No ticks either!

[Oldcountryboy]

Or I should say "Very few ticks this year".

But I'm not complaining, it's been nice all this last summer. We have not had any problems at all with ticks in our yard all this last summer and fall. I have never lived a summer around here (45 yrs.) that we didn't have a tick problem. Our dogs roam free out in the brush and woods all the time and they don't even have big dog ticks on them. We haven't sprayed nothing to prevent them either. There not even out in the woods. My 2 youngest daughters and I spent the last 3 days deer hunting and we did not get one tick on us. My daughters killed 2 deer and the deer weren't even infested with ticks nor crabs.

Like I said "Not complaining" but what's the deal?

[Harry Chickpea]

If the end of the world is in 2012, I sure hope that what I'm thinking as one possibility is not really a possibility...

I've found tick populations affected both by excess heat and lack of host animals.

[Alice In TX/MO]

Here in southern Missouri, it has been a very low tick year as well. It is VERY dry here.

On the other hand, it could be the bee industry's hive collapse has affected ticks.

[calliemoonbeam]

Hey RH, I think all of your ticks just came over to my place, lol! I got bitten and got Lyme last year and darned if I didn't get it again this year, early too, not even full summer yet. Got the bull's eye rash and had to take a big round of antibiotics and still had multiple side effects, shoot, last year's hadn't completely gone before this year's round.

I've always been an insect magnet for some reason, lol. I can be getting eaten alive by mosquitos and everyone around me doesn't even notice them. Wasps swarm me every time I step out the door, but don't bother any of my friends or family. Guess the ticks didn't want to be left out, so they just packed up and moved on over here!

[fishhead]

We've got plenty of dog and deer ticks. A 5 mile walk on forest trails results in dozens of deer ticks crawling on the dog this fall and that's with Frontline Plus.

My last 2 dogs had Lyme 4 times (despite annual vaccinations) and anaplasmosis 3 times. The latter disease killed one of the dogs.

The dog I had before these two had hundreds and hundreds of tick bites and never got sick. It's possible that she was infected but just didn't show symptoms because she was a really tough dog. We've also got an abnormally high deer population thanks to our drought that's reducing snow depth. It used to be single fawns were the norm but nows it's almost always twins or even triplets.

[April]

We had massive amounts of ticks here in Southeast MO this year. More than in any other year. Just walking across the yard would route you through giant swarms of tiny tiny "seed ticks". Blech.

[TRAILRIDER]

We haven't had ticks or fleas in years. I had a bunch of guineas and other poultry, so I attributed the lack of ticks to that. Now I just have the chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys but still no ticks. When we had the cicadas a while back, my yard had almost none. But my ducks crops were so full the ducks could almost fall over forward! My neighbor a half mile up the road had so many you could still hear them indoors. They were so loud outdoors you couldn't hold a conversation. I love my birds!

[Patt]

Same here in western AR. We have a large guinea flock but our dogs roam pretty far into the woods too and so do we and we haven't had any ticks in months. It has been super hot this Summer and super dry, we are actually on water restrictions here right now.