When you find tick eggs in your backyard, it can be scary. As the number of diseases spread by ticks continues to rise, it is important to know how to find, handle, and avoid tick eggs to protect your family and pets.
How to Spot Tick Eggs
Eggs laid by ticks are very small, about 0.5 mm across, and are usually long and thin. They look see-through or slightly whitish, and you can usually find groups of them on plants, leaf litter, or objects close to the ground. They get more solid and a color that looks like an adult tick as they get older.
What Tick Eggs Can Do to You
The main worry about tick eggs is that they might hatch into disease-carrying maggots. Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever are just two of the very bad diseases that ticks can spread. To keep diseases from spreading, be careful when handling tick eggs.
Taking out and getting rid of tick eggs
Stopping Tick Infestations
You can help keep tick eggs out of your garden in a number of ways:
Get rid of plants that deer like, like flowers and azaleas.
Plant herbs like mint and rosemary that keep ticks away.
Keep up with regular yard care and get rid of extra grass and bushes.
Wood piles should be kept up high and away from your house.
Keep up stonewalls and stay away from bird feeds to keep small host animals away.
Use natural ways to keep ticks away, like diatomaceous earth and cedarwood oil.
Use tick tubes to get rid of ticks and keep people from getting sick.
Add rough textures like pebble sand or lava rock.
Hardscaping can be used to make areas without lawns.
Be careful when using pesticides, whether they are synthetic pyrethroids or natural ones.
If you do these things, you can keep tick eggs out of your garden and lower your risk of getting diseases that ticks carry.
