Securing Your Environment

Steps can be taken to lower the number of ticks infesting your property. Please see the directions from Fairfax County, Virginia for creating a Tick-Safe Zone on the last page of the document. Click here to view the document.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also provides suggestions for reducing the tick population on your property.  Click here for more information.

The following methods are suggested to minimize ticks on your property:

1. Keep your lawn cut short to make the environment less attractive to ticks and mice. They prefer moist grassy areas under trees and in and around shrubs, so it is important to maximize both air circulation and sunlight to create as dry an environment as possible.


2. Keep the eco-zone where ticks and white-footed mice live away from the house by removing shrubs and long grasses that you may easily brush against near the home.


3. Female ticks prefer to lay their eggs in leaf piles, so rake them early, and be careful when raking leaves. Consider not allowing children to play in leaf piles.


4. Wood chips or gravel can create a "drying barrier" between wooded areas and the beginning of your lawn.


5. Professional pest control experts can apply effective pesticides, especially during the peak nymphal season for Ixodes ticks (spring and summer).


6. Do not feed birds during tick season, which is April through November. Winter bird feeding may be less risky, as you are less likely to be bitten by ticks during the winter months, although infected ticks do bite year-round. Bird feeders attract tick-carrying animals including birds, squirrels, raccoons, deer, chipmunks, and mice.


7. Keep garbage in tightly closed cans, and never leave pet food outside or purposely attract and feed wild animals.


8. Reduce the number of plants that attract deer, and plant those that they do not eat.


9. Soap such as Irish Spring can be used to keep deer from eating plants.


10. Ten foot high deer fences can be effective in keeping deer out of property. 

Several commercial products are available which kill ticks and the pests which carry them:

1. Damminix Tick Tubes: The widespread use of tick tubes containing cotton impregnated with permethrin can significantly reduce larval stage tick populations over time. Mice take the cotton to their nests where larval ticks live, and the permethrin then kills only the ticks – not the mice. Please click here for details.


2. Decon rodent control should be used in garages, basements, and attics to reduce the incidence of white-footed mice which can carry Lyme disease.


3. The Biter Fighter Tick and Mosquito Control device uses carbon dioxide to attract blood-sucking pests and adhesive strips to trap them. Details are available by clicking here.


4. Four Poster Tick Reduction Stations: Municipalities can invest in these devices, which apply tickicide directly on deer, especially its ears, as it interacts with a feeding station. A drawback is that the feeding stations may attract groups of deer, causing herding and the spread of other diseases.