There are several tick species throughout the U.S., but two of the most common are deer ticks (blacklegged ticks) and wood ticks (most commonly American dog ticks), and while they might cover similar territory, they have the potential to carry and transmit different diseases.
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Ticks are especially bad around here this year for some reason. I've picked at least a half dozen off of me and I don't know how many off Legal Lucy and that asshole dog Jack, even after using flea and tick medicine on them. For some reason, they like Lucy hell of a lot more than that asshole dog Jack - last week I found a cluster of 5 right in front of one of her ears.
I've sprayed for ticks around the house but the dogs tend to range all over the property so that protects us but not them.
I religiously throw out granulated diazinon
ReplyDeletein the yard, and around all shrubs, each spring
and fall. Along the edges of all tree lines too.
We never have any problems. One of those 12-15 lbs.
bags will service 5000 square feet area.
Runs about 12 bucks or so.
Used it for nearly 30 years
Like maybe four years ago, neighbor lady got whatever the name is virus from a tick bite that makes you allergic to red meat. Four years without a big juicy hamburger or pot roast or a nice steak. Think on that one think.
ReplyDeleteH
It isn't from a virus, it's an allergic reaction to alpha-gal.
DeleteAnd they carry a disease called "bobcat fever". Two of my barn cats (I suspect a third, also) died from this. No cure, no effective treatment. If your cat gets it, it dies in about 2 to three days from the onset of symptoms. It is not pleasant. A vet recommended aggressive treatment for one of the cats; I should have put her down instead. In the end, I regretted prolonging her agony; but the vet thought she had a chance of making it through.
ReplyDeleteGuinea hens. They scarf them little bastids like a fat kid at an ice cream buffet.
ReplyDeleteNot for animals but I take a Garlic Supplement it keeps the tick away from me. For my German Shepard I give her Bravecto for fleas and ticks. Thankfully none yet this year on her.
ReplyDeleteSteve
If your chickens aren't eating them, get some guinea fowl. They'll gobble up the bugs and roost in the trees at night. The neighbors flock are quite talkative and sociable, and follow them around the yard.
ReplyDeletetallow pot
That asshole dog Jack would have a field day with any fowl running loose.
DeleteJack might get one or two of them at first. After that, the guinea fowl would have a field day with Jack.
DeleteGot my first one yesterday. On my little toe of all places. I thought they climbed until they got to the warm and hairy places. I thought they jumped on you from overhanging trees and shrubs until I read that they got on your ankles from grass and about that time my doctor told me the same thing. I've had good luck religiously keeping the grass cut.
ReplyDeleteSeresto collars seem to work well. Nice that you get 8 months of protection from fleas and ticks.
ReplyDeleteBuddha
Yup. All the oral products sold through vets or pharmacies work great. But the most economical without sacrificing effectiveness, is the Seresto collar. IF you don't mind another collar on your dog.
DeleteI have tried every tick and flea "pour-on" available on the market. For about three years some meds from Australia was working and then it didn't. Everything works for maybe four days then nothing. Big pharma fucking us some more. Now days I buy the hottest insecticide I can find at the large animal/ ranch supply stores and spray everything down.
DeleteI like triazicide granular. Lowes carries it. Get a bag or two and the old over the shoulder strap spreader with a crank and do the entire yard every three months, early spring, mid summer and fall. Stinks for about a day. Used it for years. Had three or four dogs in that time all lived long and healthy lives. Took care of ticks chiggers and I believe snakes in Va. Also, kills cut worms big time.
ReplyDeleteMy entire yard is 100 yards across and 150 yards deep. No way I can afford that.
DeleteWe're having a bad year with ticks also. I keep my dog cut very close so I can find the little bastards better. I don't like the idea of putting poison on Watson so I found some herbal stuff that seems to work. You need to spray it every time they go out because it doesn't last long. I hate those damn things. When I was at Ohio State University I worked in the Ohio Dept of Health, Vector borne disease unit as part of my study's. We collected mosquitoes and ticks and studied the various diseases they carry and spread. St Louis and California Encephalitis and Tick typhus, (Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever) were the most studied at the time. That was fun times is the early 70,s. I was bitten by a mosquito in our lab that we knew was infected with St Louis Encephalitis and damn near died. I was in a coma for a week trying to fight it off. I was working towards my masters and once I recovered, I dropped out of school and moved to northern Michigan where I still live and became a carpenter and became a General Contractor after 5 years working for a builder. I could have still been at Ohio State after all these years if things would have went differently. Almost dying changed all that. Now you know more about me than you ever needed to know. Ticks are nasty. Chickens eat them and so do opossums. Not sure why the good Lord made the little buggers.
ReplyDeletejoe
Ask your vet about Comfortis, its a chewable flea treatment you feed to your dog with food, and not sure whats in it, but within an hour they started dying off - not sure what it does for ticks though. I trust my vet recommending it, as hes always been more of a holistic vet and stays away if possible, just tossing a drug or three at every condition. He passed it to me a few years back when my dog was a flea magnet and scratching himself raw, and I was using the expensive treatments that a while back, even those are changed formulas that do little in the way of serious flea protection. I bought a dose of it last fall to have on hand for this time of year when he starts getting ate up with fleas, but havent seen one yet so far and it was always at the start of May before.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a bad product and I used to use/recommend it but it fell out of vogue in this area of the country cause it does nothing for ticks. Which are just as bad, and carry more diseases, than our fleas here in Georgia so if you used it, you had to add a second product for the tick issue.
DeleteJust a reminder to not shoot all the opossums on your property. Each one collects and eats 4 to 5 thousand ticks from their own hide every season. A true fact.
ReplyDeleteTry Diatomaceous Earth; the food grade kind which is safe for you and pets, but murder on spiders, ticks, and other creepy crawlers. I do perimeter of the house to keep out scorpions and black widows here in WY. Have to reapply after every rain but that's rather infrequent here in the summer.
ReplyDelete+! for DE. It takes some time to do the job (couple of days) but it's wicked cheap, readily available, and chemically inert (read safe for animals in ANY dose)
DeleteTis a fine white powder that you dust all over the affected area. even directly on the animal if needed.
If applied in pet food it WILL kill worms
DeleteDiatomaceous earth is just ground up limestone, a particularly pure type that is made up of fossilized critters: Diatoms. These fell out of the ocean when they died and ended up as pure calcium carbonate muck, eventually lithified into limestone. Absolutely inert and not a chemical poison - just ground up rock with lots of sharp micro-edges that cut up the insects
DeleteMy daughter once picked a tick up in Walmart in Bakersfield on our way to Kings Canyon. You just never know.
ReplyDeleteAnybody who has been to Fort Hood, Texas, knows the 214,000-acre post has several millions of ticks every spring and summer. For a couple or three years, some National Guard soldiers wore flea and tick collars around their legs, above their boots. Whether that kept ticks away no official study ever said. Story was, though, that wearing collars above his boots killed at least one soldier. He was lying on a tank trail, licking his d!ck when a tank came along and ran over him. Wear dog stuff, suffer the consequences, I guess.
ReplyDeleteMy dogs are on once-a-month NexGuard. It's a beef-flavored chewy treat. Not a tick or flea on them, and it also handles certain parasitical worms as well. Vet highly recommended it and so far, so good - been using it for a year. If a flea or tick bites, it dies. When I go walkabout with the dogs I have to check myself carefully when we get home - the ticks like the long grass and key in on CO2, from exhalation. Not uncommon for me to have to get one or two off - but the dogs, zilch.
ReplyDeleteSulfur soap - Before we went to the lake in Oklahoma for vacation we bathed with sulfur soap for the two weeks prior and while there. The locals sprinkled powdered sulfur around their yards as well as using the soap.
ReplyDeleteMr. Lane,.. you know me kind of, I live in Nicaragua. You guys do NOT know ticks, what you have is a minor inconvenience for a few months a year. I have had Anaplasmosis 3 times, Lyme disease once. I eat Doxycycline like candy.
ReplyDeleteSpray your yard with Amitraz (Bovitraz if you buy the Bayer stuff) mixed with Permethrin or Cypermethrin.
The Amitraz will kill the ticks, the permethrin gives them "hot foot" and they book it when they encounter that stuff.
Spray your clothes with Permethrin ( I prefer Cypermethrin, a bit stronger) this stuff is good on your clothes for 4 or 5 washings in the laundry cycle and apply Deet to your boots and pant legs before venturing into high grass. This is standard military procedure.
We keep our grass trimmed by staking a horse around everyday, out of reach of the gardens but close enough to eat the tall grass.
Go to the feed store and get any anti parasitic containing Fipronil (way cheaper than buying dog sized portions for $50) and apply 4 or 5 cc along the spine with a syringe once a month. This will keep ticks off your dog, it is essentially the same as the tick products Advantage Plus etc only 1/20 the price.
Sure Bravecto works, it works great,.. but you can do all the above cheaper than one dog on Bravecto.
I hope that helps, I don't want ANYBODY going through what I have gone through with tick borne diseases ( except maybe Obama)
I read somewhere that possums eat ticks...
ReplyDelete