Does anybody know of anything I can spread out on my yard to kill ticks and not harm my chickens. I use to put out tick crystals before I started raising chickens again. I haven't had dogs for several years but I still have ticks every summer.

-- Russell Hays (rhays@sstelco.com), June 15, 2001

Answers

I don't have personal experience but have heard that ducks, especially Mergansers, or Guinea fowl will rid property of ticks. A neighbor has a pond and one time had ducks around it. I fished there several times with no ticks at all then he got rid of the ducks and the ticks were more prevalent. Hope this helps.

-- Dave (drcomer@rr1.net), June 15, 2001.

Get some Guinna birds. We had tons of ticks until we ended up with the neighbors birds adopting our property. They are free ranging. So coop them up for a couple weeks and get them used to getting fed about a particular time and they wil hang around your place. We have horses and they started coming over during graining time and then stay and eat ticks. They can be noisy but worth it

-- Stacia in OK (OneClassyCowgirl@aol.com), June 16, 2001.

I will third that!!!Guinea fowl!!!

-- teri (mrs_smurf2000@yahoo.ca), June 16, 2001.

Russell, if you do decide to get Guinea hens, here's a real good link for you. This is the Frit's Farm site. There's a bunch of interesting info about Guinea hens there.

www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/9463

I hope these birds are as good as advertised for tick control - I have a dozen eggs in the incubator now!

-- John in S. IN (jsmengel@hotmail.com), June 16, 2001.

Guineas are good for tick control. When we first moved here about 15 years ago the ticks were unbelievably bad. We got guineas about 8 years ago and the dogs come in from the woods with ticks on them occasionally, but our family rarely gets them anymore. I'd say they're worth the noise! Used to be whenever we went outside for anything we'd be picking ticks off us. Yeah, they're definitely worth the noise!

-- Sharon (spangenberg@hovac.com), June 16, 2001.

Oh I've thought about guinneas, but I really don't have room for them right now, I've got so many chickens that there practically sleeping on top of each other now. Plus my next door neighbor has some guinneas, they don't come over here on my property, but I was wondering if my guinneas would take up resident over with his guinneas and then I would still have ticks?

-- Russell Hays (rhays@sstelco.com), June 17, 2001.

You evidently need more chickens. And guineas if you don't have neighbors close by and can stand the noise! -G-

-- ~Rogo (rogo2020@yahoo.com), June 20, 2001.