I took my pony on an overgrown trail on Sunday, and have pulled 7 or 8 ticks off of him since then. Most were at the edges of where his girth goes, and I just found one I missed today. I also had one attach to me from that 2 hour ride. It climbed right up my pants and attached just above the waistline.
I’m generally ok unless I drop them off the comb and lose them 
I hate that. We just drop them in jars of alcohol to kill them, it’s gross but also kind of satisfying in a way…
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On my horses, maybe one every few months always hiding in an armpit or between hind legs.
On my dogs, I see them crawling around (not attached) 2-3 at at a time once or twice a day. I’ve only found an attached one on the dogs once or twice ever.
So disgusting. They have been terrible this year.
I found another one last night. They’re bad this year. Or maybe they’re infesting the field where we’re hand grazing.
@emeraldcity What kind of comb do you use?
What I’ve noticed at my place is that the ticks like Red horses.
There have been times when I picked ticks off the bay and chestnut horses weekly.
I have NEVER found a tick on the black pony, the dark bay mare, or the white Arabian.
Never, but a horse we rescued last year was ill from anaplasmosis, a tick disease. She was in terrible condition. Our vet told us that she would have died from the infection if we hadn’t rescued her and treated her. Not sure where she came from originally. She was picked up by a dealer from an auction here in the Midwest.
We have a strip of shelter belt evergreen trees that harbor ticks but the horses are fenced out of there.
We also have cattle pastures and woods where we can find ticks ourselves, but we mow trails through there for the horses. The grass is too rich for the horses to be turned out in that area.
I would be pulling several off daily here…but I use equispot, so with that I will only pull some off in the peak of tick season. I also do more frequent equispot applications in spring summer…and can stretch it out longer in late fall and winter.
Pretty much every horse will get a case of anaplasmosis every few years…and we do test for Lyme so we can catch stuff before it becomes a chronic issue.
I picked a tick off a horse for the first time today. He’s definitely had ticks before - we treated him for lyme disease around this time last year, and it is definitely bad/endemic in this area and I have known a couple of horses where it was bad enough that it caused significant aggression and the horses were euthanized because they were not safe even after treatment. And I just know so many horses at this barn who have been treated for lyme. And at other farms in the area. It’s just everywhere around me now, even if I rarely encounter the ticks.
