Help! Tick Infestation!
 

Hello, everyone. For reasons too involved to list, I have very limited
posting ability to Usenet. I can read as much as I want, however, so
please forgive my lack of quick response to answers to this query.

All last year in this rural farming area, we never saw a single tick.
Not one.

Suddenly, starting about two weeks ago, ticks seemed to be everywhere.
Our indoor cats have not been affected, but the barn cats in the area
all seem to have multiple ticks feeding. It is terrible.

I have spent the last two days reading every .edu and .gov domain
website I could find about these filthy bloodsucking fiends, and have
already begun to take some of the actions they recommend, including
cutting grass to golf-course heights, pruning all low-hanging tree limbs
and generally making the surrounding environment unwelcoming to ticks in
all three of their life stages.

However, I would like to combine these efforts with a chemical approach.
Discouragingly, I have read that the most effective (and legal)
residential insecticide for tick control is pymethrin and pymethroid.
Though 6-45 time less effective than the illegal phosphate insecticides,
anything is better than nothing.

The problem with pymethrin-based poisons is that cats are particularly
sensitive to its toxicity, or so I have read. I really do not want to
present these barn cats with anymore problems than they already face,
but the ticks also kill them.

I have recently come across a recommendation to use something called
Sevin against the ticks. I have been unable to find any reference to
Sevin's effect on mammals, cats in particular and wildlife in general.

Any help or recommendations would be GREATLY appreciated. I have
included a good email address in the Reply-To: line in the header.
Thanks in advance for any constructive response.

Help! Tick Infestation!
 

On Fri, 26 May 2006 15:34:24 -0500, lid wrote:


Hello, everyone. For reasons too involved to list, I have very limited
posting ability to Usenet. I can read as much as I want, however, so
please forgive my lack of quick response to answers to this query.

All last year in this rural farming area, we never saw a single tick.
Not one.

Suddenly, starting about two weeks ago, ticks seemed to be everywhere.
Our indoor cats have not been affected, but the barn cats in the area
all seem to have multiple ticks feeding. It is terrible.

Yep, here too.

I don't think there is a good, cat-safe, chemical for general tick
control, but there certainly is for the cats themselves.

As you said, a couple of weeks ago the ticks - and fleas too -
populations and cat infestations suddenly exploded - I was picking up
half a dozen flea bites and one or two ticks a day myself from those
the cats brought in. My cats were almost due for their monthly
Frontline dose anyway so I dosed them. Two days later, both ticks and
fleas in the house and on the cats dropped of to almost nothing. The
cats do continue to bring ticks inside on their fur, and Snowball had
one attached to the edge of her left eye last night, but basically,
the problem is over.

Frontline is applied to the back of the cat's neck and controls ticks
and fleas on the cat for about a month. Unfortunately it's very
expensive is used as labeled - about $10 per cat per month. However,
the dog and cat formulas are almost identical, the largest dog size is
only a few dollars more than the cat size and treats about eight cats.
The stuff comes in packs of three in the US. You can get it for about
half the US price from vet supply web sites in Australia (I buy
several six-packs at a time to treat my twelve cats for about $2.00
per cat per month. I empty the tube into a small bottle, and meter
and apply the doses with 3 cc syringes (0.5 cc for a normal size cat).
It's still costly for large clowders, but the results are outstanding.
You do have to be able to catch and hold the cat to dose it.

--
T.E.D. )

Help! Tick Infestation!
 

we have indoor and outdoor cats, we have been using sevens for some time now
and it has not affected our animals in anyway
wrote in message
...

Hello, everyone. For reasons too involved to list, I have very limited
posting ability to Usenet. I can read as much as I want, however, so
please forgive my lack of quick response to answers to this query.

All last year in this rural farming area, we never saw a single tick.
Not one.

Suddenly, starting about two weeks ago, ticks seemed to be everywhere.
Our indoor cats have not been affected, but the barn cats in the area
all seem to have multiple ticks feeding. It is terrible.

I have spent the last two days reading every .edu and .gov domain
website I could find about these filthy bloodsucking fiends, and have
already begun to take some of the actions they recommend, including
cutting grass to golf-course heights, pruning all low-hanging tree limbs
and generally making the surrounding environment unwelcoming to ticks in
all three of their life stages.

However, I would like to combine these efforts with a chemical approach.
Discouragingly, I have read that the most effective (and legal)
residential insecticide for tick control is pymethrin and pymethroid.
Though 6-45 time less effective than the illegal phosphate insecticides,
anything is better than nothing.

The problem with pymethrin-based poisons is that cats are particularly
sensitive to its toxicity, or so I have read. I really do not want to
present these barn cats with anymore problems than they already face,
but the ticks also kill them.

I have recently come across a recommendation to use something called
Sevin against the ticks. I have been unable to find any reference to
Sevin's effect on mammals, cats in particular and wildlife in general.

Any help or recommendations would be GREATLY appreciated. I have
included a good email address in the Reply-To: line in the header.
Thanks in advance for any constructive response.