Best Method of Flea Control to Keep Home Pets Protected

Unlike many backyard pests, red imported fire ants are capable of delivering multiple, venomous stings that create a serious health threat for family pets. Injuries include a burning sensation from the poison injected into the skin, swelling, lesions, fluid buildup in the lungs and, in some rare cases, blindness.

Fire ants are dangerous because they live where pets sleep, eat, run and play," says Bryan Gooch of Bayer Environmental Science. "As fire ants continue to spread across the United States, we encourage all pet owners to seek professional help to protect their pets from these dangerous and aggressive creatures."

Families and pet owners can now reclaim their yards from fire ants using a breakthrough ingredient, fipronil. Fipronil is the same ingredient commonly used

Tips for homeowners who want to safeguard their pets:

Survey the area and inspect your property to determine whether there is an infestation, or call a lawn care professional (many offer free inspections). If one or more mounds are present, your property should be treated -- especially if you keep pets outside.

Fire ants are more likely to attack young and caged animals and usually sting body parts with little or no hair, such as the eyes, ears and stomach first. Open sores, wounds and areas of diseased skin are also often targeted. Pets with these conditions should be kept indoors.

If fire ants attack your pet, carefully and quickly remove the pet from the area and remove any fire ants from your pet. Do not attempt to spray ants off will hang on with their jaws and sting the animal repeatedly.

Even though proper maintenance of the habitat is primary, there are just some times when the ants will come. This page will give you some tips regarding how to keep the ants away from your pets. If they are in closed habitats and cannot escape the attack, the results can be devastating.

In each step, there will be a different technique for battling the situation. All of them are relatively easy, and the choice is yours. But they are important. Ant attacks can happen in the blink of an eye.

Double-Sided or Inside-Out Tape

Even if you do not have double-sided tape, any tape will do, especially duct tape. This might take two people, depending on the size of the habitat. Have one person hold one end of a roll of duct tape upside sticky side out while the other person wraps it tightly around the habitat. When cut at the end, the non-sticky part sticks to the sticky part. So do the ants. If the tape is wide enough, it should do the trick. Thin tape does not work. Thick tape, duct tape or packing tape, does work.

Bowl within a Bowl

Dogs and cats are also plagued by ant attacks when ants invade dry pet food or wet pet food.4 An easy solution is to take a small bowl of the pet food and place it in a larger shallow bowl of water. The outer bowl of water needs to be large enough to give a good amount of distance between the two bowls, but the right size to enable your pet to easily get to its food.

Check the bowls frequently. If a piece of dry food or kibble falls in the water, it will expand and form a handy raft that enables the ants to reach the smaller bowl and invade the food.

For more control tips, check out our main page here:

Auckland ant control