Ticks!

[NH Homesteader]

Somehow I think I should pass on that offer!

Then again they don't carry deadly diseases right? Lol

 

[tortoise]

Best tick avoidance technique is to stand next to someone with a higher body temperature than yours.

I don't mess with ticks! Nexguard for the dogs. Daily tick checks for humans.

 

[Beekissed]

My chickens do the do for where the dogs live, so rarely get ticks on them, but the tomcat hunts far afield....literally in a field next door where the sedge brush has been allowed to grow rampant, so he picks up anything waiting for a host.

I'm going to try some sulfur dust on him this week.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

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

And that is the ONLY reason to let a fire ant survive! I really haven't seen a tick on any of my critters in years. The only time in recent memory is when we butchered a pig about 5 years ago - he had a couple on his belly...

 

[Wannabefree]

I feed my fire ants dry grits to kill them out. Ticks are horrible here.

 

[NH Homesteader]

Where are you located? They're so awful here, they never used to be until the past 10 years or so. Never had to deal with them like this when I was a kid. It's enough to make me want to be a city dweller, lol! (I am so kidding, but really they're stressing me out!)

 

[Wannabefree]

I'm in Tennessee, tick heaven...

 

[NH Homesteader]

Ooh we might be moving to eastern TN. Swapping northern tickville for southern tickville. At least I'll lose some snowfall in the process!

 

[lcertuche]

I have been getting a tick off of me every couple of days. hose slackard yardbirds are not doing their jobs this year.

Fireants are just getting started here but we have a ton of ants. Hills literally everywhere outside. My chickens don't seem to eat them for some reason. I think I'm going to try the grits thing this year. That the chickens will eat though!

 

[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.