premises for a couple of hours). I can personally recommend this as I once returned from holiday to find the house infested with fleas!

three days may not be enough as the flea eggs will still be hatching out. if after the recommend time you see even one live flea - get the guy back!

Jennifer_Jane

meritaten wrote: »

if its really bad I recommend a smoke bomb and evacuating the house for the recommended time!

Acclaim is also good (about £13 a can which will do a small three bed house) and again vacating the premises for a couple of hours). I can personally recommend this as I once returned from holiday to find the house infested with fleas!

three days may not be enough as the flea eggs will still be hatching out. if after the recommend time you see even one live flea - get the guy back!

That takes me back. Didn't know you could get them here. We used to do this all the time in Cape Town.

Retro82

Thanks everyone for all your advice. Hopefully we're at least on the way to breaking the cycle. The numbers do seem to be going down but that's not easy to measure when my scrutiny is going up!!

If he's willing to come back for free after just a week then I wont turn him down (and the longer I leave it the less likely I can hold him to his offer!).

Retro82

I know it's irrational but I think it bothers me that I can't SEE the insecticide once it all dried out so it's harder to believe it's actually doing anything!!