If you were surprised when your dog was struck down by tick paralysis last spring, think again. Just like many insects, the life cycle of the paralysis tick is closely tied to the seasons. Cued by warmth and humidity, adult and baby ticks, living in the humid micro-climate of the undergrowth and grass, come out to play.
Come spring, infant nymphs and adult ticks go questing: looking for a host to feed on. They climb onto vegetation, waving legs in the air, grabbing a host as it walks past. The Byron Bay stats below, demonstrate the repeatable seasonal pattern. Ask your regular vet to give you a more accurate idea of the peaks in your local area.
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Rain and humidity are important for triggering tick activity, and the onslaught of after hours emergency tick cases after spring rain is a common source of sleeplessness for the on-call vet. Rain patterns can also be used to explain the variation in number of cases from year to year. Wetter years tend to have higher caseload peaks. Conversely long dry spells, at any time of the year, can fry baby ticks.
Looking for concrete links between local weather and tick seasons is hard, there’s a lack of broadscale epidemiologic stats for cats and dogs, and simply too much noise in climatic data. Coolangatta data below, courtesy Wolfram Alpha.
So what about the effect of climate change? Too early to say. Tick season timing and duration may change in the future. Compared against the predicted expanding range of independently mobile, malaria and denge-laden mozzies, ticks may be slow. They don’t travel far; their world may not extend far from a bandicoot burrow, to a neighbouring backyard lawn. Hitchhiking a few hundred metres on your cat is like a flight to Paris.
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- Recognise that, if your pet leads an outdoor lifestyle, in our local area, you’re a fool not to start tick prevention in June/July; August at the latest. A $14 tick collar can save you $400 in treatment. Continue until February.
- Small numbers of ticks continue to paralyse pets in the low-season, February to June, during periods of unseasonably warm and wet weather. When you marvel at how mild the winter is, or how nice a little autumn rain was for the garden, consider how it may make other members of the ecosystem feel. Believing that your dog’s vomiting and lethargy can’t be a tick because it’s the wrong time of year could be a fatal mistake.
- A pet owner’s attitude to risk will influence their use of tick preventatives. The ultra-cautious may chose to treat all year round, ignoring the uncertain long-term effects of all that insecticidal load.
- While you don’t have control over the weather, you do have some control over the micro-climate in your backyard. Keeping the grass short, dries out and dehumidifies the grass environment, killing off the nymph ticks.
Tags: Byron Bay, climate change, Paralysis tick, prevention, season, seasonal, tick
Hi Matt
Can we put this on our Goonengerry website. We had allot of interest from an article on ticks we published last year. http://www.goonengerry.com.au/news-mainmenu-2/1-latest/65-has-tick-season-started-yet.html
Hi Matt,
nice idea plotting that and I love the inverse relationship to hours of sleep for on call vets, nice one!
By the way, I took our demanding visitors from last week bushwalking in Wanganui gorge, there were some lovely spots, saw two very mature cedar trees, tyhat looked like they must have been at least a couple of centuries old.
We should go bushwalking sometime now you’re back up this way
Catch up soon
Cheers Rich
Thanks for the great article and information. We need to get our new calves drenched too–apparently ticks can kill cows too.
yep greg, all animals are susceptible to the paralytic toxin. Theres only 2 mechanisms that render animals resistant to their effects
1. Body size. The bigger then animal, the less toxin per kg of tissue, the less the impact. Horses and Cows would need many ticks to have an effect while calves, goats and other smaller farm animals suffer paralysis more readily.
2. Immunity to tick venom, only occurs after repeated exposure to the venom, a bit like vaccination boosters. Even wildlife species which dont usually get ticks, like birds, can go down with paralysis if tick affected.