Natural flea preventatives

[crow_noir]

I was looking for natural flea remedies/preventatives and somebody told me to add bout a tablespoon of dry yeast to their food once a day. Any opinions on this? Or other suggestions?

What about using diatomaceous earth (food grade) around the parimiter of your house? Had fabulous results of infestations (of several things) go away after we did that.

It's said you can use it right in your dog's coat, but i can't trust doing that. Not when they sniff themselves, and i rub into their fur, etc.

If you did do that all i could suggest is washing your dog with a paste made of it. Rinsing it all out. Sure, the fleas wouldn't die and fall out right away, but they eventually would. You'd also have to do a second wash for when the eggs were to hatch.


(I still swear by it for deworming. )

[dragondawg]

diatomaceous earth is great for keeping slugs and snails off your dog. Not sure how many dogs have such problems. The whole idea of diatomaceous earth is that soft belly critters that crawl, will crawl over the diatomaceous earth and scrape up their abdomens. In the case of snails and slugs in the garden the abrasions cause them to become dehydrated and die. You have to reapply it to the soil after each rain.

But for fleas they should be able to walk or jump over the crystals, with no effect to themselves.

Also the status of the immune system has nothing to do with getting or repelling fleas. If a healthy dog or a dog with an impaired immune system is around another dog with fleas both are equally likely to have a flea jump on them and start biting. However, mites such a Demodex (puppy mange) are small enough to have interactions with the dog's immune system. An older geriatric dog that suddenly comes down with demodex mange has an impaired immune system and should be checked for cancer.

[crow_noir]

The only thing i've had evade the DE around here are spiders. ...and that's fine with me. I like most of the spiders we have (even though i'm spider-phobic.)

I can see fleas easily jumping over it though (if you had a line drawn with it.)

diatomaceous earth is great for keeping slugs and snails off your dog. Not sure how many dogs have such problems. The whole idea of diatomaceous earth is that soft belly critters that crawl, will crawl over the diatomaceous earth and scrape up their abdomens. In the case of snails and slugs in the garden the abrasions cause them to become dehydrated and die. You have to reapply it to the soil after each rain.

But for fleas they should be able to walk or jump over the crystals, with no effect to themselves.

[TamanduaGirl]

Neem oil sprays or the rub in foam. It works great. My fahter is selling is own mix now but in the past used the Vetrinarian's best Waterless dog bath. Not marketed for fleas but has neem in it and seen it actualy kill fleas but it's safe enough a child could drink pure neem and be okay.

[k9krazee]

Thanks for the input everybody. On a side note, my dogs don't actually have fleas, they are on preventative but I was hoping to possibly go the natural route instead.