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NothingToSeeHere1670 t1_j4rxg0c wrote

I’ll take anything that’ll help control the deer and therefore tick population, having mysterious cool cats in the woods is just an extra plus

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Grower182 t1_j4spak5 wrote

I think the tick problem is cause by a loss of woodland birds like grouse.

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[deleted] t1_j4tbrfx wrote

Also by the lack of harsh winters that used to kill them off.

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NonDeterministiK t1_j4tekw8 wrote

I thought this also, but in fact ticks can survive very harsh winters by being on mammals

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Szabko t1_j4votiz wrote

Ticks are also attracted to Japanese Barberry which is in invasive ornamental plant that self-propagates in the woods. Nurseries sell it. Eradicate that plant and you eradicate a lot of tick habitat, but also invite some opossums to help because similar to grouse they also love eating ticks.

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bond___vagabond t1_j4w2osk wrote

Rattlesnakes too, I can't remember, but I think each adult rattler eliminates 50,000 ticks per year, just from the mice it eats eliminating the larval stage of the tick lifecycle!

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BothCourage9285 t1_j4upvjt wrote

That's a myth. Tick population is most directly tied to the mouse population.

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weareami t1_j4v4e14 wrote

Its all connected! Ticks feed on many mammals

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NothingToSeeHere1670 t1_j4v23lo wrote

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25118409/

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BothCourage9285 t1_j4vpfen wrote

Hate to point out the obvious, but VT is not CT. Our deer density is completely different along with our residential development.

Technically, the tick population is tied to drought and the nut crop. Bumper crop for nuts equals a high survival rate of all mammals, but the mice and small ground mammals are where the tick larvae feed. Only ticks surviving to adulthood feed on deer and larger mammals.

They're considering vaccinating mice against lyme to reduce the spread-

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vaccinating-mice-may-finally-slow-lyme-disease/

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NothingToSeeHere1670 t1_j4weqrd wrote

“VT is not CT” … proceeds to link another study in CT. Anyways, you’re not wrong! We’re just looking at it from different views. Mice provide the host for young ticks, but deer provide hosts for breeding age ticks. Any effort to tackle the issue is worth it in my opinion, and I do wish we had more data to see what’s going on here in VT.

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bond___vagabond t1_j4w263y wrote

Oregon transplant here, they have a lot of cougars in Oregon, anecdotally they don't mess with cows that much out there, they can be hard on sheep though, so might be even less hassle for the farmers here than in Oregon, since it's a lot of dairy farming out here, and if there's big sheep farms here I haven't seen them. Central Willamette valley in Oregon is just sheep, sheep everywhere, hah.

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