One of the main issues our new and existing customers have been contacting us about this year has been Fleas. While Spring Break in the Rio Grande Valley is widely considered a time to vacation or take time away from school and studies; in the pest control industry the first couple weeks of March usually brings in an abundance of pest related calls and inquiries. As Spring begins to move its way towards Summer, make sure to keep an eye out for potential Flea issues in and around your home.

What to look for:

• Check any pets living inside or outside of your home for signs of fleas or ticks. Make sure to check around ears and the underside of their belly, as these areas are hot spots to fleas.
• Vacuum carpeting indoors: When inside your home, fleas will lay their eggs deep in the fibers of carpeting. Vibrations from the vacuum will force dormant eggs to hatch, and the vacuum can lift eggs from the carpet before they have the ability to hatch and mature. Remember to always empty vacuum contents outside of the home.
• Keep your grass short: Like the vacuum, a mowers vibrations will force flea eggs to hatch and keeping a short lawn will deter fleas and ticks from harboring in your lawn.
• An easy trick to "test" for the presence of fleas is to wear a pair of white calf high socks and spend about 10 min inside and then outside of your home. If an infestation is present you should notice multiple small fleas on your socks. Although we know this is not going to be very "fashionable" unless your a middle aged father of two; this is a great way to identify your flea issue quickly!

Please remember that fleas are capable of spreading fleaborne diseases so we highly recommend contacting a professional Pest Control company (Such as us!) at the first sight of any flea infestations.

Welcome!

Our topic for today will be about our crazy weather here in the Rio Grande Valley!  A lot of the times we rather not get pest control because we feel like the rain is going to mess you up, but in reality, MID VALLEY PEST CONTROL has an easy solution when it comes to that.  

It's a sunny, beautiful day in the Rio Grande Valley and you are waiting for our technician to arrive at your home to get a pest control service.  But wait!  Tim Smith, Meteorologist has just confirmed a slight chance that it could rain around the time that we had scheduled you.  So what do you do?  You call us and you tell us that you would rather cancel the service because it's going to rain.  We tell you that as long as it's sprinkling we can go ahead and do the service and here's why:

Welcome and today we are talking about TERMITES!

There are actually many different types of termites, but for today we will only talk about Subterranean Termites (these are the ones that you'll see in your home most of the time down here in the Rio Grande Valley).

The number one important thing that here at MID VALLEY PEST CONTROL try to protect, is your home.  You made an investment to purchase a beautiful home, so why are you going to let Subterranean Termites take control?  Here are some basic information on how to spot if you have termites:

Welcome again!

Today I am talking about the pest control seminar that UNIVAR hosted at the RGV Livestock Grounds in Mercedes, TX.  First off, I would like to point out that nobody is paying me to review this seminar, or am I a representative of UNIVAR in any way.

The first power point presentation was covering the topic about mainly Lawn and Ornamental Pest Control.  This usually deals with anything that pest control technicians cover on golf courses, parks, cemeteries, etc.  The majority of this topic was about nuisance ants and the biology structure of the ants and different types of methods that you can use to spray the mounds in a certain manner.  If you are a Lawn & Ornamental technician, this was the topic that was mainly for you, and if you wanted to widen your knowledge about ants like (raspberry/tawny ants in example) you were able to learn how to distinguish the different structures of them as well.

The second power point presentation was conducted by Creig Manson, his topic was more related on Rodents and the different types of ways to treat them.  Creig Manson is a speaker that can wake you up at 9:00 in the morning, considering that this Seminar does start at 7 in the morning!  He gave his hierarchy of who is on top of the chain when it comes to the pest control industry (in example the customer being the number on and manufacturers being the last on the chain).  He was a good speaker in the way that he demonstrated with rubber rodents the way they feed and how they don't have the best visual.

The third power point presentation consisted on IPM and was conducted by Janet who is a representative of Texas A&M.  She did mention that she is working a lot with schools and that is what her power point presentation consisted mainly about.  A lot of the information is very useful when it comes if you want to be treating public schools, colleges, etc.  There are many restrictions that by law you cannot spray or use different types of methods, so this is the person that you really wanted to pay attention to if you were interested in getting in this type of business.  I know that MID VALLEY PEST CONTROL treats certain schools and there are rules that we have to follow.  If by law we cannot spray something, maybe the IPM Method is something that would be useful for you company.  (*Sorry I cannot provide much more information on this, but you can always research IPM Schools, they train technicians and give in-depth detail on this type of information.)

The last power point presentation consisted of General Ants.  If you wanted to know the physical anatomy of ants, biology structure, and scientific names, this power point would clear that up on (Ghost Ants, Raspberry/Tawny Ants, Carpenter Ants, Etc.).

My Review on this UNIVAR SEMINAR:  

This is the perfect time to service your home for pest control if you are interested. The kids are out for summer and that means it's time to service for fleas, ticks, and maybe even mosquitoes!

Right now, we have been getting a lot of calls for fleas and ticks. If you ever have had another pest control company, you know that fleas and ticks are really hard to get under control. In fact, fleas and ticks have a two week egg cycle, which means, if we only go one time and spray for that, expect to see the eggs hatch in the next two weeks. You might be thinking, well why weren't they rid of the first time? When we go out and spray, the chemical and growth regulators make the eggs that the fleas/ticks hatched immune.

So that's the reason that you need a second service (which by then we would've given you a 30 day guarantee.)

So how does the service for fleas and ticks work?