-------------------- --Lymetutu-- Opinions, not medical advice! Posts: 96222 | From Texas | Registered: Feb 2001
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WPinVA
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posted
Is this for ticks or mosquitoes? We have a company spraying our yard which usually works great but STILL have a ton of mosquitos this year, so I agree with it being a bad year. All the wet weather I guess?
I also have a lot of plants that are supposed to repel mosquitos and ticks. Unsure as to the efficacy but figure it can't hurt.
Posts: 1737 | From Virginia | Registered: Aug 2011
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lpkayak
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posted
im talking about ticks how much do you pay for ticks my company is 1000. a year now for 6 sprays
i cant pay that
-------------------- Lyme? Its complicated. Educate yourself. Posts: 13712 | From new england | Registered: Feb 2004
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TX Lyme Mom
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posted
These DIY tick tubes might be a helpful strategy by stopping ticks at their source of origin. (There are other good ideas for protective outdoor living on this website also.) http://www.practicalprimitive.com/skillofthemonth/ticktubes
Another strategy is to sprinkle sulfur powder around the area, but I don't know how practical this is. At Girl Scout day camp, we sprinkled sulfur powder onto the girls' socks to prevent insects from crawling up onto their legs when hiking along trails.
I'm pretty sure that sulfur powder is sold in agricultural supply stores, but it's been a long time since I shopped for it and my memory is vague. I haven't looked for it at Home Depot or Lowe's recently either, but I'd expect to find it there also.
Luckily, we have fire ants in our county now, so ticks haven't been a big problem for many years where I live, thanks to the presence of fire ants. Whatever you do, do NOT get rid of fire ants on your property whenever they move into your area if you want to eliminate the tick population.
Posts: 4563 | From TX | Registered: Sep 2002
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lpkayak
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So the ants eat the tick eggs? First time i herd thst. Thanks for links!
-------------------- Lyme? Its complicated. Educate yourself. Posts: 13712 | From new england | Registered: Feb 2004
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TX Lyme Mom
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posted
quote:Originally posted by lpkayak: So the ants eat the tick eggs? First time i herd thst. Thanks for links!
No, it's something about the formic acid that the fire ants secrete which kills or deters the ticks. Or maybe it's that the fire ants discourage the secondary hosts (rodents, etc.) from populating the area. I'm not sure what the real explanation is.
All I really know is that whenever fire ants move into a county, then ticks aren't such a big problem in that geographical area anymore.
Posts: 4563 | From TX | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
I've heard that too. I know when we first got fire ants on our property in Texas, all the ticks disappeared. It was nice. They came back many years later, but still not as bad as before.
I know one person in Texas (between Dallas and Houston) who told me that she had fire ants and ticks. Lovely.
Also .. My brother went to forestry school in New Mexico in the late 60's where the ticks were HORRIBLE. They doused themselves in sulfur every day. He never got Lyme .. I don't think.
-------------------- --Lymetutu-- Opinions, not medical advice! Posts: 96222 | From Texas | Registered: Feb 2001
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Rumigirl
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posted
Sulphur powder keeps ticks at bay? That's the first I've heard of that! I just wrote my niece a dissertation on preventing tick bites, as she's
going (or already gone) to Shelter Island. That's where the gov't got the ticks that our blood tests are based on, i.e., ground zero for ticks.
I just realized I should have gotten it to her earlier in the week.
Fire ants . . . wow!
Are others finding that Permethrin doesn't work this year?? That would be horrible! It's the most effective thing in my experience.
BTW, although I live in a city, we already have mosquitoes (quite a few) and flies. They usually don't come until later. The flies mostly towards the end of the season. So, yeah, more bugs and earlier this year. We just had to get screens (apt 7 stories up, usually not necessary).
Posts: 3771 | From around | Registered: Mar 2008
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TX Lyme Mom
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I have to tell y'all a real life joke (on myself) about using sulphur to prevent tick bites. At Girl Scout day camp, we were given sulphur powder in our group baskets for the week, which also included Plaster of Paris for making castings of objects found in nature.
I had missed the required training session for group leaders because I was substituting for another leader at the last minute, so I was a little confused about what was in our group activity baskets.
I can imagine that y'all have already figured out what direction this story is going to take. Yup, you're right.
I plastered those girls' socks real good with that white stuff ('cause I didn't find the yellow stuff).
It was embarrassing to admit my mistake, but I knew better than not to forewarn the girls' mothers to pre-rinse their socks before throwing them in with a larger load of clothes in the washing machine.
This silly story is a really good way to remember about the value and utility of dousing oneself with sulfur powder as a tick preventive though.
It's been nearly 4 decades ago, and I still haven't forgotten about it -- although I wish I could forget that embarrassing incident.
And now, I'm willing to bet that everyone who reads this topic will always be able to remember this simple and effective tick prevention strategy -- and never forget it either.
Posts: 4563 | From TX | Registered: Sep 2002
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Rumigirl
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So the sulphur powder really works? Wow, that seems simple and non-toxic. And probably pretty darned cheap.
Posts: 3771 | From around | Registered: Mar 2008
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TX Lyme Mom
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quote:Originally posted by Rumigirl: So the sulphur powder really works? Wow, that seems simple and non-toxic. And probably pretty darned cheap.
Yes, it's an old-fashioned preventative, back before the days when DEET became popular. Is it any better?...or not? I can't answer that.
Also, we don't know if there are any special warnings are precautions about frequent use of sulphur powder. I can still remember the old days when talcum powder was considered safe for babies' bottoms. Now though even simple old-fashioned talc powder is taboo for fear of cancer many years later.
For regular usage, it would be wise to research the pros and cons of sulphur powder.
We have a very savvy rural person in our TxLyme Yahoo group who could answer this question -- if I can remember to ask her about it. She has posted that she sprinkles sulphur powder around her property outside in places where she knows that her pets won't track through it, including inside the house too in spaces where her pets don't go. I'm pretty sure she has a good reason for being so careful about how she uses it.
I can also remember the days when sulfa was used as an antibiotic without caution. I lost a good friend from kidney failure within less than a year after graduating from high school because of kidney damage from sulfa drugs. Her older sister had to have a kidney transplant later for the same reason.
Doctors didn't know that sulfa forms crystals in the kidneys and that patients must drink copious amounts of water to flush the kidneys whenever taking any form of sulfa antibiotics. This was back in the 1940s when sulfa first came on the market as an antibiotic -- even before penicillin appeared on the market, if I recall correctly, or around about the same time when penicillin became available right after World War II ended.
That's why you will want to use caution when handling sulfur powder and to become familiar with all warnings pertaining to its use.
Posts: 4563 | From TX | Registered: Sep 2002
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TX Lyme Mom
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Another idea for tick-proofing your yard is DIY tick tubes, which is a home-made version of Daminex tick tubes (which can be bought commercially on the internet via Amazon, etc.)
This idea was first posted by a member of our TxLyme Yahoo group who is very savvy about living in rural areas. I had heard that there was a way to do this, and I was very glad to learn about it. It is worth sharing this idea widely in the Lyme community.
Posts: 4563 | From TX | Registered: Sep 2002
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lpkayak
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Interesting! Thx.
-------------------- Lyme? Its complicated. Educate yourself. Posts: 13712 | From new england | Registered: Feb 2004
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