Everyone in our family are covered with bites. Looks kinda like a chigger bite. Wife went to the doc today and he said it was sand mites. He gave her a shot and some meds, hope it works. My question is, if it is sand mites how do you get rid of them? My property is about 7 acres of mostly sand down near the gulf coast. We have a large dog kennel (about 150 dogs) where we breed dogs, some of them seem to be suffering too. For them I have found using vinegar seems to work. But I don't want to just treat the symtom, I want to elimate the problem. I also sprayed the kennel area with orange oil, jury is still out on that, but orange oil is very expensive($45 a gal)and I don't know that I can afford to spray 7 acres. Any ideas?

-- Howdy from Ken in TX (palooza98@ev1.net), March 25, 2002

Answers

Hi, Tide washing powder works-but 7 acres might get expensive. We sprinkle it around the house and the out buildings. We call them sand fleas here in Fla. They can be a real pain! Oh yea, have to repeat the Tide after it rains. Daryll

-- Daryll in NW FLA (twincrk@hotmail.com), March 25, 2002.

Howdy right back Ken, I know nothing 'bout these sand mites but if we have a problem with a local pest we contact our County Extension Agent and they come out and evaluate what's happening and suggest methods of dealing with same. Also, as you have a large kennel, do you belong to a State Kennel Club? If so, others in your area would maybe be able to help. If you don't, join. Get on the net, contact the AKC or whatever org. you register your dogs with and get some input from others there. Good luck, this sounds like a miserable problem to deal with. Tricky finding something that will kill those pests and not harm your dogs. LQ

-- Little Quacker (carouselxing@juno.com), March 26, 2002.

You can dust the dogs and their kennel with food grade Diatomaceous Earth.

Sprinkle the DE all around the outside of your house. Heck, I'd even sprinkle inside the house, since if you have carpeting it's gonna be tough to get rid of the buggers.

When the dogs got fleas last year, it was the first time in my life I had ever seen them. I sprinkled DE on all the carpeting in this rental and I woke up to dogs with clean bodies and a bunch of dead insects I didn't know I was sharing space with ~ including scorpians! I left the DE on the floor for a couple of days before vacuuming it up.

I now have a Pest Offense plugged in and don't have insects in the house. Hmmmm, wonder if it would help your situation.

-- ~Rogo (rogo2222@hotmail.com), March 26, 2002.

Since you're near the Gulf of Mexico, sounds like the plain old noseeums (sand flies, fleas or whatever) I put up with for 37 years in Florida.

Short of slathering yourself in diesel fuel, about the only thing that'll keep em off you is an insect repellant with a high percentage of DEET -- 27% minimum.

I used to use either Ben's 100 or Muskol, either of which is 95% DEET and it worked very well.

If that's what's been biting you, you can probably forget about ever eliminating them from the property. Even if you crop dusted the whole thing with some kind of spray that killed the current population, a new one would just blow in on the next wind.

-- Hank in Oklahoma (hbaker@ipa.net), March 26, 2002.

I should mention also that some people (very, very, very few) are highly allergic to DEET.

Use sparingly to begin with.

-- Hank in Oklahoma (hbaker@ipa.net), March 26, 2002.