Diatomaceous Earth and Ferrets

[Deleted]

Hi all!

Has anyone tried using food-grade diatomaceous earth on their ferrets' food?

Where I live, flies can be a real challenge. Mere minutes after setting out fresh food, the tiny gnat-sized flies have already found it. These tiny gnats appear to be able to lay eggs that hatch into maggots very quickly, maybe within a day. It can be challenging to control them, because they will also lay eggs in the poop in the litterboxes. Even if I changed the litter every day, they get into the garbage can and can breed there. I would have to not only clean the litterboxes every day, but also take the trash out every day. Even then, I often miss a piece of meat the ferrets have hidden, and the flies will get at that. My ferrets love their jerky, so I hate to not let them have some old gross meat around, since they enjoy it so much.

I have read that exposure to diatomaceous earth kills flies. I also have read that some dog people feed it to their dogs to kill parasites. If I was to sprinkle food-grade DE on my ferrets' food, would that have any effect controlling flies? Or is the stuff only effective on flies when it's dry?

I thought that if it was effective on the food, it might also be helpful to control the flies on the ferret poop, since the ferrets would ingest some of the DE while eating their food, and pass it in their poop.

Your thoughts? Anybody tried this?

[Deleted]

An alternate idea I thought about trying was setting up fly traps affixed to the outside of each ferret cage, near the feeding dens and litterboxes. I've had decent luck with a water bottle fly trap, where you just poke a small hole in the lid of a plastic water bottle, then put a bit of vinegar and a scrap of meat in there. The vinegar attracts any fruit flies and the rotting meat attracts the tiny gnat-like trash flies. Once they crawl into the tiny hole in the bottle, they typically never manage to find their way back out of the bottle, and usually end up dead in the vinegar. Anybody tried this method for controlling flies?

[Heather]

You can definitely try it. DE to function, has to be dry. The one thing to remember is that caution must be used when handling. If inhaled it can cause serious damage to mucous membranes
ciao

[Deleted]

I don't understand the bit about it being dry though, supposedly it will kill intestinal parasites when fed to dogs. It's certainly not going to be dry during the digestion process.

[Heather]

That's just it. It depends on who you talk to. I've never seen it as an effective method to worm but if you want to try it go for it. Supposedly, if it's wet (and believe me it is wet inside an animal) it won't work. If you use it to control fleas and such in your yard you must re-apply after heavy dews and rain. Think about it this way. DE works by scraping the exoskeleton of an insect or parasite to work. By damaging the protective coating the insect dehydrates, or becomes infected and dies. If that worked inside your furkids what do you think it would do to the inside of your pet. It couldn't be safely used....it would start to scrape away at the inner walls of the oesophagus, stomach and bowels. So, theoretically it shouldn't work but others swear by it....so give it a try.
ciao

[Deleted]

Apr 6, 2012 17:09:07 GMT -5 Heather said:

That's just it. It depends on who you talk to. I've never seen it as an effective method to worm but if you want to try it go for it. Supposedly, if it's wet (and believe me it is wet inside an animal) it won't work. If you use it to control fleas and such in your yard you must re-apply after heavy dews and rain. Think about it this way. DE works by scraping the exoskeleton of an insect or parasite to work. By damaging the protective coating the insect dehydrates, or becomes infected and dies. If that worked inside your furkids what do you think it would do to the inside of your pet. It couldn't be safely used....it would start to scrape away at the inner walls of the oesophagus, stomach and bowels. So, theoretically it shouldn't work but others swear by it....so give it a try.
ciao

That sounds really scary o.0