Safe Flea Powder for Dogs - Ingredients & Effects

  • Thread starter Thread starter Skystar66
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Powder
Join the discussion
Registration is free. Ask a follow-up in this thread, or start your own.
Sign up Log in
1 reply · 3K views
Skystar66
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
I'm making a flea powder for my Golden Retriever and hope to find a 'food grade' inert that will disable fleas but not hurt my dog if he licks it off his fur.

Potassium sorbate
Corn gluten meal
Putrescent whole egg solids
Corn oil
Sesame (includes ground sesame plant)
Eugenol
Sodium lauryl sulfate
Geraniol
White pepper
Lauryl sulfate

Are all these powders (as opposed to oil or liquid)?
Are any 'granular' (like salt as opposed to baking soda)?
Are any destructive or poisonous to insects?

Thank you,

Michael
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Discussion

Chemistry news on Phys.org
It seems that you are basing your experimental powder on an existing labeled product and want to retro engineer it. While in grad school, I was witness to some high schoolers that my advisor had agreed to have us help with science fair ideas. One of the ideas used a video camera and T-maze to gather data on repellency of components extracted from natural sources towards some type of bug. Our contribution was to show them some simple TLC and chromatography that could allow them to isolate bands of the active component(s).

I can recognize that a few of these in your list would have been present in the extracts they had found some promise. I would guess that experimenting with fleas would be a bit difficult, but I recall that they can be attracted to traps by certain color of light, so the T maze could collect data for a repellent that could overcome attractive light.

You have to ask yourself though; if the repellent works, where do the fleas go? It can be no fun if you are the item they choose to dine on, and they inhabit your carpet and sofa!