Sulfur for fleas, ticks, lice, chiggers and flies

[Guest guest]

Hi,

Here is all the information from a discussion on sulfur on another list.

Baugh

*************

Dose for a medium size adult human is 1 teaspoon.

Judge said human at 120-140 lbs - after all, this was 100 years ago and

people were smaller. So the 60 lb dog would get half a teaspoon, and

the little dog one eighth, using this as a guideline.

My Mom always used to put sulfur in milk to de-worm all our barn

cats.

For external parasites, though, you can add 1 teaspoon yellow sulfur

powder per goat to their individual feeds every Saturday night. This

makes them exude a brimstone odor through their skin which lice and

ticks and flies can't live with. Also keeps the goats' digestion in

good order, they shouldn't ever get constipated.

If you think you  got them in your yard rather than camping or the park

etc., just dust your yard very very lightly with agricultural sulphur. do

not inhale it and wash hands etc well after using it. read the directions

When I first moved into my lake property there was nothing but trees, tall

grass in some areas and scrub with

forest litter in between, and in all that stuff,..millions of chiggers. It

was a long hill with a southwest wind coming off the lake so i started on my

neighbors lake front and went all along the two lake fronts allowing the

breezes to carry the dust up the hill to cover my lots and neighbors lots on

either side. We were never bothered with chiggers the 20 plus years we were

there after that. nor ticks. I didn't want to kill everything, and was happy

that it seemed to be of no harm to other animal/insects.

If you think you  got them in your yard rather  than camping or the park

etc., just dust your yard very very lightly with agricultural sulphur. do

not inhale it and wash hands etc well after using it. read the directions.

I had a bad case of lice

in early spring. I gave my goats one and a half teaspoons of sulfur per head

per day. I gave this to all of them until the lice was gone. I rubbed the

sulfur along the back line of each animal and underneath the legs. I put

the

sulfur in a syringe (without the needle) with honey or molasses and added

some

water. They took it without any problem. As soon as I see anyone scratching

I

give them this treatment and Viola! the lice are gone. I bought my sulfur

from

the herb store. I couldn`t find it anywhere in the feed stores.

Here is a good book to get for goats, Natural goat Care by Pat Coleby.

I've not used internal sulfur on a regular basis for the goats myself

as there hasn't been any need, just the occasional goat whose lice did

not die off by more usual means.

But one of the more famous dairy herds in NZ, in the Waikato where they

have ticks as well as lice, did a weekly dosing with sulfur for many

years. The goats were beautiful, healthy and high producers. Each goat

had its dose mixed in with its ration on a Saturday night.

Goats do seem to like the taste, as I've seen them lick the dust off

each other when it has been used externally.

Seems logical to give a smaller dose to a smaller goat.

Pharmacies do carry yellow sulfur powder. Will be expensive, though,

as it's purer than the agricultural version. For medicinal purposes

it's to BP standard. This does mean you could use it internally on the

goats to repel boarders, dose per adult goat is 1 teaspoon weekly. Much

more economical than using it as a dusting powder.

Btw, internally or externally, even though it stinks, I've not had any

trouble with tainted milk. The goats themselves do exude an odor of

brimstone.

The sulfa drug I used is called Eftolon, it's made by Pfizer, and is

used for both animals and humans. I had the animal stuff, and used the

pig dose, which is the same as for humans. I doubt it is allowed in the

US, but here, if you are out of reach of medical assistance and you have

drugs that will work, even if they are in an animal packet, you will be

advised by telephone of the dose rate and frequency. I had the oral

form, and just mixed it in a little water and swallowed it. Sulfa drugs

taste absolutely foul, but I had to take them when I was a child with

whooping cough so I got accustomed. The alternative is to pack a

capsule, which has always been impossible for me, I just can't swallow

them - Mum had to break the capsules when I was 6, and mix the powder

with a spoonful of milk....

I've found sulfa much more effective than penicillin and tetracyclines

for abscesses of all sorts in animals. It also works better in newborn

pneumonia than anything else, and is sold in its cheapest form for than

in NZ, for animals. The sulfa family has several variations, some of

which are better for certain ailments than others. Any good veterinary

dictionary should give a short history of them, it's very interesting.

Btw, sulfa is the cure for leprosy. It's the oldest of the modern

drugs, started being used in animals in the UK about 1936, I think. At

that stage penicillin was still in the laboratory.

I had a similar problem with one of my bucks and biting flies, they

adored him and never touched the other bucks. One of the neighbour's

bitches was the same. I came to the conclusion they both had sweeter

blood than the others! <grin> A favourite anti-sandfly trick in NZ is

for a human to have 1 tablespoon vinegar daily - you can take it how you

like. Never tried it on my goat but would be easy enough with a dog.

The vinegar is suppposed to give off fumes through the skin that the

insects can't tolerate so they stay away.

Another old trick is to give an animal 1 teaspoon weekly of yellow

sulfur powder. This does make the animal give off brimstone fumes from

the skin, I've used it on a couple of goats who never quite got rid of

all their lice by any other method, which made them reservoirs for

reinfecting the rest of the herd. Sulfur and treacle was the

Saturday-night dose for the humans in the late 19th, early 20th

centuries, supposed just to clear out the digestion but I bet it shooed

off the bedbugs and fleas as well.