I've lived in an area that has dog ticks (not the Lyme carrying ones). I've pulled dozens of ticks off myself. I've never once had one attach, always caught them in time.
I got into archery during covid and would haul a target out onto some grasslands and shoot. My buddy and I would pull half a dozen ticks off ourselves at the end. I'd find ticks half dead on my car dash the next day.
We bought "tick pants". Pants coated in some chemical that does something like this. Tuck them into our boots.
No more ticks.
Clothes coated in this drug seems like a good alternative to actually consuming the drug in my opinion.
Also I've been trying to spot a tick in the wild before it grabs me and have never done it. I want to see a "questing" tick, ie one that is holding on to the edge of a blade of grass with its arms out trying to grab something.
When you know what to look for, a questing tick is not too hard to spot.
If you are in an area that you suspect might have a lot of ticks. Look at the tips of any grass stems for a little brown/black spot. They climb as high as they can and then kinda "stand up" and put their "arms" up and out and wait for something to touch them. Then it's off to the races to climb as high as they can... on you. They stop once they hit an obstacle they can't easily get around and dig in.
I spray my shoes with permethrin. That seems to almost totally eliminate climbers as I'm not walking through tall grass. You know they've gotten a deadly dose when they start walking in circles. I don't feel bad for them. My doctor told me that 85% of ticks in my area are positive for Lyme.
trying to spot ticks in heavy brush as you are walking seems like a inefficient approach. They take a while to attach so if you do a thorough review after your activity you should be good. It's also a lot easier to strip down to your birthday suit in the privacy of your own home.
Stripping down has massive 'corner' cases. If you are alone, good luck find one on your back, between ass cheeks and few other places. Also if you do full day activity (or god forbid multiday out in the wild), not so good.
Once they reach your hair (unless you shave clean), even good luck may not be enough, very hard to spot and almost impossible alone
Yes of course but not good enough, imagine darker not ultra short hair, how do you spot one on the back of your greasy hair.
I live in places where lyme is barely 5% incidence, and even that not everywhere. If it would be like 80% like some mention, doing week-long hikes alone would be outright suicidal. Better chances for retirement in base jumping.
You can feel your head for them. Even if you have one attach, Lyme is really only concern after 72 hours of attachment (other things can be an immediate concern). You should be quite itchy and notice it before then. A single dose of antibiotics is a highly effective post exposure prophylactic. Lyme is a concern, but not as bad as many in the media make it out to be.
Lyme is not the worst thing from ticks. Tick-borne encephalitis is much worse and can effectively leave a person disabled. There's just no treatment for it.
That's why I said there are other concerns that can be more immediate. The point was that lyme is not an inevitably or death sentence. Encephalitis is one of the more rare ones.
“permethrin“ is the stuff that kills ticks. My brother works outside and got Lyme disease. It was awful so his crew wear permethrin soaked clothing. I think they buy it pre treated.
I found two deer ticks (one attached) last fall. I always wear long pants and they’d just climb up till past my waist. They’re quite small.
They gave me one dose of antibiotics as a preventative. I worry about our dog. She got the vaccine and has some medicine that kills then, but I still found three on her.
I once rented a cabin on Cape Cod, right next to the beach. The path to the beach had big clumps of grass growing at the sides, with overhanging blades of grass. The first day we realized that every single clump of grass had numerous questing ticks on them. You could see them clearly, all just waiting to latch on to you as you walked by. Honestly, it was kind of terrifying.
Also I've been trying to spot a tick in the wild before it grabs me and have never done it. I want to see a "questing" tick, ie one that is holding on to the edge of a blade of grass with its arms out trying to grab something.
Interestingly, a "questing" tick has been found to be able to cross air gaps by leveraging static electricity:
“We have now discovered that ticks can be lifted across air gaps several times larger than themselves by the static electricity that other animals naturally build up. This makes it easier for them to find and attach onto animals that they want to latch onto and feed from.
Kills ticks but also kills cats, so be careful. I have heard that once it is dry, it isn't a threat to your little furry friend, but I still won't risk it.
Seems there are a couple of chemicals that act as anti-tick. We're using Seresto collars for our two dogs (no ticks in a decade of usage), which seems to be using Imidacloprid (anti-fleas) and Flumethrin (anti-ticks).
So at least there seems to be two ingredients, there are probably more.
A long time ago when I worked on a seismic crew we found ourselves cutting lines through the brush in a river bottom. Millions of ticks would swarm up your pant legs in a red-brown cloud looking for any opening to your skin. It was not unusual to see someone strip down in the field and burn the ticks off of their clothes. I carried a large knife and used the blade to peel them off my pants by the hundreds. It was crazy how thick they were. They seemed to be hanging on every pecan leaf and on the grass under the trees.
We began treating our boots with diesel to try to repel them. That worked to a point. It didn't take long to reveal the shortcoming in that method - diesel fuel soaks through the leather and easily enters the skin. It ruins the boot leather and burns your skin so that wearing anything on your feet is very painful so we abandoned that method.
After looking at options we decided to use cattle ear tags because each cow only uses one and it keeps them tick-free. After reading all the warnings about safe handling - wear gloves, avoid skin contact, potential reproductive harm, cancer risk, etc. - we decided that it made no difference. We realized that this had to be absorbed through the cow's bloodstream from the puncture on the ear and since every cow we had ever seen had an ear tag, this meant that this chemical was present in every steak or burger we had ever eaten so wearing one long enough to complete the part of the survey with the tick problem wasn't going to increase our risk of any adverse effects.
We bought a pack of tags and each hung one on a boot and never had another tick.
I don't have any known health issues to report here 40 years later. Totally anecdotal information from what is likely to have been a low-dose, short duration exposure event.
Well, there's a difference between something entering your body through your digestive tract, and something entering your body directly through the bloodstream. Additionally, different substances have different bioaccumulation characteristics - some substances may accumulate in only in specific tissues (fat, muscle, etc.), a combination of tissues, or none. How an insecticide bioaccumulates in cattle would affect their suitability for beef.
You don't usually get bitten by mosquitoes on your neck though, how would this help with the bites you DO get all over your legs and arms? Or are you suggesting something so potent it absorbs into your bloodstream and then prevents bug bites? no thanks.
> Or are you suggesting something so potent it absorbs into your bloodstream and then prevents bug bites
That’s what the medicated pet collars do.
Part of the advantage of collar-absorption is that you can use a molecule that readily breaks down/inactivates in digestion. And avoid sharp peaks in blood levels.
> how would this help with the bites you DO get all over your legs and arms?
Not sure how true it is, but the marketing for the collars we use claims that eventually the chemicals spreads to protect the full body, even if the collar is just around the neck.
In Germany there is a spray based on eucalyptus oil and it works very well. it is marketed as “sensitive”. we have a dog that licks stuff and wanted to avoid the use of the acaricides
AFAIK there has only been one documented case of it killing a kitten and it drank the liquid form, unknown quantity. Baby animals do not yet have fully formed livers to metabolize the sodium channel blocker. Insects on the other hand do not have a liver. They use body fat to detoxify but it isn't fast enough or volumetric enough to handle the sodium channel blocker in large amounts relative to their size.
People put dog tick/flea stuff on cats all the time by accident containing it (I've personally seen it twice now), it usually doesn't kill them but it's absolutely horrible to witness, cats will get seizures and treatment is only supportive, either they live or they don't. Both the cases I saw were brought to the vet and the cats were messed up pretty bad for a few days.
I could imagine if a cat was being covered in it often enough and they lick it up their glutathione may be depleted then their liver won't keep up. I will have to dig into the stats iskander provided to see pre-existing condition the cats were at. i.e. elderly, kittens, sickly Skimming over it I am not seeing stats on age or liver health.
I use permethrin around my yard as well as have some clothing I’ve treated myself. I also use flea and tick treatment on my two dogs which is primarily permethrin.
I have two cats and we haven’t had any issues that I could see.
I make 100% sure they can never be exposed to it when it’s wet, but they’ve been around me in treated clothing, escaped the house and walked through treated (dry) grass, been around dogs that have been treated with it, etc.
Given the number of people that have cats and dogs living together who are treating their dogs with it monthly, it seems relatively safe if used properly and cautiously.
I find this surprising, are you sure it's not based on the concentration of the permethrin? Here in the US, I was able to buy a clothing spray of 0.5% permethrin from Home Depot. I'm also reasonably certain that at least some lice shampoos I've seen at my nearby CVS use permethrin, although I checked the one I bought and it doesn't have it.
Can confirm above comment. Only thing close we can buy is permethrin impregnated clothes for mosquitoes. No permethrin anything otherwise. I have some, but only because I had my sister ship it from the states. Blows my mind that you can buy up to 36% permethrin by the jug down there
It takes time for a tick to transmit lyme disease, but you can also take a single dose of doxycycline as post-exposure prophylaxis if you think it was attached for a while and ask a doctor
They recommend that dose if it’s been attached more the 36 hours and it’s less than 72 hours since removed. I fell into this slot last fall and got a single dose of doxycycline.
Odd how the sibling comment got downvoted into oblivion for this, but you're right - prophylaxis is an option here, and last I checked it was the recommended course of action if you develop the bullseye ring. Note that the tests have high false negative rates, so still might be sensible if you have a negative test.
Of course, these antibiotics are not without risk too.
Some points correcting what's been posted here and above. A single dose of Doxycycline is not an effective prophylactic. It failed me and other people I know (after my doctor and I read over the CDC guideline that was misinformation). The original study supporting it was poor regarding how it was established as effective (required the bullseye rash). The bullseye rash does not appear for everyone. Depending on the attach point/strength, ticks pass along bacteria and/or viruses in minutes. Testing the tick and monitoring yourself for symptoms is always a good practice. I prefer clothing & topical solutions vs ingested chemicals.
It would be nice to see support for natural consumption of ticks by fowl (chickens, turkeys, quail, etc), marsupial, etc.
What I read was that the bullseye was considered sufficient evidence even without a positive test to administer antibiotics. I don't know the recommended dose, perhaps a single dose is not enough.
You can take a prophylactic dose of doxycycline for 1-2 days I believe. If you have a lot of ticks in your area a general physician should be familiar with that protocol.
Put it in the freezer as you wait the bullseye game. If you do think you have Lyme's disease then bring the tick with you to the doctor, so that they confirm it.
Works well until you end up with temperatures too hot to wear pants. Or you exercise someplace with ticks and get too sweaty for pants.
Hell, I live as far north as you can go in New England, and I've found ticks on my feet after grilling dinner in my backyard. At some point I just do not care to don my anti-tick hazmat suit every time I do anything outside.
I agree I'd be more happy to use permethrin than ingest something that gets into my blood.
I find a ton of ticks around where I live and have experienced a questing tick by pulling them off of my dog before they attach and then carrying them on something. Sure you're not spotting them naturally but they will quest when given the freedom to do so. If you don't kill them immediately but put them on a leaf or something they will crawl to an end of it and start! If you're just interested in seeing how it looks
We usually use anti-tick spray on our skin and clothes when hiking in tick-infested areas, and then check for ticks in the evening. Also important to long pants and shirts if possible.
I can relate to this. My poor dog god bless her soul would collect ticks like a bandit in our backyard (not the Lyme ones). I enjoyed removing the little devils off my beloved dog and clear her suffering (and, killing ticks, which is surprisingly hard). I also gave her regular antitick soap baths, but it was not super effective.
Not one bit or attached to any member of our family. And, we had plenty of kids in the low teens around the house. In fact, it was so "OK" to see ticks, that none of the adults made a fuss about them - so we grew up never being paranoid about them - in contrast to most of my east coast friends with kids
I have a hard time understanding how a tick bites a fully grown adult in summer weather. Of course if you are wrapped in massive layers of clothing and you can't see it coming at you, its something different.
Protip: If you take your city dog abroad -particularly a tropical area outside of the country- make sure your dog is very well tick-protected. East/West coast dogs can't handle foreign tick diseases. They don't have built-in inmunities. It only takes 1 tick from a farm/field you visited to give a deadly disease to your best friend.
Almost all coated clothes use permethrin or a similar pyrethroid. It's fairly effective but I often have issues with ticks coming off my dog much later and getting on me. I look forward to this (or a lyme vaccine) making it to market - the ticks are already pretty bad this year in the midwest.
Watch for long grass along deer trails. During a particularly bad tick year (Wisconsin) I could walk along the deer trail by our swamp and just count the ticks hanging out on the ends of the green swamp grass. I did not spend much time outside that spring.
Are there already ticks? I haven't seen them yet in Illinois (though my last hike was a week and a half ago) and it's been below freezing the last few days
Between my wife, dog, and I we've gotten about a dozen in the last three weeks (we are frequent visitors of forests/fields around here). One of them was in February which I've never seen before. Apparently it takes several days of 10 degree weather to kill them off so I doubt it will slow down much from the last couple days of cold.
Unfortunately one of them was a deer tick that dug into my armpit, so now I'm playing the "wait and see if it's Lyme" game :(
When I was a kid, my mother would lightly apply sevin dust on the lower part of my jeans before I spent a lot of time outside. Seemed to work really well at reducing the incidence of flea/tick bites and the stuff washes off quite readily.
I didn't know what Sevin dust is. It's the pesticide that the plant in the Bhopal disaster was making (MIC, precursor to carbaryl). Today's Sevin doesn't have the same chemicals in it that it used to though
I don't know if the ticks would consume the drug on clothing. It is meant to be consumed in a blood meal. That said, it is largely well tolerated in dogs and cats.
I got into archery during covid and would haul a target out onto some grasslands and shoot. My buddy and I would pull half a dozen ticks off ourselves at the end. I'd find ticks half dead on my car dash the next day.
We bought "tick pants". Pants coated in some chemical that does something like this. Tuck them into our boots.
No more ticks.
Clothes coated in this drug seems like a good alternative to actually consuming the drug in my opinion.
Also I've been trying to spot a tick in the wild before it grabs me and have never done it. I want to see a "questing" tick, ie one that is holding on to the edge of a blade of grass with its arms out trying to grab something.