Could my chickens be making my tick problem worse?

[Yardmom]

Once it is freezing nightly they are seldom seen.

 

[roonster]

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!

I don't think they are. I used to take my dogs on walks in the woods...but once the ticks started getting bad, I only let them out in my fenced yard and they still have more than before...unless, I just thought of this, if chickens are attracting mice, rats, and other critters? I saw a squirrel today, the 1st I've seen in my yard. I also had mice and rats moving in but put out poison. The poison seems to have worked! At first I used poison that comes in bags but was advised to use the kind that you run a wire through and put in secluded areas or inside pvc pipes, so they eat it but don't carry it off....

 

[Folly's place]

Those tick tubes are helpful, and the dogs and cats need to have monthly meds to protect them from the fleas and ticks!
Here in southern Michigan, it's been warm and very wet, and more ticks are turning up everywhere! All ticks can carry several unpleasant and sometimes fatal diseases, so be careful outside!
We are also having a couple of new ticks, carrying new diseases, that have come from overseas. No tick is a good tick!
Chickens and guineas will eat them, but with so many, won't be keeping up.
You'll be glad to know that one female tick will lay 1000 or more eggs at a time!
Mary

 

[StinkyAcres]

Like others have said, it's the time of year. Can't get away from them in the spring and fall. My dog is on a monthly preventative and I've only seen dead or dying ticks on her and she still contracted anaplasmosis. Our guineas didn't help with the problem, but we only had four of them.

 

[Folly's place]

And getting your own doctor to test you for anything except Lyme disease is really a pain!!!
When these ticks are in the neighborhood, we are all possibly infected with whatever, even if we never actually noticed the tick.
Mary

 

[roonster]

And getting your own doctor to test you for anything except Lyme disease is really a pain!!!
When these ticks are in the neighborhood, we are all possibly infected with whatever, even if we never actually noticed the tick.
Mary

and hopefully, build some immunity??
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140402110029.htm

 

[Folly's place]

It's interesting that the canine Lyme vaccine is very effective. And ticks carry a lot more than Lyme disease, which we are monitoring pretty well in dogs, not people. And at least here in southern Michigan, we are finding Erlichia and /or Anaplasma in dogs, with or without Lyme. Then there are the other tick borne diseases, and more coming in as more tick species arrive.
Cheering news, right?
Mary

 

[StinkyAcres]

Yep, I only saw deer ticks here up until just last year. Now we have dog ticks and deer ticks.

 

[Folly's place]

We now have lone star ticks too. How nice!
Mary

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Until I moved to MO eleven years ago I could count on half a hand the number of ticks I'd seen in my entire life of over 50 years, and on each of those occasions I was camping in the mountains of Colorado. But here - well, ticks are just an unpleasant fact of life. Mostly I "deal" by just staying indoors or spraying legs with insect spray and avoiding tall grass. Horrid creatures.