Midges in Scotland ?

All this doom and gloom of blood sucking things is not the best advert for anywhere. I wonder how to link this thread to the Scottish Tourist Board.;)
 
Quandary said:
Are you sure, I understood that without a host they would not survive, though I was also told that deer ticks are more dangerous than those on sheep. We have to treat our dog every month in summer with a poison administered to the back of his neck which enters his bloodstream, it seem to work, they drop off almost as soon as they start to gorge on his blood. Time something similar was developed for humans especially if it could be extended to midges but I suppose if there was a cure the solitude of the hills would be lost for ever. The poor old midge does not do any permanent damage so we could have worse problems though the wee Scots ones seem to be much more aggressive than those of the same species in Ireland. Clegs seem to have been declining for quite a few years now?
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If fleas and ticks are a problem I am sure if you put the same stuff on the back of your neck it would do the trick just the same. You can get it quite easily from most vets. We use it on our dog every 6 months or so. You might need a bit more the amount used is varies depending on the weight of the dog.

Not sure what the long term side effects might be? Barking:)
 
Sybarite said:
You have to be careful with them. SWMBO got Lyme disease from a horsefly bite. It's not only the ticks.
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This runs counter to everything I have read about Lyme disease, where the tick is specified as the only vector. Can you (or anyone else) point me towards a reference to non tick-borne Lyme disease?
 
alan_d said:
This runs counter to everything I have read about Lyme disease, where the tick is specified as the only vector. Can you (or anyone else) point me towards a reference to non tick-borne Lyme disease?
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http://www.care2.com/greenliving/why-is-lyme-disease-not-just-tick-borne-anymore.html

Lyme disease has recently received a new definition. It now refers to illnesses transferred by insects, as opposed to simply a tick-borne disease. Mosquitoes can carry Lyme disease and many other serious infections, as can spiders, fleas and mites.

http://www.lymedisease.org.au/transmission/

Modes other than ticks :
• Blood-sucking insects, such as mosquitoes, flies, fleas and mites

..........................................http://www.lymedisease.org.au/transmission/#bloodsuckers

• Transplacental transmission
• Contact with infected urine and other bodily fluids from infected animals
• Transmission via blood, tissue and organ donation
• Sexual transmission
 
Sybarite said:
She's the expert...!! She says that any biting creature eg mosquitos which bites an infected animal, can also pass on Lyme disease.

She saw the horsefly biting her and didn't think too much of it at the time. However at the time the disease was not well known and they had to bring a special antibiotic from the States where it had been developed at the town of Lyme.

It took several weeks of daily intravenous injections to cure her and she had quarterly check-ups for several years thereafter. Apparently the normal rate of antibody is 500 units (of something) and she has over 7000. The doctor says that any beastie biting her now will be done for..!!

On the other hand she is great for bringing on holidays. The mosquitos are especially attracted to her...!!
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Good to hear she is recovered.
Very interesting.
I know the Americans are paranoid about the disease, especially in Northeast states. When I visited in The Fall a few decades ago, there were warning signs all over the place on The Appalachian Trail. ( I only walked a couple of miles of it, not the couple of thousand !!)
 
Two or three years ago, I got the classic early stage warning of Lyme disease, rings like a target on my leg. The side effects of the medication were quite strange. The little blighters (ticks) are so small that you don't see them, and you may not be aware of them until an itch develops after a day or two. Midges and clegs pale into insignificance.
 
Robert Wilson said:
I know the Americans are paranoid about the disease, especially in Northeast states. When I visited in The Fall a few decades ago, there were warning signs all over the place on The Appalachian Trail. ( I only walked a couple of miles of it, not the couple of thousand !!)
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They have a made-up disease in America called "Chronic Lyme Disease", for which there is no medical evidence at all and which is basically hypochondriacs demanding antibiotics. Very odd.

NormanS said:
Two or three years ago, I got the classic early stage warning of Lyme disease, rings like a target on my leg. The side effects of the medication were quite strange. The little blighters (ticks) are so small that you don't see them, and you may not be aware of them until an itch develops after a day or two. Midges and clegs pale into insignificance.
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We carry tick removers on the boat; everybody should.
 
JumbleDuck;5802628 We carry tick removers on the boat; everybody should.[/QUOTE said:
So do we, and we have rigourous mutual all-over body checking after being ashore, ooooo-errr, but if they are so small that you can't see them, the little plastic clawhammer isn't much help.
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Quandary said:
We have to treat our dog every month in summer with a poison administered to the back of his neck which enters his bloodstream, it seem to work, they drop off almost as soon as they start to gorge on his blood.
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Would love to know what you use on your dog. We use Advantage on our boxer's neck but she still gets lots of ticks - mainly on her head where she shoves it into the bracken. So if your treatment works better that would be great - tho she does like the biscuit she gets every time we remove a tick !
 
pragmatist said:
Would love to know what you use on your dog. We use Advantage on our boxer's neck but she still gets lots of ticks - mainly on her head where she shoves it into the bracken. So if your treatment works better that would be great - tho she does like the biscuit she gets every time we remove a tick !
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We use one called 'Frontline' which we buy on Amazon though you can also get it from the vet (at a premium), supposed to be effective for ticks , fleas and lice. He gets an application at the start of every month from May until September and is not allowed to go swimming for 24 hours. The ticks will land on him but they do not develop and usually fall off after a day. The wee plastic claw hammers are very good as they seem to remove them intact no matter how small they are.
 
pragmatist said:
Would love to know what you use on your dog. We use Advantage on our boxer's neck but she still gets lots of ticks - mainly on her head where she shoves it into the bracken. So if your treatment works better that would be great - tho she does like the biscuit she gets every time we remove a tick !
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Brevetco. Bit expensive at around £30/3months. Works very well and ticks not a problem since I started treating my Labrador.
A soft "lozenze" type pill, must taste ok as he consumed it without even sniffing it.
The little plastic claws are ok, if you can find the little blighters (as said above) but I find that they seem to know where to land on me where I can't see them - without almost impossible contortions!
 
I met a woman with three dogs

she was a runner and had just finished 12 miles with them

two spanials and a jack russel

she had stopped at the end of her run and was sitting down de-ticking the dogs

she found about 12 and just pulled them off

she says she has always lived in scotland, ticks are part of life, she was not using any instruments other than her finger nails and was just pulling the blighters out

said she had never had any problems with herself or the dogs with leaving the heads in or the dogs getting disease

she said most times the heads come out with the bodies but she said that if the head is left it drops out within a day or so anyway

I now do the ame to Maggie when she comes up to scotland - I have stopped worrrying about them

so far..... so good

D

PS - she had one on a nipple the other day. I just pulled it off with my finger nails - did not seem to bother the dog and all is fine
 
Following from my preceding post #74, I shall recount my first encounter with ticks after a walk up Ben Mor Coigach in 2002, in short trousers..........

On returning to my guesthouse in Ullapool I gratefully eased into a hot bath to sooth away my eight hour's exertions on a very hot day. On washing certain parts of my anatomy I felt four little lumps, which on visual inspection, turned out to be ticks enjoying a meal at my expense.
I hopped out of the bath, donned trousers and nipped down to the kitchen, there to ask Mary the landlady for a cotton-bud and some vodka or gin to remove some ticks. I had been told that deluging ticks in alcohol worked well at removing them; this subsequently has been rubbished by the cognoscenti, but ultimately it worked for me that evening.
Anyway, Mary being a Highland lass and familiar with the problem, kindly offered to remove them for me. Mary was, and is, a very, very attractive lady but I declined her offer.
"I don't mind," said she, "I regularly remove them from John." (husband)
John was/is an ex-fisherman of substantial physical proportions (brick lavatory building etc).
Says I, to Mary, "If you think I'm going to risk John catching you attending to the parts of my body where the ticks are, then you are a braver person than I am."

Going on from this I have found this year that ticks have attached themselves to me in places impossible to see, even using at least two mirrors. The first I have felt is the "itch" and when scratched the insect has fortunately dropped-off.
I don't know if I have been infected. Worrying.
 
Barnacle Bill said:
They can be seriously bad - particularly in muggy weather with no wind.

The good news is that they won't bother you on a yacht a little way from the shore. But personally I would NEVER camp in a tent in the highlands/islands - there are times in the evening or early morning in Skye when you wouldn't want to go out of the house.
..
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We solved that one many years ago; we camped on Skye for a couple of weeks and took a couple of kayaks. Paddling for a couple of hours around the gloaming worked a treat, missing most of the midges.

The worst place we've found, though, was the coast around Kames/Tighnabruich .. nearly matched by the midges we encountered at a rally in Minard forest in the 1980s.
 
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