Managing ticks and tick borne diseases
Routine use of acaracide treatments is unacceptable from an organic perspective. Strategies should be developed which focus on prevent the diseases and support the specific resistance of the animals to ticks and the tick borne diseases. These strategies can include:
Preserve enzootic and endemic stability, or re-establish it through immunization against TBD. Please consult you local vet for more information.
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Use the existing knowledge and educate all in the organic farming environments about the benefits gained and methods of boosting immunity to tick borne diseases, and achieving host resistance to ticks,
Breed for increased resistance to ticks as well as to tick borne diseases,
Develop grazing and husbandry strategies, see below for some examples:
Use non-poisonous methods of controlling ticks in individual cases, and fitting to the situations - e.g. hand-picking of ticks and use of plant-based acaricides like tephrosia.
Careful use of acaricides, which is a careful selection of situations where it is found relevant to use acaricides, in combination with a careful selection of the acaricide itself.
This is described in details below. Even though acaricides are strong poisons, we have to face the fact that tick borne diseases and ticks are very dangerous diseases which cause great losses, and it can be necessary to use in some situations, as long as we have them available. Below, we have given a description of situations and a description of the different poisons (acaricides).