Ear mite home remedies can be useful if your cat or dog has an infestation of this little pest and you do not want to use chemical medications on your pet. These medications commonly contain pesticides which can be toxic for larger animals too.
Pesticides can have a cumulative effect on your pet, on other members of the household and on the environment. For that reason, many people prefer to avoid using them. Fortunately, there are effective ear mite home remedies available.
Even though ear mites are not dangerous in themselves, they are irritating to your pet. They directly cause around half of all ear infections as well as many cases of scratch wounds that can become infected.
You can create effective ear mite home remedies using essential oils, but first, you will need to remove as much as possible of the brown waxy or mealy debris that you will probably find in your pet’s ears. Massage the ears to bring the debris up to the surface where you can wipe it off with damp cotton wool. If the ears are scratched, use plain water or a non-stinging antiseptic liquid mixed with water. If not, you can use diluted vinegar (one teaspoon vinegar to five teaspoons of warm water) on cotton wool.
If there are significant amounts of debris and you look at it closely, you will probably see live mites moving in it, so be sure to throw out the cotton wool immediately. If you don’t see the mites, you may want to take a trip to the veterinarian’s office in case the ear problem has a different cause.
Then you can use essential oils to treat the ears. Mix 1 tablespoon of almond oil or olive oil with 400 IU vitamin E liquid in a dropper bottle, and apply about 10 drops into each ear. Massage around the ear, let the pet shake its head and then clean with cotton wool – not Q-tips. Repeat on alternate days for three applications over six days, then leave a gap of three days and repeat the six day treatment.
Always make sure that the oil is at body temperature before using a dropper to get it into the ear canal. This will mean gently warming it, for example in a bain marie or over steaming water. Either use a thermometer to check the temperature or drop a little onto the inside of your wrist. It should not feel either cold or warm.
After this, move on to step two of the treatment. Mix 1 tablespoon water at body temperature with 10 drops of yellow dock root extract which you can find online or from health stores. Drop half of this mixture into each ear. Massage, let pet shake, and wipe clean.
You will need to continue the yellow dock root extract treatment every three days for a month. It takes that long for all of the mite eggs to cycle to a point where they will be susceptible to the treatment.
If you have other cats or dogs, be sure to treat them too. Even if they do not have symptoms yet, they very likely have some mites which will increase in number and spread right back to the pet you just treated with one of these ear mite home remedies.
Leave a Reply