Ticks!

[NH Homesteader]

I am so sick of picking ticks off everyone! I also don't want to use heavy duty chemicals, particularly on my daughter. Does anyone have a natural tick repellent that actually works?? And is safe for young children? Thanks!

 

[Farmfresh]

Time once again for my Tick Safety and Awareness Rant.

I for one DO think a lot about those stupid ticks. Ever since hubby spent almost two months so ill that he almost died from a tick born disease I have really realized just HOW dangerous those ticks can be.

The tick born illness that My hubby had was not Rocky Mountain or Lyme disease that you hear so much about either. His disease had about 25 letters in it and was in Latin. It was very devastating. He picked up a few seed ticks when we went on a hike. We cleaned them off of him and even got all the little bits too. Then we promptly forgot about it until he got sick.

Here is what happened to us:

It started like the bad flu then he passed out in the bathroom in the middle of the night wedged behind the bathroom door! It took 6'2" Geek AND me to get him out of the bathroom and into the car to go to the emergency room that night. (Thank God Geek was still living at home back then!)

They tested hubby for a heart attack then admitted him to the hospital. He was hooked to fluids and they took so many blood samples to test it was crazy. Before this incident he had always been terrified of hospitals and especially getting blood pulled, but he just laid there limp while TWO nurses pulled out blood at the same time... one from each arm! Scared me to death. It took almost a week of testing to narrow down WHAT he had. Then they could start treating him. At one point his white blood count was so low (down to less than 1/4 of normal) that they sent him to a leukemia specialist for treatment! Even after he was on the mend he was so weak for another two months that he got winded walking across the room.

Who knew that a hike to see the buffalo and elk in our native wild animal exhibit in a local park where he picked up a few ticks, could be so dangerous? At least if you are bitten by a snake you are aware that you NEED medical attention and fast. Those ticks take a week to poison you.

Last - but MOST IMPORTANT.

The lesson that we learned from this ordeal was to ... ALWAYS save your ticks. Gently remove them to get them out whole as soon as possible, then label and freeze them. Even after the doctors realized that we were battling a tick borne illness it still took precious days of him getting worse and worse before the doctors could narrow it down. There are literally hundreds of tick borne diseases! The doctors said that IF we had saved the tick then they could have cultured it, determined what disease it was carrying and gotten treatment for my hubby in hours instead of taking nearly a week. Every day of that time we waited his white count was dropping. If he had not been in perfect health and young when he contracted our tick disease... he might not still be here.

SAVE those TICKS.

 

[Farmfresh]

If the information can help one other person, then the ordeal was worth it. Pass the info on too, to anyone that will listen. It is something simple that can possibly save a life.

And yes, it was a terrifying time. I watched a strong healthy guy that was biking 20 to 30 miles in a weekend fun ride be reduced to a person who could not stand up and walk alone to the bathroom in less than two weeks. Thank God they figured it out and today he has no lasting issues from it.

It is just a God Blessing. Period.

 

[baymule]

To get your chickens to eat ants, scalp the hill with a hoe or shovel, exposing the little white larva. Chickens will eat the larva, but the ants themselves must taste bad.

Seedticks. Those things give me the heebeejeebies. I haven't seen any in many, many years, so maybe fore ants are a good thing. As teenagers, my cousins and I were visiting our grandparents who lived on 40 acres in east Texas. We went walking through the woods, looked down to see thousands of tiny seed ticks crawling all over our clothes. The other two girls freaked out, I said, Head for the creek! and I took off running. They followed. I ran down into the creek, on a sand bar, and started stripping off my clothes. They were freaked out about that too. I told them to strip or those ticks would bury up under their skin and make them mighty unhappy, so reluctantly they did. I scooped handfuls of sand and scrubbed with it, they did what I did. Then we sloshed up and down in the creek to wash the sand off.

Now what. There we were, naked, with a pile of tick infested clothes that we were NOT going to put back on. Three girls picked up our clothing, trying not to touch much of it and started back through the woods to the house. The house stood in a clearing and wouldn't you know it, the neighbor was working in his garden on his tractor. We waited for him to turn the tractor and go the other way, then we high tailed it to the house! Clothes were dropped outside.

 

[Lazy Gardener]

Even a heavy snow year will not knock back the tick population. They have been seen even with good snow cover on the ground. Have you read about the cotton balls sprayed with permethrin and stuffed into toilet paper tubes? These are then placed around the property. Mice take that tainted cotton back to line their nests. The permethrin kills the ticks at the source b/c the babies and mama have the permethrin on their fur. Studies have shown that this practice has a substantial affect on the tick populations. Mice are part of the deer tick/lyme disease loop.

 

[baymule]

Oh that's uplifting!

Thought you'd like that......thinking about what deadly disease you might get while picking ticks.....maybe you should get oh, maybe a hundred guineas!

 

[Mini Horses]

New issue of Mother Earth News says these essential oils repel --

Cinnamon -- mosquitoes
Citronella -- mosquitoes & flies

Eucalyptus -- mosquitoes, ticks & lice
Geranium -- mosquitoes, ticks & lice

Orange -- fleas

I've read sage helps with fleas. Peppermint for mice.

So, if you lightly heat a little carrier oil, ad some alcohol or witch hazel, plus some essential oils...you could do a wipe for the animals & self. Cedar & garlic are 2 more scents that are insect repellant. Cedar bedding, garlic in food.

The pet collars sold as non-chemical are combinations of the above. Just make your own. You can buy pure essential oils thru soap making suppliers & I get some from Puritan's Pride.

Do not use the ones sold in candle aisle for potpourri (sp) as most not true essential oils.

 

[baymule]

I suck it up, both chemically and financially, and buy Bravecto for the dogs. It keeps fleas and ticks off the dogs for 3 months.

 

[baymule]

I could send you some fire ants! They eat ticks!

 

[tortoise]

Adverse reactions to essential oil flea/tick treatments:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1476-4431.2012.00780.x/full

d-limonene (component of citrus and lavender) is toxic to cats.

Terpenes are risky for cats too, so eucalyptus (terpene + d-limonene) is toxic to them.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/104063879801000223

Citronella is toxic to cats, but at higher concentrations. It is used for cat deterrent products, which indicates to me there is a safe level of exposure.... and that your cat might not appreciate wearing it.

I hadn't heard of geranium or cinnamon posing problems for cats, and I didn't see anything on a quick Google Scholar search.