tick blood meal Archives » Tick Control in Central Mass

Do Ticks Take Blood?

Ticks need blood to survive and feed from a wide range of hosts.

Your blood is valuable, especially to ticks. Once a tick hatches from its egg, it needs a blood meal at every stage of its life. Without this meal, a tick cannot survive. Ticks feed from mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles. They frequently look for blood hosts and are willing to do whatever they can to feed from them. With the right planning, you can guard against ticks and prevent them from biting you and taking your blood.

Tick Blood

What the Life Cycle of Ticks Looks Like

The life cycle of ticks includes four stages: egg, larva, nymph, and adult. This cycle lasts about two years. The one constant during each of these stages: ticks need blood. In order to move from one life stage to the next, a tick must find blood hosts. If a tick is successful, it’ll be able to reach adulthood. At this point, it can help foster a new generation of ticks before it reaches the end of its life.

How Ticks Identify Hosts

A tick can detect a potential host through its breath, body odor, moisture, and other factors. Oftentimes, a tick will find a well-used path as it looks for prospective hosts. For example, a tick may wait on the tip of a piece of grass or shrub. It’ll hold its front legs outstretched, while its third and fourth pair of legs remain attached to the grass or shrub. If a human being, animal, or any other potential host brushes the grass or shrub, the tick climbs aboard. From here, the tick can bite the host and get blood from it, without the host likely realizing it is doing so.

Will You See Blood If You Squish a Tick?

If you squish a tick, be prepared for a splatter of blood. It’s common for an engorged tick to be filled with infected blood. Thus, when you squish the tick, it will pop. When this happens, blood can splatter, and you may get blood on your hands.

How to Remove a Tick Without Having to Deal with a Splatter of Tick Blood

Using tweezers is the best option if you have a tick on your skin and want to remove it without a splatter. Pinch the tweezers to grasp the tick from your skin. Next, pull upward with steady pressure. The tick may have a strong grasp on your skin. Regardless, if you pull consistently, you can remove the tick.

Tick Control Tips You Need to Know

Expect ticks if you’re going outdoors in brushy, grassy, or wooded areas. Apply an insect repellent on your skin, clothing, and footwear when you visit these areas. This helps you keep ticks off of you. Also, check for ticks and shower within two hours of going to areas where ticks may be present. Of course, if you’re dealing with ticks at home, you may need extra help. In this instance, you can partner with a tick control company.

Don’t Wait to Get a Tick Control Treatment

A tick control company can apply a treatment across your property. This treatment helps you limit the tick population. You can receive regular tick management treatments. As you do, you can keep the tick population at bay long into the future.

Also read: Can a Tick Bite You in the Winter?

Do I really need tick control in the fall?

As summer winds down, we anticipate not only the change in season, but also the changes we make in everyday life. There will be less cookouts. Less long days of outdoor play for the kids. There will not be less ticks.

Central Mass tick control is not just something we do in the spring and summer, and then hang up until next year. In recent years, Central Mass residents have wised up to the importance of tick control even after the temperatures have begun to fall. Why is tick control in the fall so important?

tick control in the fall

Ticks are looking for their reproduction blood meal in the fall.

White-tailed deer are on the move, and so are ticks! Female ticks are looking for their blood meal, which is necessary to produce eggs. When they are successful in reproducing in the fall, thanks to the blood meal they received from the deer population, their eggs will hatch in the spring. And so the cycle continues – a never ending cycle of tick reproduction, right? No, it doesn’t have to be this way!

fall tick control

Female ticks lay their eggs in nests of mice.

Most of the fertilized tick eggs will be left to incubate in the nests of white footed mice. The larvae ticks will be looking for their very first blood meal next spring, and will find that blood meal from the mice, who have given them a cozy spot to survive the winter.

Practice Central Mass tick control in the fall.

The best way to eliminate ticks is with professional tick control, and the best way to get a jump on next year’s tick population, is to have your yard protected in the fall. A time-released, EPA-registered tick control spray will eliminate up to 95% of ticks in your yard and around your home. October and November are the prime months that female ticks are looking for their final blood meal. Stopping them from being able to do this will halt the reproductive process. Thus, greatly decreasing the number of new ticks that will hatch in the spring.

Central Mass tick control in the fall

A tick tube program will provide even more tick protection for your family. Tick tubes are placed where mice make their nests. Inside a small tube is cotton, which is treated with tick control insecticide. Mice will use the treated cotton to create their nests, and will get the insecticide on their fur and skin in the process. Ticks in search of a blood meal will come in contact with the insecticide, and be eliminated – stopping the nasty tick life cycle!

Dave Macchia, tick control enthusiast — Dave Macchia, Central Mass tick control enthusiast

Stopping the tick life cycle isn’t just about eliminating nasty pests. It’s about protecting your home and family from serious tick-borne illnesses, such as Lyme disease and the Powassan virus.

Ticks are much like Game of Thrones’ Night King!

Ticks are no good for ANYONE. They prey on our families, our pets, and even our livestock. Will you be stuck trying to remove a tick from yourself or a loved one this year, and hope that said tick has not left devastation behind?

As we inch towards the series finale of Game of Thrones, I started thinking about how I might compare Central Mass ticks to the once-feared, mysterious Night King. Here are some comparisons between the two!

Central Mass ticks and the Night King are u-g-l-y, and they ain’t got no alibi!

Most obvious of all, the Night King is hideous and scary looking. The same can be said of ticks! Not only are ticks gross on the outside, but they have a mouthful of hooks that allow them to DIG IN to your flesh, and borrow!

Your sacrifice is required for their reproduction, just like the Night King built his army of Wights!

Female ticks take a few blood meals during their life cycle. They require their last blood meal in order to reproduce, and create more blood-sucking, disease spreading ticks! In search of their blood meal, they will latch on to your flesh, sink their hooks in you, and can transfer very harmful diseases, like Lyme disease.

Tick bites are your blood sacrifice!
Your sacrifice could be Lyme disease!

Central Mass ticks can survive the winter, just like the Night King!

Contrary to popular belief, ticks do not die in winter. Reputable Central Massachusetts tick prevention professionals have solutions, such as tick tubes, which will continue to eliminate ticks “out of season” and control the tick population in your yard during the next spring and summer!

Do ticks survive winter? — Like the Night King, Central Mass ticks easily survive winter!

Don’t say, “Dracarys!” Fire will not help you remove a tick – just like dragonfire won’t kill the Night King!

You do NOT want to burn ticks to get them out of your skin. Never put yourself, your loved one, or your pet in harm’s way by trying to burn a tick to remove it. This cannot end well! How should your remove a tick?

Steel vanquished the Night King, and will help you vanquish your tick!

Tweezer tick removal — Proper tick removal requires tweezers.

Valyrian steel not required! For that matter, please not your most effective weapon will not be a dagger. All you need is a nice pair of tweezers to remove and dispose of your tick.

My goal is always to inform you about the dangers of ticks in Central Mass. The best way to control them, and to keep your family safe, is to prevent them in the first place. As they say, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

What’s Long and Slithers and Had Ticks All Over?

You might have a difficult time believing the answer to this riddle! Recently, Gold Coast and Brisbane snake catcher encountered a truly unusual snake. When these professional reptile re-locators found this carpet python, he was covered in ticks – 511 blood-suckers, in fact!

Talk about an animal in need of tick protection!

Nike the snake is now in the care of Currumbin Wildlife Hospital Foundation in Queensland, Australia, where he continues to recover. When Gold Coast and Brisbane Snake Catcher rescued poor Nike from a pool in Coolangatta, he was nearly unrecognizable and severely anemic, because these ravenous blood-suckers were feasting on him. Usually, snakes will fight off invading ticks and insects, but Nike did not. Once these hungry ticks latched on, they weakened the carpet python past the point of defense.

What does a cup of 511 ticks look like?

Feast your eyes on this! Even though more than 500 ticks were meticulously removed from the snake’s body, more remained intact under his scales, and had to be treated with medication.

ticks all over - 511 ticks — More than 500 ticks feasted on the snake’s blood until he became severely anemic

Days later, this baby koala required a blood transfusion after having 100 ticks removed!

To further illustrate the damage these nasty invaders cause, and the danger they pose to our families – pets – wildlife – livestock!

Ticks eat to live and live to eat! Don’t allow your family to become a “blood meal.”

Ticks must have their blood meal in order to survive each stage of life. In the larvae stage, they often take their first blood meal from Lyme infected hosts, like the white-footed mouse. Nearly the entire population of this mouse is infected with Lyme Disease, which is how ticks become infected. In the next stage of life, ticks are in search of a larger host with a lot of blood and nutrients – which make us humans an ideal feast! During this feeding, ticks actually filter and regurgitate the water content from our blood right back into our bloodstream, introducing the threat of disease. Don’t become a blood meal.

When it comes to tick-borne disease prevention, tick control is the key. Be sure your family is protected this year by calling a tick control professional!

Why is it so Darn Difficult to Remove a Tick?

Living in Massachusetts, Charlton residents certainly know a thing or two about deer ticks. Tick populations are at epic proportions, making us experts in finding and removing ticks whether we like it or not.

As we all know, deer ticks can’t simply be brushed off; they have to be removed with great and careful effort. Just what is it about ticks that make them hang on so tight?

See: How to remove a tick

Ticks are Built to Hang On – How can we remove a tick?

While it may seem just like any other insect bite, a tick bite is a multi-step process. Telescoping barbed mouth parts are why a tick is so difficult to remove. Reliant on its ability to latch on to a host for a several day’s long blood meal, ticks depend on the proper function of this barbed appendage. If they were easy to remove it would make it impossible for them to get a full meal as a change of clothes would cause them to fall. The anatomy of a tick’s mouthparts is where a great deal of the magic happens that allows them to feed successfully for days on their host. The Scientific American recently published a fantastic story explaining exactly how these very specific mouthparts function.

Charlton Ticks Bite

By studying ticks under a microscope during the process of embedding into a mouse ear, scientists have been able to learn a great deal about their successful feedings. Think about this microscopic process next time you get a tick bite:

Ticks burrow into their host’s skin with “two telescoping, barbed structures called chelicerae.”
Next, they spread their chelicerae apart like two arms doing the breast stroke.
When they spread the chelicerae a “spikey, swordlike appendage” called the hypostome, sinks into the host.
The hypostome forms a tube for the process of withdrawing blood from the host.

With anatomy made specifically for their long-term blood meal habits, a tick bite is an efficient feeding process. While the little blood they take doesn’t seem to do us so much harm, the bacteria and viruses ticks can spread during the process is something to cause concern. With Lyme disease, Anaplasmosis and Rocky Mountain Spotted fever being spread so easily, avoiding ticks and tick bites is the best option for staying healthy.

Charlton tick control is essential.

I am committed to providing you the best most up-to-date information on the threat of tick-borne diseases in Tewksbury. Stay tuned for the latest on ticks in the area. Be sure to follow the 7 C’s of tick control to make certain your yard is not inadvertently attracting ticks.

Category: tick blood meal