TICKS!

Im having a tremendous tick infestation around my house, I have never seen it like this unless im in the woods.

Anyone have some input on treating your yard for ticks other than spraying?

I have everything picked up and cut that needs to be so they can't hide as easy, but I will still need to spray or something, someone mention powder borax to me once? Never used it.

And its the big ones not little deer ticks

There is a garlic spray that you hook up to your hose and seems to work pretty good.

https://fleaandtickproducts.org/st-gabriel-laboratories-all-natural-mosquitognatfleatick-repellent-32-oz-hose-end-concentrate-70075-1/

Terminix or TruGreen (sister companies) will come out and do a 1 time treatment around the perimeter of your house, out 6 foot, for about $50. They will treat the whole yard too, get a quote, and ask for the best deal. If your a hard sale they will drop the price to the smallest yard size, minimum charge (I didnt say that out loud). Get one treatment and be done with it. This is one of those areas where your money ahead to pay a professional.

I used to work for Trugreen as a door to door salesmen. Did it while I was laid off last year. Part of my benifits was free weed&feed for the yard. My yard went from 90% weeds to 90% grass in one season. I stopped working there and had them continue the service. This year I should have 100% grass and no weeds. The yard looks great. Couple of my neighbors have made comments, and one of them hired another service to do his yard. On the plus side, no moles last year, even though they attacked my neighbors.

HanR - I think he is trying to remain pesticide and chemical free (as am I). Too much nasty stuff in our land, air and water already

Get a couple of chickens and turn them loose in your yard. Seriously.

GreenRiver said:

Get a couple of chickens and turn them loose in your yard. Seriously.

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I have heard that - Chickens suppossedly love LOVE LOVE to eat ticks

Now I lost my appetite for chicken

Ginny hens will eat ticks all day you need to fence them in at first until they get comfy in the new home
they aren't as noisy as chickens
When i go on vacation every year the ticks on our farm are unreal my dogs avg 50 ticks a day
front line is great it kills them all
my wife and i also have to keep checking for them
last year we burned 1/2 our fields in early spring and that did an amazing job reducing the ticks
the birds in the area had half as much land to find food so that did the job we burned the other half this spring so we will see if it works again
please let me know if that garlic stuff works i will try it around the cabin if you have good luck with it

X2 on the yard birds. Common practice "out in the country" around here.

Thanks fellas, Keep it coming on any more ideas. I had the chickens and fram animals before, it just leads up to another problem for me, kinda like get a cat to get rid of the mouse, then a dog to get rid of the cat. :lol:

Im done with all the animals, down to one rabbit, one dog and two stupid cats! Don't ask about the rabbit [-X

At this point I may have to go rogue and drop a nuke on them, keep my dog in for it.

I found with fleas and ticks just go down to the store and buy JOY with lemon dishwashing soap. Add it to a hose adapter and just spray it over your yard. It will bubble for the first 5 mins but it kills all bugs and doesnt effect your grass or gardens at all.

We use the dish soap and water spray on box elder bugs.

Yep,guinea hens will clear the yard of ticks in a hurry.

Another vote for the guineas. Dad had them for several years because the place he bought when I was 10 had alot of ticks. After just a little bit, we didn't have any problem with them after that. Them birds are good watch dogs too. They will let you know when anything is around with there unmistakeable alarm noise they make. But they will attract predators like fox, coyotes and bobcats and wild dogs and dogs in general. One thing that does work is sevin dust. This will keep the ticks away and this stuff is pretty cheap.

One thing that does work is sevin dust.

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You want to be really careful with that stuff if you have pets...we had a dog that got some of that from a plant we had sprayed once and we almost lost her.

Also -- I have seen a few of the large ticks this year already. Actually the deer ticks freak me out more...the are so small you don't see them until they have already bitten you and they carry lime disease which is a really bad thing to get.

Just found the answer - non-toxic and will not harm you, your pets of anything other then the ticks

https://www.ticktubes.com/

Captain Ahab said:

Just found the answer - non-toxic and will not harm you, your pets of anything other then the ticks

https://www.ticktubes.com/

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Looks like a good product, Cap'n, but

"...All the while, the mice,...are unharmed and undisturbed."

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. We used to have a problem with field mice wanting to come inside during cold weather, but the yard cat(s) took care of them. I use Sevin spray attached to the garden hose and spray around the perimeter of the house, which takes care of ticks, spiders, ants, and Japanese Beetles (which love to decimate ornamental trees, shrubs, etc.). We're semi-rural here and real close to farm lands, so bugs are a never-ending problem. Now if I could just stop the birds from crapping on my vehicles :-k

There is no way the cats got all the mice - this will get ALL the ticks in your area

and by now Terminix would have been there and gone. All the bugs would be gone as well. You only need to keep your pets inside for 1hr after application, actually its 10 minutes, however peolpe lose track of time. All products used are approved by the FDA, and applied by liscensed technicians. Plus its garunteed to work.

You can dick around with "home remidies" all day long and still not solve your problem. MAny do, and then they call in a professional. Take the short cut, call int eh professional and be done with it.

Best way to get ride of field mice is to keep your grass short, 2-3", or get a couple of snakes.

I do not use any pesticides or other inorganic compounds as I know there is no way they are safe for my child or my dog (or me)

Plus, I really hate the idea that when Terminex sprays your yard they just kill everything, good, bad or otherwise. Then the chemical is persuasive in the entire ecosystem and as sure a shooting eventually makes it way into the streams, lakes and river where is kills and harms the fish as well

Quite a few years ago we used to have one of those companies spray our yard to keep the weeds under control. I finally realized that we were pretty much throwing our money away because the neighbors on each side of us didn't spray their yards, so their yard problems (weeds) always came into ours, no matter how much our yard had been sprayed. Now I just cut whatever is growing (grass, broadleafs, clover, etc, etc).