natural ways to reduce tick populations in back yard

Question
Hi Susan,

Thanks for taking my question.  I hope you have some suggestions for me as I'm so confused as to how to address this!

We live on a semi-wooded 1.5 acre lot - our back yard is fenced and mostly lawn, but there is a portion of landscaped area with ground cover and shrubs between the house and the lawn area.  Most of the woods is beyond the fence.

And we have TICKS!  Lots of them.  The fence combined with allowing our dog outside seems to have drastically reduced the amount of deer we see, but we have an existing population of ticks that is just so extreme I need to find some solutions.  In addition to our dog, we also have 3 small children who play in the yard.

I am wondering if it would be a horrible mistake to have the yard professionally sprayed with something like permethrin (bushes/ground cover only - the tick habitat area) - I usually hate using pesticides or any chemicals, but am wondering if we just do it once initially to rid the yard of the existing population, we could discourage ticks in the future with more natural means, like that garlic spray (or something?  any suggestions?).  I've also considered using tick tubes to treat the local mice..  again, not ideal...

Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to ticks because my sister is suffering terribly with chronic Lyme disease that she picked up when she was a child in my parent's back yard.  I really hate to use chemicals but will consider it if there are no better natural options...  

Please help!!!   :)

Thanks again for your time,
Maggie

Answer
Dear Maggie,
I understand your frustration.  Ticks are absolutely horrible here now too.  We never even saw a tick a few years ago.

If you go to my web site http://www.critteroil.com and go to the articles section and click on it, there is information on natural tick control.  It is imperative to treat both the house and the yard. Unfortunately, getting treatment from a reliable (don't recommend big franchise types) pest control company is probably the fastest and most sure fire way.  Make sure to talk to several companies and ask what their tick treatment procedure is and what their guarantees are.

I would also use all available natural methods as well because they stand a good chance of providing back up as well as helping prevent re-infestation so that you won't have to use poisons on an on going basis.

Tell your sister to find a good homeopathic practitioner that is either in the area or who does telephone consultation and treat her Lyme disease with homeopathy.  It works! There is homeopathy available for the prevention of Lyme as well which you may want to use on your pets. My holistic vet, Dr Gerald Wessner has the nosodes available. (He may also be able to help your sister..the treatment would probably be the same, just minor dosage differences.) His phone number is 352-245-2025.

Years ago a client of mine had a tick infestation in her home. She tried two different pest control companies to no avail. One day she decided to take the Critter Oil carpet powder formula and put it down into the crack between the top of her baseboards and the wall (quite a pain staking task I would imagine). Within minutes she said, she had ticks crawling out of the baseboards and into the room. She went along picking them up and putting them into a small jar of Critter Oil and water, and finally became tick free.

That's about all I can tell you for now.  If you ad a few drops of pure cinnamon essential oil to the Critter Oil you will boost the tick repellent factor.

Keep me posted. I'd like to know what you do and how it works so I can pass it along.

Take care,
Sue