Flea eggs are generally oval-shaped and off-white in color with their “chorion” soft shell – they will appear like some salt grain, sand, or dry skin. However, what do flea eggs look like on a dog?
In summary, Yes and NO – flea eggs are light in color and tiny and may thus prove difficult to see while on your dog with a naked eye. However, flea eggs are smooth and oval with a white color, which may hinder their visibility on the dog’s fur just like while on some light-colored fabric.
Details: What Do Flea Eggs Look Like on a Dog?
Fleas will definitely hurt your dogs as they’ll bite and suck blood from your pet. Fleas bites might also prove life-threatening.
- Despite that flea eggs will be challenging to detect on your dog’s fur, you must know how to identify and control these bugs.
- Proper and timely control of the flea eggs on or around your dog will help disrupt that elusive flea cycle – and thus you’ll make the dog and other pets safe.
1. Check Specs that Resemble Tiny salt and dandruff
To identify the fleas on your dogs, you should check for specs that resemble some tiny salt or dandruff. This must be especially be done during summer – during the warm climates as fleas will love the warmth.
- After every blood meal, the female fleas can lay about 4-8 eggs on your dog.
So, I recommend checking the dog’s tail and stomach for some flea eggs. Also, if there are no flea eggs around these areas, check too in the pet’s sleeping places.
- Notably, for a dog bed that is dark, you’ll get it easier to notice or see the flea eggs since they’re light-colored – check if you can notice some tiny white specs.
In case the dog already has adult fleas distrubi9ng it, you’ll notice that the pet will be scratching its skin and fur regularly. However, the coaching actions may contribute to further spreading of the flea eggs in other areas of the dog and the surrounding.
- In addition, flea eggs tend to hatch within 2 weeks, and thus if your dog already has these creatures, you’ll need to flea treat the house and dog too – maybe use flea shampoos.
2. Use a flea comb
You can use some flea combs such as the Safari Dog Flea Comb will assist you to get between the dog’s hair strands and thus remove those specs that could be flea eggs.
With the flea comb, you can easily remove and identify those flea feces (flea dirt) and be able to now differentiate them from flea eggs through the water-paper test.
- As a pet parent, you must be able to spot those flea eggs on the dog and its sleeping locations such as dog beds – you can use some magnifying glass to help you easily identify those flea eggs on the dog.
As noted above, ensure to inspect the dog’s tail and stomach for flea eggs. But be sure to observe where the dog is scratching itself first.
Various Indications on Dogs for Flea eggs
While the adult flea eggs will be simple to identify, the flea eggs might prove more challenging to notice on your dog – they’re microscopic measuring about a length of 0.5 mm.
- You may mistake the flea eggs for sand or dry skin – but also flea dirt could point to the presence of adult fleas in the surrounding.
So, to differentiate fleas from other things, you may need to position the speck you found on some paper and use your magnifying glass to check if the object has that oval shape that characterizes flea eggs.
Flea dirt or flea feces can also help know if you have fleas and their eggs around your dog – so check for spots that appear like flea dirt.
So, simply drop a few water drops into that paper with the speck and check for any color change to red- blood color since flea dirt is practically undigested blood from fleas.
- Note that flea larvae will appear like tiny maggots that’ll grow to pupae with their cocoon – the pupae will occupy their cocoons for about 1 week annually.
How Do Dogs Get Those Flea Eggs?
Dogs may pick fleas from different locations including carpets and even from other pets. So, when the dog is effectively attacked by fleas it’ll drop flea eggs and adult fleas as it moves on its trail.
Further, even when the dog is mainly indoors, you could still get some outdoor flea infestation – which implies that critical care is required.
- You can prevent fleas eggs from getting onto your dog by cutting that flea cycle early enough. So, if the aim is to remove flea eggs from your pet, ensure you control fleas early in time before they land on the dog.
Further, you’ll notice that flea eggs will tend to hatch faster when the climate is warmer – and thus this is when you must input extra flea-control measures.
To reduce the spread of fleas while reducing the risk of future infestations, ensure to keep home cleanliness – especially on the carpets of the dog’s sleeping areas as they may host adult fleas on even the flea eggs.
- I would recommend using pet vacuums in cleaning the home areas since these tools will suck up most of the flea eggs lying around.
How to Remove Flea Eggs From your Dogs
To remove flea eggs from your dogs, you’ll require flea-treatment methods such as flea shampoos, flea collars, or even oral treatments such as Capstar.
Most of the flea-treatment methods available will equally kill those flea eggs or hinder them from hatching.
- Therefore, you’ll easily break the flea cycle to control the bugs from your dog and also the surroundings such as the house and carpet fibers.
Flea vacuuming will also remove flea eggs plus pupae, larvae, and adult fleas. Equally, you can use tick and flea sprays for the house to control flea eggs and ticks in the home and environment.
Conclusion
Fleas will lay their eggs around the dog’s hips and fur – but since the eggs are not sticky they’ll fall off from the pet into carpeting or the dog’s resting areas.
- Flea eggs will look like tiny specs on the dog’s body – and they could be invisible in most cases since they’re small-sized and will be seen using some microscope.