When I was a kid, I took it for granted that tick bites were as common as mosquito bites. Because that's how it was for kids in my neighborhood. You'd go out and play in the summer, and when you came home a few hours later, your mom would have to take the tweezers and remove a couple of tics from you. It was just routine.
One day in my teens, some peers in my class, from another part of the county, were talking about tics. "I had one last summer", said one. "Wow, that's really cool! I've never had one!", replied the other.
I was dumbfounded. Were these kids joking? Had they spend their entire lives in an attic? The concept of not getting at least one tic every time you set foot outside during the warmer months was about as alien to me as never having had a fly land on you.
Some time later, I came to understand that tics were much, much more common in my neighborhood than in the typical part of my country. In fact, my area has apparently officially been declared "the most tic-dense part of Sweden".
Some people say our numerous deer are to blame. The tics feast on the deer, and then fall or rub off onto other things. We hold our hunting team in high esteem around here.
For the sake of clarity, this is the type of critter I'm talking about:
Picture from https://www.fotosidan.se/blogs/susajt/detta-ar-fasting-och-ett-hjarta.htm.
When you live in the most tic-dense part of the country, you're free-ranging chickens will inevitably have the odd tic fasten itself on them. If I see a chicken with a tic on its face, I usually just ignore it. I've never seen a really swollen tic on them, so I take for granted that they pick them off one another, that they fall off while dust bathing, or perhaps that chickens even have something in their blood that repels tics.
Three days ago, a hen had six chicks. They like to walk around in tall grass, which for the chicks is very tall, and the chicks have gotten a lot of tics around their eyes and mouth. As I said, I tend to ignore tics on adult individuals, but I assume chicks are more sensitive to the dangers of parasites, so I've taken some time to painstakingly pick them off with mom's old tweezers.
I drew this image today, that fairly well sums up how it is to submit the chicks to that treatment:
The chicks don't like it. They don't like to be held in sometimes awkward poses for long; the tics hold on really tight, so I sometimes have to really stretch the chicks' skin before the tics get loose; and sometimes I accidentally pull off some down.
The mom doesn't like it; when she hears the stressful beeps of her offspring, she gives off a type of clucking that can not reasonably be interpreted as anything other that chicken language for "f*** off!"
Stressing chickens is a bad thing in itself, but stressing the chicks is doubly problematic, because I want to tame them. I want them to see me as "that huge thing that brings comfort, cuddling and tons of food", not "that huge thing that pics me up once a day and tugs at my skin with his portable metal beak for no discernible reason whatsoever".
So my question is: Should I keep removing tics, or should I just leave them be?
Thanks,
Henrik
One day in my teens, some peers in my class, from another part of the county, were talking about tics. "I had one last summer", said one. "Wow, that's really cool! I've never had one!", replied the other.
I was dumbfounded. Were these kids joking? Had they spend their entire lives in an attic? The concept of not getting at least one tic every time you set foot outside during the warmer months was about as alien to me as never having had a fly land on you.
Some time later, I came to understand that tics were much, much more common in my neighborhood than in the typical part of my country. In fact, my area has apparently officially been declared "the most tic-dense part of Sweden".
Some people say our numerous deer are to blame. The tics feast on the deer, and then fall or rub off onto other things. We hold our hunting team in high esteem around here.
For the sake of clarity, this is the type of critter I'm talking about:
Picture from https://www.fotosidan.se/blogs/susajt/detta-ar-fasting-och-ett-hjarta.htm.
When you live in the most tic-dense part of the country, you're free-ranging chickens will inevitably have the odd tic fasten itself on them. If I see a chicken with a tic on its face, I usually just ignore it. I've never seen a really swollen tic on them, so I take for granted that they pick them off one another, that they fall off while dust bathing, or perhaps that chickens even have something in their blood that repels tics.
Three days ago, a hen had six chicks. They like to walk around in tall grass, which for the chicks is very tall, and the chicks have gotten a lot of tics around their eyes and mouth. As I said, I tend to ignore tics on adult individuals, but I assume chicks are more sensitive to the dangers of parasites, so I've taken some time to painstakingly pick them off with mom's old tweezers.
I drew this image today, that fairly well sums up how it is to submit the chicks to that treatment:
The chicks don't like it. They don't like to be held in sometimes awkward poses for long; the tics hold on really tight, so I sometimes have to really stretch the chicks' skin before the tics get loose; and sometimes I accidentally pull off some down.
The mom doesn't like it; when she hears the stressful beeps of her offspring, she gives off a type of clucking that can not reasonably be interpreted as anything other that chicken language for "f*** off!"
Stressing chickens is a bad thing in itself, but stressing the chicks is doubly problematic, because I want to tame them. I want them to see me as "that huge thing that brings comfort, cuddling and tons of food", not "that huge thing that pics me up once a day and tugs at my skin with his portable metal beak for no discernible reason whatsoever".
So my question is: Should I keep removing tics, or should I just leave them be?
Thanks,
Henrik
