If you are out in the woods and you come upon a roughly circular area of crushed down grass, that is a deer bed. Try and avoid walking through it, deer beds are full of ticks.
If I'm going off trail I cram my jeans into my boots and shake everything out before getting in the car. Ontario ticks are just a part of the experience now :/
> Twenty 50-m trail segments across two sites were randomly assigned to intervention groups: untreated woodchip borders, deltamethrin-treated woodchip borders, and ten assigned to untreated controls.
> Treated woodchips reduced I. scapularis adult and nymph density by 99 % (incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 0.01, 95 % CI: 0.001–0.08) relative to controls, while untreated woodchips achieved a 48 % reduction (IRR = 0.52, 95 % CI: 0.34–0.78).
Through a combination of two of my hobbies, I learned that pyrethroids are toxic to aquatic animals. Glad to see that they used "locations [that] were situated away from waterbodies".
Pyrethroids are very powerful tools for insect control (and non-toxic to humans) but any place where you have runoff or ground seepage is going to be a problem.
Aren't those places the ones most likely for ticks to thrive -- areas near bodies of water where animals like deer come to drink?
So hot take: this would only be useful in places where there are not a lot of ticks?
(PS: Permethrin-sprayed clothing is very effective.)
I got bitten by a mosquito in Ottawa a couple years ago that sent me to the hospital.. I stopped near the river while cycling to see a raccoon for few seconds, was more than enough for that lil sucker to do the job.
Another worrying proxy for how deeply climate change is bleeding into everyday life: coffee prices, orange juice prices, and now having to engineer huge trail areas with woodchips just so people can avoid being bitten by exploding tick populations.
We have (had?) some ticks in our backyard and I came across these which I thought was a clever attack angle: tick tubes.
Permethrin-soaked cotton balls in a tube, mice find them and build nests out of the freely available cotton, ticks that the mice have gathered while walking around die when they come back to the nest.
This seems like a good way to encourage ticks to develop a permethrin resistance because the cotton will stay in the rodents nest and gradually be reduced in concentration.
Ive been treating my car, hiking clothing and gear with permethrin and haven't had a tick since doing that. Reapply every time you go to the woods or every two weeks if you're in the woods continuously and keep the concentration up.
If my house was in the woods I would also treat the den/mud room.
If you have a rodent problem then control the rodents: manage habitat, trap/kill them, encourage predators like hawks etc.
No ticks at the altitude I reside. But with global warming it's slowly creeping up towards the towns further down. Same with Spanish slugs. Will soon be able to thrive here as well.
I've spread beneficial nematodes several times before and the following 2-3 years I get notably fewer tick bites. They are a bit of a pain to spread over any significant area.
Wearing appropriate clothing for walking grassy trails is 95% of the solution. Decent walking boots, trousers in socks and a long sleeved shirt goes a very long way.
And no, it does not have to be too warm if you use an appropriate light and wicking fabric.
Really the best is to check for ticks and weird bruises with a partner every so often.
Got Lyme disease from a tick years ago and it was very visible -> a spreading red bruise with a white middle (it get bigger and looks like it's not healing)
When spotted some antibiotics did their jobs in two weeks if I remember correctly.
I should check the other diseases' visual clues too.
I am grateful that everything points to the fact I was able to aquire tick resistance. Bites get itchy the moment ticks start to feed, and nymphs die in a matter of minutes while feeding on me.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 43.9 ms ] threadThe deer trails are a lot harder to avoid.
> Treated woodchips reduced I. scapularis adult and nymph density by 99 % (incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 0.01, 95 % CI: 0.001–0.08) relative to controls, while untreated woodchips achieved a 48 % reduction (IRR = 0.52, 95 % CI: 0.34–0.78).
So hot take: this would only be useful in places where there are not a lot of ticks?
(PS: Permethrin-sprayed clothing is very effective.)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NGv6RASFsY4&t=26s
Permethrin-soaked cotton balls in a tube, mice find them and build nests out of the freely available cotton, ticks that the mice have gathered while walking around die when they come back to the nest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permethrin - see other animals, I can never get anchor links to copy on mobile.
Ive been treating my car, hiking clothing and gear with permethrin and haven't had a tick since doing that. Reapply every time you go to the woods or every two weeks if you're in the woods continuously and keep the concentration up.
If my house was in the woods I would also treat the den/mud room.
If you have a rodent problem then control the rodents: manage habitat, trap/kill them, encourage predators like hawks etc.
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2009/09/occupatio...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27756609/
And no, it does not have to be too warm if you use an appropriate light and wicking fabric.
Great, more insecticides :(
Now even in places we least expect them.
Got Lyme disease from a tick years ago and it was very visible -> a spreading red bruise with a white middle (it get bigger and looks like it's not healing) When spotted some antibiotics did their jobs in two weeks if I remember correctly. I should check the other diseases' visual clues too.