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Spring has sprung and Ticks are out!

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http://www.extension.umn.edu/garden/insects/find/ticks-and-their-control/

Tips on Personal Protection
Ticks usually crawl onto people below the knees and then crawl upwards. When you are outdoors in known tick areas, wear protective clothing, such as long-sleeved shirts and long pants. Wear light colored clothes so it is easier to see ticks on you. For added protection, tuck pants inside socks. This helps keep them on the outside of your clothing, giving you more time to see and remove them before they get to your skin and start feeding.

Stay on trails and avoid walking through woody, brushy, or grassy areas where ticks are most common.

Use repellents for additional protection. Apply them to socks, pant legs, and parts of clothing that may brush against vegetation.
DEET (N, N-diethyl-m-toluamide) and permethrin are effective repellents. You can apply DEET to clothing and skin, 20% – 30 % DEET protects for several hours. Although higher concentrations of DEET are available, there is evidence that suggests that there may not be much added protection with higher concentrations.

Apply permethrin only to clothing. Permethrin-based repellents remain effective for several wearings. Do not overapply repellents; apply only enough to cover the desired area.

Check your clothes and yourself when you have been outdoors in known tick areas. Particularly examine yourself around the waist, under the arms, inner legs, behind the knees, and around the head, including in and around the ears and in the hair. Adults should help check their young children for ticks. Save any suspected blacklegged ticks for identification.
In your yard

The numbers of ticks that are found on a property are influenced by the amount of favorable habitat that is found there, i.e. brushy, grassy areas, and the number of animals, especially whitetailed deer and whitefooted mice, that are present. You can reduce tick numbers through landscape modification that creates a less favorable environment for ticks and their animal hosts.

Keep grass and vegetation short around homes, where it borders lawns, along paths, and in areas where people may contact ticks. Ticks are less likely to survive in short grass.

Remove leaf litter and brush, especially from buffer areas, i.e. where the lawn borders grassy, brushy areas. Also prune trees and shrubs in these areas to allow more sunlight through as ticks are more common in shaded areas.

You may be able to reduce the number of ticks adjacent to your home by reducing the number of deer that are nearby, although this usually very challenging. Do not encourage deer into your yard by feeding them. Fences can help reduce the number of deer that enter into your yard, but will have to be sufficiently high enough, about 8 to10 feet tall. Try to avoid plants that deer particularly like to eat. For more information, see Coping With Deer in the Landscape.

It is generally not effective to treat large areas of woods, brush, or grass with insecticides as insecticides do not always reach into areas where ticks are found (e.g. in the leaf litter). Ticks can also be reintroduced into areas when animals and birds carrying ticks move into previously treated areas.

It is not necessary to treat your lawn for ticks as ticks rarely infest maintained yards.

In cases where high numbers of ticks are present in areas adjacent to home yards, treating the edges of wooded or brushy areas and paths can help to reduce tick numbers. Use an insecticide labeled for a turf area, such as those containing permethrin, cyfluthrin, or carbaryl. Do not spray such an area more than once a year.


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