Some Natural Ways to Control Ticks in Your Yard
One of the most annoying things about ticks is that they are such annoying pests! Yes, they are not lovely pets whose company you would want to keep. The other reason why you wouldn’t want to tolerate ticks in your yard is that they’ll suck the lifeblood out of you and your pets. And if that’s not bad enough, they are likely to also make you and your pets sick. That’s why tick control is important. But the good news is that you can as well use some natural methods to get rid of ticks in your yard. This post will explore some of them.
Keep Quail
There are several fowl that are helpful in tick control. One of them is the quail. Not only will they provide you with quail products, but they’ll also deal with the tick nuisance squarely.
The smallest bird on our list – quail is still a force to be reckoned with if you’re a tick. They make up for their small size with their hefty appetites for creepy crawlies.
This bird gladly forages in small groups and eats small invertebrates that it happens to find. Ticks are by no means spared – quails are even used in organized tick biocontrol programs such as this one on Long Island, NY.
If you live in the US, there is an awesome opportunity – to join the native bobwhite quail raising program and the study aimed at tick reduction.
That way, you are both supporting a vulnerable species that declined 85 percent over the last century, and you are getting rid of ticks.
How cool is that? Read more at Outdoor Happens
There’s nothing to lose and everything to gain if you go this way.
Keep Chicken
Free-range chicken are another interesting type of fowl that will give you both meat and eggs if you want them. But they come with the benefit of eliminating ticks from your yard. In fact, they’re experts in other categories of pest control as the following post describes:
Ticks
Guess what? Chickens are omnivores, so they’ll eat foods of all sorts, including many pests like ticks. Ticks are carriers of disease and happily latch onto us and our pets, which means that chickens that eat carrier ticks can get sick too (1).
Fleas
Your chickens will happily gobble up fleas they come across (2). Not a lot of meat on a lone flea, but packed together, they make a tasty chicken treat. Just as with ticks, if they are carrying a disease, the chicken-eating one is at risk.
Hookworms
Hookworms are parasites you don’t want in your back garden. And while there are many worm-type parasites chickens can get and pass to humans and our pets, hookworms aren’t one of them (3).
Mosquitoes
These hungry little vampires won’t know what hit them when your free rangers get to them; chickens also snack on mosquitoes (4). Read more at Ecopeanut
It’s a win-win with chicken on your yard!
Consider the Guinea Hen Too
Another kind of fowl that is beneficial for tick control in your yard is the Guinea Hen. This is another type of fowl that will really get your yard tick-free, apart from doing everything else its wild self wants to do.
For tick control, you may also want to consider the guinea hen. Although it’s not technically a type of chicken, the guinea hen is another type of non-mammalian fowl that is excellent at foraging for and eating ticks.
You can raise these birds right alongside your chickens to double up on your tick control efforts.
However, guinea hens are notorious for being harder to raise than chickens. Guinea hens tend to be ‘wilder’, than chickens. They enjoy doing what they want when they want.
They will roost and lay eggs wherever they please, making them harder to manage. Guinea hens are much louder than chickens also. Read more at The Happy Chicken Coop
Well, the rowdy nature of the Guinea Hen is quite a small price to pay if you think about the benefit it brings in tick control.
If any of these ideas make sense to you, then go for it. But if you’re not exactly into keeping fowl in your yard, then you may want to consider organic pest control options. At Backyard Bug Patrol, we offer a barrier spray program that ensures ticks are dead on contact. Moreover, the treatment goes deep into the foliage so that there’s extra protection for you and your family. Call us today for an affordable service.