Cheap & Dirty Lice Treatment

Now, just to be clear, I'm not in any way trying to promote this as the best solution for lice; in fact, I'm quite certain it's *not* and if you have any way at all to get hold of some Revolution, use that instead.

But, it occurs to me that someone else might find themself in an emergency situation -- say, NO vet in town seems to carry Revolution and you don't want your babies to suffer for the two weeks it seems to take to get anything in the mail from 1-800-petmeds (true story)....well, you can use this as a stop-gap measure.

Anyway: vegetable oil. I hear olive oil works better, but I had vegetable oil in the house so I used that.

I got the idea from reading about headlice treatments for kids and thought it would be worth trying, and would you know, it works better than the sulfur-lime dips my vet was using. I don't think it would work for mites or other buggies, but it works wonders for the lice (and you'll know it's lice, because you can see them crawling around in their fur).

What I did was bring a rat with me into the bathroom, and pour out some oil into my cupped hands; then I'd slaver this all over the rat in question, making sure to cover the underbelly, armpits, etc. Work it into the fur, down to the roots, so you can be sure to saturate the skin. Then, I rinsed in warm water, shampooed with kitten shampoo, and rinsed again, followed by a vigorous rub-down with a soft towel and a thorough combing with a flea comb. The theory is that the oil smothers the lice, killing them and causing them to release their hold on the ratty so they rinse off -- so it's more effective than just washing them would be.

It worked GREAT -- like I said, just as well or maybe better than a sulfur dip, at least, smells better, and doesn't cost $15 a rat.

So if you're like me and stuck in a small town where the vets for some unknown reason don't carry Revolution....it's worth a shot while you're waiting on the 1-800-petmeds to come in.

Interesting, although when you mention vegetable oil, for some reason I don't see ratties, I see....SALAD.

aw im lucky here i can get horse wormer paste.

but if im ever in need i will keep this in mind even though it sounds very messy and slimmy :giggle:

...Maybe I'll try ivermectin next, there IS a feedstore up the street that should have it. I'm just paranoid about overdosing on that sort of thing. With oil, at least you know you won't hurt them....even if they do kinda smell like you're about to tempura them....

I hope it works cause if it does it's a darn good thing to offer up. Could save a kid's life if someone wasn't going to get proper treatment.
I expect they'd be pretty popular with their cagemates and get a good grooming anyplace that didn't get shampoo'd good enough too.

I've used Ivermectin for 10 or 11 years. Never a problem with overdose. I buy the horse syringe and was told to put in in another container (I use a pill bottle) and mix it well. I put a bit the size of a grain of rice on my finger and add some cool-whip, yogurt, peanut butter, whatever and mix with a toothpick and they lick it off. I've used same dose for small girls to large boys so it's pretty safe.

I used this on Piper and her babies when revolution was too dangerous for a mum and her wee bubers.
It worked WONDERFULLY!
However, I agree, IF revolution can be used, i'd recomend that first and foremost.
I only used olive oil the one time on Peiper because like I said she was nursing, and the babies were days old and all were CRAWLING with lice.

Another thing to note is this will NOT work for mites. You cannot 'see' mites, you can only see lice, so that's how you would know the difference.
:wink2:

This does work wonders for human head lice, I know with 3 girls long hair going to elementary school and we found out when my youngest was 2yrs old she is very sensitve to the lice meds, the 2am trip to the hospital in ambulance was not fun!!! UGH!!!
BUT keep in mind for it to be effective you have to do it like every 3 days for a cpl weeks cause the lice eggs are not killed by this. so when they hatch(5-7days) you got a new batch of the little creepy crawly critters!
Oh and for people it makes your hair very nice...its like hot oil treatment!

This is indeed true! When my vet was on vacation [they seem to disappear when you need them most..] and I started finding scabs, everyone was doused with olive oil, the cage was bleached, and their bedding was washed in hot water. They were quite miffed with me and groomed themselves and each other for an hour before settling into a nap. Jem's is right that the olive oil coating has to be repeated every 3 or so days to continue to suffocate and drown the spawning eggs and remaining adults.