Ticks

Your owl friend surprises me not to come back. Maybe something happened to him. Most wild animals weigh the 'calories/protein <> exertion' equation and free food is hard to turn down.

My mom has two Red Shouldered Hawks eating meat scraps about 20 feet from her kitchen window almost daily. Started out feeding the foxes, but then the hawks started visiting the next day for leftovers. If she puts food out in the afternoon, the foxes get it. If she puts it out in the morning, the hawks get it. I bring her 'deer corn' to put out and she has a half-dozen deer (that she has all named) that come into a housing development to eat in her yard. Replaced the outside floodlight with a red bulb so she could watch them after dark.

We tried putting some meat scraps out and all we got were vultures, 5 years later they still roost outback once or twice a month.

We seem to have quite a few deer around here, but I don't want to encourage them to hand around. Last year they discovered that my water melon plants had pretty tasty leaves, and they stripped them down to nubs. This year I'm hoping to finally have some real success growing melons, so I certainly don't want the deer to strip the vines bare. Heck, last year I also had 2 foxes digging up and rolling on one of the water melon mounds, so I really don't want them doing that again this year. Consequently, I put a cloth covering over the mounds, and set up "bunny blasters" covering each one. But I'm sure something else will come along that I am not anticipating.

We use permethrin spray here. For the humans, the dog, and the tortoises (as needed). I make sure to avoid using it before interacting with my pond since we do not want to be disruptive of non-target (non-pest) organisms, but the safety profile tends to be very acceptable for us.

This may not be your flavor, but I also encourage my opossum residents to do well on the property. They do not let me stretch tortoise food cost dollars as far, but the trade-off is worth it for us.

Originally Posted by nickolasanastasiou

We use permethrin spray here. For the humans, the dog, and the tortoises (as needed). I make sure to avoid using it before interacting with my pond since we do not want to be disruptive of non-target (non-pest) organisms, but the safety profile tends to be very acceptable for us.

This may not be your flavor, but I also encourage my opossum residents to do well on the property. They do not let me stretch tortoise food cost dollars as far, but the trade-off is worth it for us.

And the benefits for having possums around are ___________ ?

They naturally consume ticks in large quantities within their territories. Not something I have dug into deeply, but they apparently are quick to detect and eat ticks which climb aboard their fur and since they rummage around underbrush like drunken rat-kangaroos, they incidentally come into contact with a lot of ticks.

Button quail and some other birds also work well for pest control, but the more wildlife on the land, the greater chance of button quail getting wrecked quickly by a predator. Keeping most fowl here unprotected means a fancy meal for an owl, hawk, snake, bobcat, or other animal, so quail are not a solution for me, but they are for some people. The quail would be hunted by one of the species of tortoise I keep, too, which is another reason they do not work for me. Opossums and my adult tortoises get along fine, though. The marsupials steal the excess fruit and pellets at worst, but that also helps keep the pens curated. Between the opossums and the dung beetles, cleaning pens for me only involves removing fallen Spanish moss clumps. No feces, no food scraps, no smell, fewer endoparasite concerns, and fewer ticks.

Some years are worse than others, but the permethrin usage and the opossum presence seem to do a lot for us here. I also like being able to pet an opossum (much to its confusion) here and there, but that does not relate to ticks.

Well, we have a LOT of possums running around here, so I'm not sure they are really doing their job concerning the ticks. Or if they are, then that means that without them, we might be knee deep in ticks otherwise. Surprisingly neither the possums nor the raccoons bothered the citrus last year. Actually surprised me quite a bit, because I have seen a lot of them on the game camera when I set it out. I was monitoring for turkeys when I put feed out for them, and anything they didn't get during the day would be cleaned up overnight by everything else around here. Surprisingly enough, the foxes seem to really like sunflower seeds.

Actually, I think what would be best for controlling ticks would be controlled burns. But seems like around here there have been far too many "controlled" burns that became "uncontrolled" for me to feel comfortable trying that on my own.