Ticks, Fleas and Other Uninvited Farmyard Companions

by Ida Livingston of Davis City, IA

This past winter was the mildest I had seen since I moved to Iowa from Tennessee. Except for that two weeks in January that blasted us from the arctic with temperatures not rising above zero. That cost our peach crop but everything else was covered in a foot of snow and was well insulated from the cold. Including all the insects.

We started to get a bad feeling about what kind of bug year we were looking at when we began picking off ticks in early March. That was not a good sign. Sure enough, the gardens felt the impact of not enough winter-killed insects as the cucumber beetles and flea beetles ate whatever they could find.

Ticks

Meanwhile, the animals were being eaten as well. The main ticks that we encounter here in the midwest are the American Dog Tick and the Lone Star Tick. There are many more types, however. The “seed” ticks found in late summer are not another species; they are any one of a number of species newly hatched from eggs and ready for their first feeding.

Ticks have four stages in their 2-3 year life cycle: egg, “seed” tick (a six legged nymph), they molt then to become an eight legged nymph, molting again to become an adult. They must feed between moltings but only lay eggs after their final molting into adulthood. Ticks (and mites) are not insects; they are technically arachnids, like spiders.

An American Dog Tick can lay over 4,000 eggs¹ after she has fully engorged and dropped to the ground. These eggs take 1-2 months to hatch into “seed ticks.”

Seed ticks do not spread disease like the adults do. When they emerge from the eggs, you (or whoever the lucky mammal is) are their first host. They have not had enough time to pick anything up yet. But as they grow, morph and go from one host to the next, the chance of them picking something up and transmitting it increases. Even then, they usually have to be attached for at least 24 hours before they can transmit a disease if they are carrying it.

Our cat rarely ever has attached ticks; she is somehow able to remove them herself. Our dogs are the ones that pick up the most ticks. Every couple days we “tick pick” our dogs. I get a jar with a little vinegar or rubbing alcohol, water with a little cooking oil works too, and I drop the ticks that we pick off into the jar. Any of these will ensure that the ticks die. Ticks are very tenacious and do not die easily.

Interestingly, a good guard dog is an indirect way to keep ticks at bay. Ticks are spread by wildlife and a good guard dog that keeps them at a distance will help keep wildlife from bringing in a fresh crop of ticks. Keeping grass clipped relatively short can make it more difficult for ticks to catch their host. They do not jump far enough to count and cannot fly. They crawl, usually to the tips of grass blades or seed heads, waiting for someone to brush by.

Free ranging chickens are good about keeping ticks cleaned up wherever they range. Guineas range farther than chickens usually do and are excellent at diminishing tick populations. Guineas, however, are also famous for the amount of noise they make. That is often why people do not have them. As a side note, it is also best to not house guineas and chickens together as guineas can be aggressive to the hens.

Fleas

There are many different species of fleas, but they are all annoying. They are almost always on a farm. One of the main reasons is because they overwinter on wildlife. Rabbits and other wildlife are often crawling with fleas. These can be transmitted to your dogs when they interact with wildlife, or if they are in an area heavily traveled by wildlife.

Fleas are relatively easy to kill on pets. Any common, inexpensive cooking oil will kill them. We pour some (a cup or two) on our dogs’ coat and work it in to make sure it penetrates through the coat. In less than 2 minutes you can see the dead fleas turning up as you rub the oil in. Oil blocks their air intake openings (spiracles) and kills them quickly.

This does nothing for their eggs. When fleas lay eggs, these drop onto the ground, hatching into larvae that feed on about anything in the dust; dead skin, or any other organic debris. If you have fleas show up in your house, you probably have flea eggs that have dropped off. Frequent sweeping usually fixes this. You can also spray a mixture of water and borax on the floor before sweeping – 1 tbls borax to 1 cup hot water. Borax is toxic to the flea larvae. Change or wash your pets bedding regularly to keep the larvae in it from reaching maturity.

The oil is non toxic to your pet, but if they lick it excessively you may want to wash some of it off as too much oil may not be best for them to ingest. But the oil on their coat is good for their hair and gives it a nice healthy shine.

Mange

Mange comes in two main types, demodectic and sarcoptic mange. People and animals can get both of these but there is enough difference between the animal and human versions that we don’t (or not often enough to count) cause infestations in each other. Demodectic mange is a normally benign mange that most people have as the microscopic wildlife found in our eyebrows and foreheads. Dogs and other animals have the same benign mange and it only causes a problem occasionally on animals with compromised health.

The mange that is of the most concern is sarcoptic mange. In humans, we know of this as scabies. In animals, it is referred to as mange. A dog with mange may transfer canine scabies to people (it is possible but rare), but they cannot reproduce on human blood so the outbreak will be more localized and not spreading. Mange/scabies is host-specific.

Mange causes intense itching, hair loss, thickening of the skin, and secondary infections. Often animals with advanced cases develop a depressed appetite and they can die of starvation or exposure if a secondary infection doesn’t get them first. It is a long, slow, terrible way to go.

When my father was a child, they had a dog they loved that developed mange, probably from exposure to wildlife that had it. The dog became entirely hairless and was a sorry sight. One day my grandfather decided he was tired of the condition of the dog and, to the horror of those onlooking, grabbed the dog by the back of the neck and dunked him fully in a barrel of spent black oil. The dog did survive this baptism; the mange, however, did not. The dog grew out a full coat of hair again and never had a problem with mange again.

I am in no way endorsing black oil immersion therapy for mange. I think that the same results may be reached with a generous topical application of room temperature cooking oil. The oil works in a similar fashion on the mange as fleas by smothering them. The oil would be both painless and non-toxic.

I have heard of people who used a mixture of vinegar and borax mixed with warm water and bathed the dog with this. Both vinegar and borax will kill insects. Borax must not be ingested as it can be toxic to more than insects, and the vinegar would be painful on any open sores of any kind.

Bird Lice

There are a lot of different species of lice. Lice is host-specific. Most of us may or may not ever see any of these. I have seen and treated bird lice, animal lice, and once briefly, head lice. A bird or animal louse may be able to bite us but they cannot reproduce on us. The same in reverse: human lice are not a threat to birds or animals.

Chickens can get bird lice when new chickens are introduced to the flock. They can also get it from wild birds. We have house sparrows that will roost in the rafters of our chicken house. Many wild birds have and can transfer bird lice.

The simplest way to deal with bird lice in my chickens when it turns up is to keep a tub of wood ash in the henhouse. Chickens love a good dust bath. Ashes will kill the lice, and if the chickens have things crawling on their skin they will self treat if an ash bath is available. I have never had to use commercial medication to treat bird lice in chickens.

In animals (and people), common cooking oil will kill lice wherever it comes in full contact with them. This does not kill the nits (eggs), however. So you would have to re-treat with oil every couple days until all the lice have hatched and been killed.

Poultry Mites

There is more than one type of mite that affects poultry, but the problem and cure is the same for the leg mites. Scaly leg mites burrow under the scales on the legs of chickens. As they tunnel under the scales it causes quite a bit of irritation and cause coarse crusty legs on your chickens. If left untreated it causes itching, excessive scaling on the legs and in extreme cases secondary infections that can cause your chickens to lose toes.

If your chickens have nice smooth legs, they probably do not have scaly mites. If the legs are really rough, they probably do. Another way to tell, after the chickens are closed for the night and it is dark, they are usually quiet, except for the preening sound they make if they hear you. Anyway, if they have mites, you can hear the chickens shuffling on their roosts, shifting their feet in discomfort. This is a classic sign of mites, too.

Thankfully it is easy to treat as well. A quick fix is that trusty cooking oil again. Any cheap oil will work. It is all about suffocating the mites, water will not do it. I fill a wide mouth jar nearly full with the oil. After dark when the chickens are settled on their roosts for the night, lift them one at a time and dunk each leg all the way to the feather line on the hock joint in the oil. Replace the chicken on the roost and grab the next one.

This job is easiest to do with two people. One to hold the chicken and the other to dunk the legs. Refill the jar as necessary. This may need to be repeated in 2 weeks as the oil will not kill the mite eggs that are still under the skin, and they take a couple weeks to hatch.

Keeping an ash dust bath available for your chickens will help keep mites in general under control as well. But an outright infestation may need an initial oil treatment. You may also want to clean out the chicken house well. Then spray it down with a borax solution. Mix 1-1½ cup of borax per gallon of hot water (so it dissolves well) and soak the (empty) chicken house down with it. You can also oil the wooden roosts with oil, be generous with the oil as you may have mites hiding out there. Again, cooking oil would work fine.

Low Impact Care

When we are met with the mysterious lives of things we can barely see but have a dramatic effect on the animals we love, we can feel at a loss of what to do. It feels like our only options are the chemical cocktails that are offered to us. Some of these can be dangerous, some of them have significant withdrawal times due to the residual chemicals in their system. There are times when more serious treatment is necessary, but it is a comfort when we can reach into the kitchen cupboard and treat our animals safely with products we use in our house.

¹ The University of Rhode Island, Tick Encounter, American Dog Tick – https://web.uri.edu/tickencounter/species/dog-tick/