Could my chickens be making my tick problem worse?

[meglmcknight]

HI everybody. My husband and I live on a half acre suburban property in PA, the land of the deer tick. We just moved here a few months ago and got our flock of 10 chicks soon after moving in. We have noticed that ever since we moved them from their brooder in our garage out to the coop/run we built for them, we have been finding MORE ticks on our family members (the two of us plus our 1 year old and our dog). We have found two on our dog, one on my husband, and one on our toddler in the past few days. A big part of why we decided to get chickens was because we heard that they eat ticks and can cut down on the population. Right now, they are confined to their run area - I'm wondering if that could be part of the problem. Perhaps in order to see any benefit we need to get them to roam our entire yard. That being said, I'm still confused as to why we are seeing so many more since we've had them outside, despite the weather getting much cooler. I know ticks find dogs/humans/deer by CO2 and body heat, so I would think they'd be attracted to chickens too. Did we make a huge mistake? Are the ticks coming into the yard because they sense the chickens, but then the chickens only eat the ones that make it to the run and the rest hop on us? Please help! These ticks are making it impossible to enjoy spending time outside. It's so upsetting. Willing to do just about anything that will help (except use toxic poisons in my yard).

 

[Isadora]

If you had more acreage, I would suggest guinea hens. They have completely eradicated the ticks from my property. But they like to roam, and I have little over 21 acres for them to do that.
It's also possible that your chickens don't have a taste for ticks and actually aren't eating them. Ticks can definitely live off chickens, as well as other animals, so they could be making it worse in that regard.

 

[meglmcknight]

If you had more acreage, I would suggest guinea hens. They have completely eradicated the ticks from my property. But they like to roam, and I have little over 21 acres for them to do that.
It's also possible that your chickens don't have a taste for ticks and actually aren't eating them. Ticks can definitely live off chickens, as well as other animals, so they could be making it worse in that regard.

Yes I read this about guineas! Would love to have them, but like you said our property just isn't big enough. Chickens or ducks are all we can really have here.

 

[NatJ]

ever since we moved them from their brooder in our garage out to the coop/run we built for them, we have been finding MORE ticks on our family members (the two of us plus our 1 year old and our dog).

You might be finding more ticks because something has changed about how you (people and dog) act:

You might be spending more time outdoors now that the chickens are out there.
You might be time in different parts of the yard than before.
You might be moving around more or less.

We just moved here a few months ago

So you haven't been there long enough to know if the ticks are naturally more active at certain seasons.

I don't know much about deer ticks, so I tried googling and found this:
https://www.aldf.com/deer-tick-ecology/
"Peak activity for adult deer ticks occurs in late October and early November"
That article also said the time varies a bit in different climates, and it said that baby deer ticks earlier in the year are less likely to be noticed, and adult deer ticks in the fall are more likely to be seen just because they are bigger.

So this might be a result of the season changing and the lifecycle of the deer tick, rather than anything to do with your chickens.

You could make notes of when you find deer ticks (maybe note it on the calendar), so you can look back later and compare this year with next year or the year after.

 

[Yardmom]

I also live in PA and the ticks are always much worse in the fall. We have free ranging poultry (over 50 birds), but still see plenty of deer ticks.

 

[Isadora]

Yes I read this about guineas! Would love to have them, but like you said our property just isn't big enough. Chickens or ducks are all we can really have here.

My mom gave me this idea when we first moved here, before the guineas were free ranging. I haven't tried it myself, so can't speak to its effectiveness, but it's something you can try!
https://www.myfrugalhome.com/how-to-make-tick-tubes/

 

[roonster]

I moved back to PA in June. Ticks were not a problem until the last month.
In the last month, I have found several crawling on me and one, basically in the process of digging in. My dogs had one since June, but over the last month have each had four, my friends cat also had several. I think most are brown ticks, or whatever, but are not deer ticks with the red...
I was actually at a friend's place talking about how bad ticks were and as we talked he found one crawling on him!

 

[meglmcknight]

You might be finding more ticks because something has changed about how you (people and dog) act:

You might be spending more time outdoors now that the chickens are out there.
You might be time in different parts of the yard than before.
You might be moving around more or less.

So we have been spending tons of time outside ever since we moved in, and during the month that we were building the chicken coop (spending several hours out in the yard per day) I did not find a single tick. Now that the coop and run are complete we have spent maybe an hour per day, so I don't think this is the case. Same general area. But I do appreciate the thought and am sure there may be something else like this I'm not thinking of.

So you haven't been there long enough to know if the ticks are naturally more active at certain seasons.

I don't know much about deer ticks, so I tried googling and found this:
https://www.aldf.com/deer-tick-ecology/
"Peak activity for adult deer ticks occurs in late October and early November"
That article also said the time varies a bit in different climates, and it said that baby deer ticks earlier in the year are less likely to be noticed, and adult deer ticks in the fall are more likely to be seen just because they are bigger.

So this might be a result of the season changing and the lifecycle of the deer tick, rather than anything to do with your chickens.

You could make notes of when you find deer ticks (maybe note it on the calendar), so you can look back later and compare this year with next year or the year after.

This is a great point. Another person from PA just commented saying that they find way more ticks in the fall, so hopefully it has nothing to do with our chickens! Good idea to keep notes, too! Thank you for your reply

 

[meglmcknight]

I also live in PA and the ticks are always much worse in the fall. We have free ranging poultry (over 50 birds), but still see plenty of deer ticks.

This is very good to know, thanks so much. Do you stop seeing them (or at least see them a lot less) once it drops below freezing?

 

[meglmcknight]

I moved back to PA in June. Ticks were not a problem until the last month.
In the last month, I have found several crawling on me and one, basically in the process of digging in. My dogs had one since June, but over the last month have each had four, my friends cat also had several. I think most are brown ticks, or whatever, but are not deer ticks with the red...
I was actually at a friend's place talking about how bad ticks were and as we talked he found one crawling on him!

Oh jeez. Well I'm glad to hear that it's not just me finding more of them recently, hopefully the chickens are not contributing to the problem!