Back to research. Researchers in Connecticut chose a site where they could monitor a small herd of deer. It’s a peninsula jutting into Long Island Sound, where the land around an abandoned power station is returning to its wild state. They introduced a feeding device that regularly sprinkled small amounts of corn on the feed, giving the animals enough corn to dope them but enough to make them fat, and the second dose in veterinary formulas. A generation ivermectin, moxidectin, was administered in the diet. After that, with the cooperation of a wildlife management non-profit organization, white buffaloThey will regularly drug and capture deer, tag them, take blood samples and count the ticks on their bodies from 2021 to 2022.
They focused on lone star ticks, Amblyomma americanumcan transmit ehrlichiosis, borreliosis, bourbon virus, heartland virus, and a meat allergy known as . Alpha Gal Syndrome. This tick prefers to prey on white-tailed deer, but the tick that spreads Lyme disease also preys on rodents. (For both species, humans are opportunistic targets. Ticks have poor eyesight, but they sense the carbon dioxide they exhale. So if we inadvertently pass a human while perched on a plant , It will detect and attack humans.)
In this first round of research, the researchers found that the number of ticks crawling on individual deer did not change with blood levels of the drug. This is a matter of course. That’s because ticks don’t know if a deer has been dosed before it bites. However, as the drug concentration in the deer’s blood increased, the number of ticks that latched on and sucked blood decreased. “When serum levels rise, ticks don’t need to eat as much before they become paralyzed and slough off,” Williams says. “Ticks don’t eat animals with high serum levels and become engorged because the effects are seen sooner.”
The study has attracted the attention of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose vector-borne diseases division has awarded the group a five-year grant. “Preliminary studies looked good at the proof-of-concept stage,” says research entomologist Lars Eisen of the Division of Vectorborne Diseases. “This is additional funding for large-scale field trials in Connecticut, the interior, and the islands of Maine.”
Projects contain complex elements.a Attempts in the 1990s The study of feeding deer with the original ivermectin formulation was based on the multiple roles that deer play in the landscape. They are not only free-living wild animals, they are not just suburban intruders. Posing in the garden or munching on it can make it attractive or intrusive. They are also a coveted target for money-spending sport hunters. Billions of dollars each year to access them. Ivermectin had a regulatory limitation called the withdrawal period, which prohibited consumption of meat from treated animals within 48 days. For Hunter, that wasn’t the start of the proposal.
The result is the best method for deer tick control today. The device was developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and is called the “4 poster” because it resembles a bed. A four-poster poster contains a box of treated corn, two integrated troughs into which the corn falls, and – this is the poster part – two upright paint rollers impregnated with chemicals that kill mites. on both sides of the trough. To reach the corn, the deer must stick its face between the rollers. This causes chemicals to be rubbed into their cheeks and ears, eventually covering the rest of their bodies. It’s a nasty field version of the tick-killing liquid that dog and cat owners spray on their pets’ necks.
