Ticks are more than just offensive and unpleasant creatures; besides sucking blood and leaving a painful and swollen bite wound, they also serve as vectors for serious and sometimes fatal diseases of humans and pets.  Preventing tick-borne disease is less expensive than diagnosing and treating it, but the control of ticks and tick-transmitted diseases is often challenging due to tick biological and behavioral factors such as:

Ø       Multiple tick species with variable and overlapping seasons of activity allow adult ticks of the various tick species to be on a host year-round in Oklahoma.

Ø       Variable and sometimes prolonged tick life cycles: The entire life cycle (egg→larva→nymph→adult) takes as little as 3 months or up to 2-3 years depending on environment, host availability and tick species.

Ø       High reproductive capacity: A single female tick can lay up to 8000 eggs.

Ø       A wide host range includes deer, small mammals, lizards, birds and humans.

Ø       Immature tick stages are protected from freezing or desiccation by foliage and underbrush in the environment

Ø       Use of vegetation and undergrowth to ambush hosts:

Ticks climb onto plants and crawl onto hosts when they brush against the vegetation.  Others will actively hunt for a host; attracted by the host’s heat and carbon dioxide concentration.

Ø       Large numbers of questing adult ticks in the environment:

Understanding the tick’s biology and behavior aids in the development of an integrated control plan.  The multifaceted plan must include environmental manipulation to reduce exposure to ticks, avoidance of ticks when tick numbers are highest, daily tick surveillance for pets and people, and use of effective tick control products year-round.

1.       Avoidance is the most effective method of tick control.  Keeping your cat indoors during peek seasonal infestation times (late February to November) is the ideal method of tick-related disease prevention.