Tick treatments, anything natural that is effective? - Page 2

Northern Maiden .. any tips on using geranium oil, lemongrass oil, and lavender oil for ticks and mosquitoes?? The use of a spray or mist sounds good .. however the oils don't mix with water and must be dissolved in an alcohol ( vodka ) or other solvent before mixing with water. How do you mix your sprays?? Obviously the sprays or mists are short lived and must be applied daily.

When I lived in south florida, I used with great success a tick collar called "preventic".

Active ingredient, amitraz.

 

I prefer it to the other chemicals, because it could be removed from the dog as needed.

So if you hike, put it on beforehand, leave on, remove later.

 

I had the most horrific  infestation of "seed ticks" that came from bags of cypress mulch that I bought  and was using in the yard. Could not figure out WHAT was going on.. dogs becoming lethargic, almost paralyzed, from the TICKS that were SO small.. you could not really see them until you blew out your dog with a dryer...  it took a lot of detective work to figure out where the ticks were coming from!

 

My friend and I spent several hours picking them off of Frisco..   and drowning them in flea shampoo water...there were hundreds..

 

At that time, no monthly products existed..  there was dursban dip, adams flea mist.. 

The tick collar on the dog dropped them in hours.. infinitely preferrable to the slow death from tick side effects that the dog was experiencing..  

Sometimes you have to use undesireable things to ward off more serious other things.. 

 

Nothing natural was working.  Whenthe ticks started showing up on the ceiling above my bed, and one was on ME, thats when the natural idea flew the coop.. and the tick collar came out.

 

My uncle suffered serious bad health from a tick bite and lyme.. he suffered for years.

 

You have to weigh the bad with the good.. and choose wisely. I am all for less chemicals in my environment, but I will utilize them to keep things in stasis without costing me or my animals worse things..

Amitraz is not on my list of "worth it for the risk" dog insecticides. I don't use it ever because of toxicity problems. As far as weighing the benefits that is a case by case decision but the directions for use (DFU) or better known as the label or application instructions are written by the pesticide maker to protect the pesticide maker from legal action when something goes wrong. Something will go wrong .. usually it is nonperformance but less often it is toxicity to the crop or animals. That is exactly what using any pesticide is "do the possible benefits exceed the possible risk"?? Any professional agricultural producer knows this. Sometimes the benefits do not appear, sometimes they do, sometimes the safety margin to the plants or animals is sufficient, and sometimes the crop injury or animal toxicity does more harm than good. Natural products are not necessarily more safe than synthetic ones. There is a spectrum of susceptibility and resistance to pesticides in all target populations be they fleas, ticks, GSD, or Beagle Hounds.

I have tried geranium oil and didn't have much success with it; I know some people have used it successfully to deter insects, but it didn't work for the bugs in my area.

I put 40 drops neat oil (not in a carrier oil, such as jojoba) in 8 oz water; I have never used alcohol or vodka to dissolve the oils. I shake the bottle really well right before misting my dogs (lightly, but thoroughly), and yes, I do have to mist my dogs daily for the oils to work. My dogs smell faintly of lavender for approximately 24 hours (less if they have gotten wet, naturally). The citronella and lemongrass last for about twice as long, they are very strong oils and if you use them I would mist the dogs very lightly or else mix a weaker solution.

If you are really interested in using essential oils I recommend The Complete Book of Essential Oils & Aromatherapy by Valerie Ann Worwood, it is a very comprehensive guide to using essential oils and even has a chapter on using essential oils with animals. You can find it on Amazon or in a local bookstore.

It was tick heaven when we moved to where we are at now (in the middle of woods). I bought some Nematodes which are all natural and they will not harm animals but they hunt down ticks, etc and eat them. I sprayed them down in "07" and with in 2 months time I saw less and less ticks and now we don't have any. They are Awesome!!! my dogs haven't had any topicals on them since 2007. I bought mine at www.arbico-organics.com  You can see if your garden center carries them. They have them for different states. Mine hibernate in the winter and come back up in the spring and breed. I do need to buy some more just to keep them going. Wouldn't use anything else for ticks, etc.

Cool .. one of the principles of integrated pest management ( IPM ) is a multi-pronged approach that uses habitat management, beneficial controls ( in this case nematodes ), natural controls such as biological controls, and chemical controls. The idea is starve the pests, thin them out and control them once they become reach levels that require controls such as biological or chemical control. Using a single chemical control that works exceedingly well usually gets you a new pest resistant to the control or a version of the old pest resistant to the pesticide. Resistance to macrocyclic lactones ( heartworms ) and Frontline ( fleas ) are examples.

There are various natural methods available to get rid of ticks. Recently my neighbor told me about connecticut tick control professionals. They have best tick control services. You can also try them, to get rid of tick infestation.

If we are talking the yard, I have had great success with beneficial nematodes and Springtime Garlic for the dog (worked for all but the Brown Dog Ticks, but I rarely got those). With the increase in ticks AND with the increase in tick diseases I have gone back to chemical control and right now have been very happy with Bravecto (despite the fact that there is a page on FB screaming that it will kill my dog and despite the fact it is not natural). That said I monitor blood chemistries in detail once a year and all is in good order and they have not had a single tick for over a year and also clean tick panels each year.

I don't live where there are ticks anymore, but when I lived on my 10 acre farm, I used bug off garlic powder. Never got ticks or fleas on the dogs, but I sure had ticks on me. It really worked. Check it out at
https://www.springtimeinc.com/product/bug-off-garlic-dogs/All-Natural-Dog-Supplements