This message is from: "Tamarack Lamb & Wool" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
someone asked:
Perhaps the pheromones
given off by certain horses attract the ticks to certain horses and
not to others?
---------
You are probably on the right track. I once sat through a very long (3
day ) forage and grasslands conference and in one afternoon listened to a
researcher in LA who had graduate students sitting in screaned in tents
where they released xx hundred flies to count how many times a cow swished
her tail or swung her head back to lick her sides to chase the flies off
(they were trying to determine how much energy was spent chasing away the
flies). the researcher noted he could keep female graduate students inside
a fly infested tent about 2x longer than a male graduate student.
The next speaker was a researcher from AU who was talking about how zebu
cattle were more tick resistant than brittish breeds. Apparently in AU,
ticks can become so numerous they actually make cattle anemic..they count
them by the thousands. Well, turns out that the brittish breeds have much
higher levels of testosterone than zebu cattle, and by looking at the amount
of testosterone in the bovine they could predict how seriously tick infested
that animal would be.
I've also noted that among my dogs, the dogs with the heavier, denser hair
coats have fewer ticks than the dogs with the lighter more open hair coats,
might be just a physical thing, and sheep never get ticks anywhere but on
the feace, ears, or lower legs, never in the wool, so it could be oil in the
fleece.
these are just some ideas.
janet
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