Tick Prevention with Timber Island Builders
TICKS
They are everyone's mind. In the case of these insects, the old adage applies: knowledge is power.
As the snow melts, it is time to prepare yourself for tick season.
If you live in the southern coastal Maine area, you probably have at least a couple friends who have had Lyme disease. You may have had it yourself. It’s a really awful thing to get. The tests can be inaccurate; the treatment is marginal. The best offense is a strong defense.
I live in the middle of a 7-acre field surrounded by woods. The first year we built our home, I had Lyme twice in one summer. I’ve done a lot of research and tried just about every product out there. Its important to say that I am not an expert: this is only my experience.
The first thing I did was mow my field as low as I could - ticks like tall grass.
Then I used a variety of different sprays through a local tick treatment company. I had really mixed feelings about this as spraying a neurotoxin on my entire property. It made me question the long-term effects- both environmentally and human health effects. I then tried some of the “natural sprays” which primarily consist of lavender, garlic and marigold.
The system that I have found that works the best is:
1.) Spring time: I use a permethrin-based spray to kill any baby ticks.
2.) Mid-summer and autumn:I wait until I see a tick then spray with the lavender treatments. We use a tea tree/lavender as a bug spray.Ticks hate tea tree oil.
3.) But lastly we do something you don’t hear about often:
Lyme disease is spread from mice and other small rodents….It is commonly thought that it is only spread from infected deer. The baby ticks come out in the spring and feed on mice, contract the disease and become nymphs. They then bite you or your children and give you lyme.
One school of thought is eradicate your mice. Don’t do that. Mice are territorial and if you terminate them, new mice will move in.
Keep the mice you have a make them happy.
I read about this mouse treatment and have been doing it for a full season, I’m still in the “theory stages” but this is the idea:
(This is best when done in early fall when the mice are getting ready for the winter.)
I bought a gallon jug of permethrin which is the chemical the “bad" spray is made out of. I diluted it to about 7% and dumped in a bunch of cotton balls and let them saturate. I then rung out the excess and laid the cotton balls out on a sheet of plastic to dry. I was wearing rubber gloves, and eye protection. You no not want this stuff on you.
Drawing from Damminix Tick Tubes.
Once the cotton balls were dry, I took a 16-inch long piece of 2-in pipe. I put duct tape over one end. I then put some yummy stuff inside for the mice. - peanut butter, crackers, cheese etc. I then filled the other end with cotton balls. I placed these about every 75-feet around my property and in a few areas that seemed like "micey" places. What happens is the mice smell the food, they crawl through the cotton balls to get to the food, treating their fur with the permethrin. Usually after there done eating, they take the cotton balls back to there home and make comfy beds out of them. In the spring when they have there babies they get treated also.
Ticks try to feed on these mice and then the ticks die.
I hate to use any chemicals at all, but when they spray my property it takes 300 gallons of chemical diluted to I think 10%, For one of my mice treatments, I'm using about 1 gallon of diluted chemical.
Again, I am not an expert of Lyme disease or all the properties or dangers of using chemicals. I have done my own research and think I'm close to finding a solution that is the least harmful to my family and the environment.
I’d love to hear of any one else's tick treatment ideas.
If making your own tubes seems like a tough project, you can buy them pre-made from sites like this: http://www.ticktubes.com
By Jake Gott of www.timberislandbuilders.com
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