Deer Tick Infestation

How to Prevent Deer Tick Infestations

Deer ticks, unlike some other ticks, aren’t usually found in homes because they cannot survive well indoors. If deer ticks are inside a home, it is because deer ticks were escorted indoors on your pets or on you and your loved ones. When returning from woodland walks, check yourself and your family for deer ticks. Deer ticks are very small and not easy to spot.

Dogs and cats who venture into tall grass or who spend a good deal of time outdoors, should be thoroughly checked for ticks on a regular basis, and should be protected against fleas and ticks with oral or topical prevention products available at retail stores and at your vet’s office. If you spot a tick on one of your pets, it’s likely that any other pets also have ticks. Addressing ticks is not something you should put off for later.

Signs Deer Ticks Are Active Around Your Property

Because blacklegged ticks live outdoors, the signs you notice are mostly on people and animals after time outside:

• A tick crawling on clothing, skin or a pet’s coat after yard work or a walk near woods
• A small, dark, swollen bump on a dog’s head, ears, neck or between the toes, which may be an attached, feeding tick
• A tick found on a bed or couch soon after a pet comes in

Checking the yard yourself: slowly drag a white towel or piece of flannel over leaf litter and low plants along shaded edges, stopping every few yards to check it. Ticks cling to the fabric and show up clearly against white.

Where to look: wooded borders, leaf piles, brush, ground cover, woodpiles, block or stone walls and the strip where lawn meets woods. Open, sunny, mowed lawn is poor habitat because it dries out.

What brings them close: deer passing through, rodents sheltering in brush and woodpiles, and dense, humid shade right up against the yard.

Season: in Florida, adult blacklegged ticks turn up mostly from fall through early spring, so cool-weather hikes, hunting trips and yard cleanups are prime times for careful checks.

Many ticks indoors? If you are finding ticks climbing walls, curtains or baseboards, especially near where a dog sleeps, that pattern points to the brown dog tick rather than deer ticks. Brown dog ticks can complete their whole life cycle indoors and call for a different approach. Learn more on our tick control page.