The ticks are just plain horrible!

[RuthBelle]

I've read previous threads on the boards regarding ticks and the products to combat them. Seems the products folks use on their dogs work in some areas of the country and don't in others. How the heck do ticks become immune to the chemicals in these products anyway???

 

I used Frontline on Belle last year and it seemed to work when you first put it on her, then as the month went by I'd be spending every evening going through her fur, removing more and more ticks. The highest daily number was 15, quite a few had gotten large, and the rest sure didn't look dead to me. This year, it doesn't seem to be working at all. In this area (central Wisconsin), we,re having a bumper year of them, the ticks are horrible! Bob and Belle had gone on a walk down by the river and came back swarming with them! I must have removed 30 to 40 of the little buggers (they weren't attached yet, just crawling everywhere!). She was due for her next application of Frontline, but I decided I was going to try something else.

 

As much as I HATE flea/tick collars, I got her one (darn, I can't remember the brand right now, but it's not Hartz--I still have the box over at Bob's house), and it seems to be doing the trick. Problem is, I'm not real happy with having those chemical laden collars on Belle and Watson.

 

Here's a question-----since the darn things seem to be working, haven't seen a tick on either dog since we've put the collars on----will they still work if we take them off after an outing in more tick infested areas? Is it the residual effect of the collar chemicals that work or just the wearing of them amongst tick infested areas? I thought I could take them off while the dogs are in the house or closer to home turf? I have some leather working tools and figured I could replace the tick collar buckles with some snaps. I wouldn't want to be handling them anymore than I have to.

 

Good idea or folly???

[Journey]

Worth a try I suppose. I too broke down and went with the PrevenTick collars. I used the K9Advantix (sp?) while out of town and haven't yet put the collars on. I do have a tick puller though and swear by it!

[1sheepdoggal]

I use the Advantage in conjunction with a flea collar, and together they both work great. Alone however, neither one works. I leave mine on the dogs 24/7 but change the flea collars about every other month.

[juliepoudrier]

Frontline quit working for me long ago. So far the Advantix still seems to be doing the trick. I don't use the tick collars because my dogs spend a lot of time in water and they're (the collars) really not supposed to be soaked all the time.

 

J.

[IronHorse]

IMO Frontline is a waste of money, tried it once and found it to be totally ineffective.

I started useing Preventic products about 3 or 4 years ago and am totally sold on their products.

I get a good 2 months effectivness on the collars (which are water resistant however I do remove them when I take the dogs for a swim)

heres a link to their site if your interested.

 

http://www.virbacvet.com/preventic/products/

[Dixie_Girl]

The best solution is to get some free range chickens. For as long as we had the chickens here, no fleas or ticks! Only when we went deep into the woods. The deer all seemed to come onto our property in the area where the chicken's food was, so I imagine the chickens were getting the ticks as they feel off. I will be interested to see what happens this year. So far, I had to take one tick off of Jackson, right above his eye.

 

Just make sure you put the chickens up at night. Damn foxes!

[Dal & Mad's Mom]

Someone here recommended the happy jack novation collars a few years ago and I've used them for 3 summers with great sucess for the pocono's. I change them midway through the summer just in case as now if tick season and Aug is peak Flea.

 

If I understand the action of it the collar makes their fur in hospitible for both. The rare fleas I have found on my pets in the late summer were dying.

[ErinKate]

I am a Advantix fan...Frontline works as well as water for flea/tick prevention.

[mbc1963]

Frontline used to work here, then stopped. Switched to K9Advantix, which seems to be working this year (crossing fingers).

 

But yesterday, I took Buddy to the flea market and let him go in the tall grass to poop. Immediately afterwards, he started gnawing his paw, so I bent down to check and yanked out a tick. Then noticed that he was literally dripping with the things - both deer ticks and dog ticks. None had attached; they had just brushed off the grass onto his fur. But HOW DISGUSTING.

 

I understand ecosystems and all that, but if there's one beast I would take off the planet, it'd be a tick. Whenever I have this discussion, people always say, "But what do ticks do for the world? What's their role?!" I say I don't know, but if we killed them off, we'd know pretty quickly. (That seems to be the human way: fix one problem which immediately creates another one.)

 

Mary

[niccru]

I understand ecosystems and all that, but if there's one beast I would take off the planet, it'd be a tick. Whenever I have this discussion, people always say, "But what do ticks do for the world? What's their role?!" I say I don't know, but if we killed them off, we'd know pretty quickly. (That seems to be the human way: fix one problem which immediately creates another one.)

 

Mary

 

Their role is to keep the tick preventative industry in business.

[M.L.]

Do the dogs get them from your yard? My suggestion is to get some guinea hens because they eat the ticks. When I lived back in Jersey my boyfriend's family got some and the amount of ticks dropped considerably.

 

Here is a link with some info http://www.lymediseasepa.com/GuineaHens.htm

[desertranger]

It's interesting reading about ticks. Fleas and ticks can't live in a desert ecology nonetheless we had a tick invasion here about 10 years ago. It was my first experience. I had to learn to pick them off the dogs without leaving anything behind. Something like tick surgery. Mookies first summer as a puppy left her covered in ticks and we have no idea how they got there. My solution was to spray the yard and destroy the insect population in the yard and start over. Then all of a sudden, like two years ago, they seeed to have disappeared. Haven't seen one since. I still here about ticks in the area but haven't seen any since them.

 

I do give the dogs a flea and tick bath whenever we return from being out of the area for a few days. It seems the dogs pick them up when we visit family near the coast and in areas cooler and more humid than where we live.

[JohnLloydJones]

It's interesting reading about ticks. Fleas and ticks can't live in a desert ecology nonetheless we had a tick invasion here about 10 years ago.

 

I have seen exactly one tick here. It was crawling away and, from the marks on Senneca, I assume it had eaten its fill. I stopped flea and tick spot treatment because Senneca gets an allergic reaction to all the ones I have tried. I just keep my fingers crossed. Oddly, an aussie we know, who lives at the college campus, close by, used to have lots of problems with ticks. Do ticks like students?

[M.L.]

I live in Tucson and my townhome community has a decent amount of grass. I have found a few ticks on Bailey over the past month and a few weekends ago I found one crawling across my kitchen counter. I have no idea how it got there. It was flat, so it wasn't bloodsucking anybody before ending up on the counter. Gross!

 

I have lived in Tucson since 2003 and this is the first time I've seen this many ticks in such a short period of time.

[juliepoudrier]

I've always had free-range OEG chickens but last year added larger free-range Rhode Island Reds and Dominques. It seems that I have had fewer problems with fleas and ticks, but that's not a scientific observation by any means, and of course the chickens don't go on the back part of the property where I walk the dogs, so they could still pick up ticks that the chickens haven't eradicated.

 

One year we had a really bad fly problem in the barn. I'll be curious to see if the big chickens help with that as well. My guess is they will.

 

J.

[Ooky]

The bay area is the worst place for deer ticks I've ever seen (including NW Arkansas) and I must have the worst job for ticks I personally know. Always surveying through long tall grass and weedy veg, looking for wetland boundaries etc. Most days after being in the field, I come home and have to strip to find the 4-10 ticks crawling relentlessly to the top of my head. They end up in my car, in my office, occassionally in my bed. Once I came home, showered and checked myself thoroughly, washed my hair, combed it, and got into new clothes. Spent the rest of the evening doing whatever. Got in bed and a tick crawled out of my hair onto my face while I was watching tv.

 

Another amusing tick-ridden Ooky anecdote: the time I rode BART home from the field and one of those creepy homeless types that sort of crazily eyes women came and sat across from me. Then I found 3 ticks crawling up my pant legs and flicked them all off without really thinking onto the floor (later I did collect them in a little folded sheet of notbook paper but at the time just had to GET THEM OFF). The creepy guy looked down, his eyes got wide, and he got up and moved to another car.

 

Advantix does a good job for Odin, though. He has gotten only literally one or two embedded and then when I've gone too long before hiking in tall grass. But we check him regularly and pull off.

 

My observation. I HATE THIS PLANT. Conium maculatum, poison hemlock. It's in the carrot family. It's what they killed Socrates with, but is now a terrible invasive weed across the US in semi wet areas. It likes disturbed levees and stuff.

 

CalFlora species profile

 

TICKS LOVE THIS PLANT!!! ime, you do not walk into a monoculture of this crap (in the bay area at least) and come back out without ticks, often many many ticks, on. I'd keep my dogs out of it both for that reason and its extremely poisonous nature.

[Caerus]

Is it the residual effect of the collar chemicals that work or just the wearing of them amongst tick infested areas?

I used to pull the collars off when the dogs were inside, and it still worked well. Preventic worked the best for me, but it says on a couple of websites that they can't be used with dogs on tricyclic antidepressants or SSRIs so I haven't reordered since D's rx came through.

 

Advantix seems to be working fairly well, in that we only find 5-8 ticks on them everyday rather than 15+. Ticks have gotten to be a huge problem this year, at least we live in an area where lyme disease is very uncommon. Seriously considered guinea fowl, they sound like they would work so well! Unfortunately, they are known for being loud, we actually live 30 minutes away and the lot is crawling with foxes and raccoons.

 

Sometimes I wish I could put a tick collar on myself though, at least the pups get their monthly preventative. I don't think the ticks even notice my "tick repellent".

 

I understand ecosystems and all that, but if there's one beast I would take off the planet, it'd be a tick. Whenever I have this discussion, people always say, "But what do ticks do for the world? What's their role?!" I say I don't know, but if we killed them off, we'd know pretty quickly. (That seems to be the human way: fix one problem which immediately creates another one.)

Ugh, seconded a hundred times over! I think the only point of ticks is to spread disease. =P

[sluj]

Another amusing tick-ridden Ooky anecdote: the time I rode BART home from the field and one of those creepy homeless types that sort of crazily eyes women came and sat across from me. Then I found 3 ticks crawling up my pant legs and flicked them all off without really thinking onto the floor (later I did collect them in a little folded sheet of notbook paper but at the time just had to GET THEM OFF). The creepy guy looked down, his eyes got wide, and he got up and moved to another car.

 

I'll have to remember that! Wonder if it works on AC transit as well. Thanks for the heads-up on poison hemlock, too,

 

So far I've had good results with Advantage here. Virginia always seemed worse to me, but then again my folks use frontline.

[Debbie Meier]

One year we had a really bad fly problem in the barn. I'll be curious to see if the big chickens help with that as well. My guess is they will.

 

J.

 

Last year the flies were horrid until after we had the ducks and chickens arrive. I've been watching this year, the ducks have been concentrating on the horse lots, so far the flies seem to be staying in check. We let everything free range, it appears that as the insect population goes down the birds begin venturing out to perimeter of the propery then finally out into the fields.

 

Last fall was also the first time we did not get attacked by misquitos, asian beetles and box elders, and I don't think I saw a single tick. $100 worth of ducks sure paid for themselves in a hurry, plus gave us the added bonus of eggs. Our results are not scientific by any means, but prior to the ducks Wayne was spraying the property every few weeks so we didn't get carried away by the bugs.

 

As for the ticks in Wisconsin, I don't miss them. When we lived there (Cottage Grove) we made sure that our property was mowed as short as possible, removed all brush and the dogs were not allowed out into the tall stuff. When we went camping everything got lathered with repellent and then bathed when we got home.

 

I found a horse spray that is also approved for dogs called Zonk it! that worked really well, it is a residual and works pretty well as long as the dogs stay out of the water. I have friends that contracted lymes, nope, don't miss that part of Wisconsin, along with the huge misquitos.

 

Deb