Tick, tick, tick. Trust me you do not want to find yourself in a situation when you have to deal with these pesky buggers. I have already shared with you how to get rid of ants or how to get rid of aphids in an earlier blog post. Today I thought we should tackle how to prevent ticks on your homestead.

Did you know there are over 800 different species of ticks? Besides being just icky, one of the reasons you should try avoid ticks is because they are the main agent in the spread of lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, anaplasmosis, babesiois and ehrlichosis. They say prevention is better than cure, so I always try my very best to prevent serious situations. Some people prefer to use natural solutions to repel ticks, however not every one enjoys success when using these.

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1. Free Range Chickens Or Guinea Fowl

If you have chickens on your homestead or property, simply let them go wild during the day and you will notice the number of ticks reduce drastically. Although, they can be very noisy, guinea fowl can do an even better job than chickens if you can stand the racket.

2. Eliminate Tick Infested Areas

Tall grass is usually where they like to reside. One effective way of keeping them at bay is cutting any wild prairie grass areas and replacing with a good well maintained lawn. Also try create barriers between your back yard and the woods by using things such as wood chips, gravel or mulch.

3. Effective Use Of Repellents

Ticks can be eradicated by using repellents which contain certain chemicals such as DEET and permethrin. The later can only be applied on your clothing and provides protection even after a few washes. There are aricides that can be sprayed by professionals too.

4. Always Keep Ankles Protected.

Ideally wearing long pants and then tucking them into your high socks, whenever you decide to do some work in your yard. If you wrap duct tape, with the sticky side out around the top of your socks, you can create a ‘sticky zone’ that will trap any ticks trying to crawl up your socks.

5. Regular Tick Checks

Most importantly, is to make sure that you perform frequent daily tick checks on yourself as well as your family. They love to embed themselves in the nice warm often private areas of your body. When you locate them, you can either use some tweezers to pull them out or just your bare hands. It is recommended that you apply some rubbing alcohol on the affected area.

Although they are hundreds of different species of ticks, the good news is that only a few are responsible for infecting people with different diseases. Don’t forget to inspect your pets too for ticks, before you let them indoors.

You can get more information from the Homestead Honey blog, here…