Animals Controlling Tick Populations
Animals Controlling Tick Populations
Guinea hens have become a popular defense against deer ticks. They can roam your property and will eat any insects in their path. Deer ticks are one of their favorites.
They can be loud as they roam in packs on your property. Guineas are best suited to larger parcels of land they can roam freely, and they need to be kept in an area zoned for poultry.
QUOTE- "By subjecting field-caught hosts to parasitism by larval blacklegged ticks, we found that some host species (e.g. opossums, squirrels) that are abundantly parasitized in nature kill 83-96% of the ticks that attempt to attach and feed, while other species are more permissive of tick feeding.
Given natural tick burdens we document on these hosts, we show that some hosts can kill thousands of ticks per hectare." Source
Chickens can also eat deer ticks. They are not as effective as guineas because they won't don't roam chickens. They can also damage gardens and landscape.
You may loose some chickens since they are prey for animals such as coyotes since they don't move as quickly or fly as well as guinea fowl. They must also be kept in an area zoned for poultry.
Young turkeys are also known to eat ticks, but are reported to not be as helpful as chickens or guinea hens.