Ticks in Kentucky: What’s the Best Way to Prevent Them?

It’s warming up and once that begins, spring and summer, and all the things they include usually roll in quickly. For most of us that’s pretty exciting, however, there is some work that goes along with it and that work includes tick control. The University of Kentucky’s entomology department considers 3 types of ticks to be the main vectors of disease in Kentucky: the dog tick, the black-legged tick, and Lone Star tick. These three ticks can carry a range of diseases including rocky mountain spotted fever, Lyme disease, ehrlichiosis, tularemia, anaplasmosis, and even an allergy to red meat. All dangerous, but all preventable.

There are four stages in the life cycle of a tick. It takes a blood meal to move through each cycle. The Center for Disease Control says sometimes this life cycle can last up to 3 years.

Do you really want a tick making your backyard it’s home for the next three years? That gives it time to feed on a bird in your birdbath, move on to your dog, and then to you or your child before it lays eggs and it’s babies start the cycle all over. You could be hosting your own little tick zoo and you didn’t even know it.

Year-Round Tick Prevention

At Mosquito Squad of Louisville, we have an extensive tick control program that works year after year, not only eliminating the ticks in your yard but also preventing the birth of new ones. Trained technicians mist our barrier treatment every 2-3 weeks during the warm months to eliminate existing ticks on contact for up to 3 weeks. Our tick tubes work all year with their unique way of keeping new ticks from making it out into the yard. Twice a year tick tubes filled with treated cotton are strategically placed in your yard. White-footed mice (the kind that female ticks tend to take their last blood meal on before they lay their eggs) pull out the cotton and use it to build their nests. When the tick eggs hatch they can’t survive the treated cotton, but it doesn’t harm the mice. This results in fewer and fewer adult ticks to eliminate. No ticks, no disease. We like that. Call us as Mosquito Squad of Louisville today and let us get started early and keep the ticks at bay all year long.