Do Chickens Eat Ticks? – Tick Control With Benefits

If you’re a hobby farmer or backyard chicken keeper, you always look for ways to keep your flock healthy and happy. Letting them take care of pests for you is one way. Chickens are natural bug and worm hunters, but do they eat ticks?

The answer is a resounding yes! Chickens are very effective at controlling ticks, other pesky bugs, and more in your yard.

But how do they do it, and what other nasty pests can they help control?

In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of using chickens for tick control and discuss the other pests they can help with. We’ll also list the top 10 chicken breeds for this nasty task.

Who knew chickens were good for more than egg production?

Do Chickens Eat Ticks? Could you use your flock for tick control?

The short answer is that chickens eat ticks! Ticks are among the many insects and arthropods that chickens like to peck at, especially when foraging in grassy or wooded areas. When they scratch around for food, they expose ticks and other bugs hiding in the soil or under foliage. Chickens will also eat ticks off each other if they catch one on their feathers.

While chickens may not be able to eradicate a tick infestation on their own completely, they can certainly help keep the numbers down.

Reducing the tick population can also lower your and your flock’s risk of tick-borne diseases such as Lyme disease and Rocky Mt Fever. Plus, it’s a natural and inexpensive way to control pests without harmful chemicals.

Encouraging Your Chickens To Hunt That Tick Population

If you want to maximize your chickens’ tick-hunting abilities, you can do a few things. First, ensure your chickens have plenty of space to roam and forage.

The more grassy or wooded areas they have access to, the more likely they are to come across ticks. You can also encourage your chickens to forage in places where you’ve found ticks in the past.

Another way to harness your chickens’ tick control powers is to provide them with supplemental feed that contains herbs and spices known to repel ticks. Garlic, oregano, and diatomaceous earth are natural tick repellents that can be shared with your chickens. Not only will these ingredients help keep ticks away, but they’ll also provide added health benefits for your flock.

How Do Chickens Help Get Rid of Ticks?

Your chickens’ instinctive foraging skills and allowing them to explore their natural habitat regularly will do wonders for pest control, including the dreaded tick.

O.K., so let’s drop this bonus in here. While your chickens are foraging for their nourishing pests, they are simultaneously fertilizing your lawn. Don’t walk barefoot in those parts of the yard, you hear.

Ticks and many pests reside just above the earth’s surface, on grass, and under leaf piles. These places are all where chickens love to forage most.

As chickens scratch and peck around, they get exercise, snooping around their yard and hunting for natural protein sources, which bugs and pests provide.

By allowing your birds to roam or free range for even an hour or two a day, you’ll reduce your risks of diseases like Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and Lyme disease, to name just a couple.

When Is Tick Season?

Ticks are more prevalent in the warm months, so while in most of the Northeast, this is spring through early winter, this could vary in your region. For example, in the southern and western states that have year-round warm weather, ticks are ‘in season’ year round. Look at this map with the AKC for your area of the U.S.

How Many Ticks Can a Chicken Consume Safely?

Chickens can eat over 300 ticks in an hour, possibly more. These feathered friends are natural predators of ticks. However, that’s the most that’s been recorded.

Now, that’s only one chicken in one hour, so imagine putting a flock of chickens out to devour that tick population in your yard for half a day! This is precisely what was done in a study in 1991, where these facts were published to support this seemingly crazy theory. Turns out it’s truth, not crazy, after all.

Reports show that the average chicken consumes approximately 80 ticks in an hour. This is still mighty impressive.

Source: NIH; National Library of Medicine

How to Prevent Poultry Pests

Oh yes, chickens are even susceptible to the woes of tick disease. You can implement measures to cut down and prevent too many ticks from invading your chicken coop and run areas.

One of the most significant offenders is the fowl ticks. Fowl ticks are much more abundant in the southern states but must be prevented regardless of where you live.

• Keep a dust bath clean, ready, easily accessible, and refreshed with insect-repelling herbs. Ticks hate the smell of certain things like spices and herbs such as cinnamon, lavender, peppermint, and rose geranium, as well as fruity smells like lemons and oranges
• Clean chicken coops, especially nesting boxes, and floors. If possible, install nesting boxes that can be removed and thoroughly cleaned and dried periodically.
• Keep cracks and crevices sealed and in good repair.
• Keep tall grasses around the foundation of the chicken coop trimmed (break out the weed wacker)
• Install roosting areas horizontally with no vertical posts. (secure side to side across coop walls). This is because fowl ticks tend to crawl up and do not fly.

Guinea Hens VS Chickens to Get Rid of Ticks?

While Guinea hens are fabulous at foraging and tick control, they’re not so much the best choice for gathering eggs or even meat. Don’t get us wrong; they have a place in your backyard ecosystem if tick control is a huge problem. Guinea fowl are among the gold standards for insect control, especially in tick-infested areas.

However, there are other great chickens for reducing tick populations in your yard. These chickens will also provide you with eggs; some are dual-purpose, meaning they are suitable for meat and eggs. Look at our top chicken picks for natural tick control when let out to free-range.

9 Best Backyard Chickens For Helping Keep Your Family Members Safe From Ticks

• Ameraucana Chickens
• Ancona Chickens
• Andalusian Chickens
• Buckeye Chickens
• Fayoumi Chickens
• Golden Comet Chickens
• Hamburg Chickens
• Jersey Giant Chickens
• Old English Game

Other Animals And Insects That Help Control The Tick Populations

Birds are a long-time favorite way to control all kinds of insects, including tick control.

Keep bird feeders filled and natural vegetation, like fruity shrubs, planted to attract birds. Birds eat a large percentage of their diet from insects.

Here are just a handful of birds worth enticing to your yard:

• Barn Swallows
• Bluebirds
• Cardinals
• Chickadees
• Grosbeaks
• Hummingbirds
• Nuthatches
• Oriole
• Purple Martins
• Sparrows
• Swallows
• Titmice
• Warblers
• Woodpeckers

17 Other Natural Tick Control Critters

Tick control isn’t limited to just our feathered friends but other species found in our yards and fields. Some of these known for natural pest control are:

Mammals That Enjoy Eating The Ticks

• Mice
• Rats
• Opossums
• Chipmunks
• Squirrels
• Wild Rabbits
• Raccoons

Oh, and let’s not forget apes and monkeys! Next time your at the zoo, watch how they preen and groom one another. They picking off and yes, devouring dead skin, lice, mites, and ticks.

Other Poultry That Loves Eating Ticks

• Ducks
• Guinea Hens
• Wild Turkeys

3 Insects that Eat Ticks

• Spiders
• Wasps
• Fire Ants

3 Reptiles that Eat Ticks

• Frogs
• Toads
• Lizards

What Other Critters and Pests Do Chickens Eat?

• Beetles
• Blackfly
• Caterpillars
• Earwigs
• Frogs and Toads
• Mice, Voles and Moles
• Moths
• Grasshoppers
• Millipedes
• Aphids
• Slugs
• Small garden snakes
• Spiders
• Worms

What Diseases Can Ticks Transmit?

Have you ever been doing yard work or just lounging outside enjoying the day and gone back inside with an unexpected guest or a few– tiny little ticks?

Unfortunately, these tiny creatures can pack a big punch. As carriers of tick-borne pathogens, ticks can transmit bacteria, viruses, and parasites to humans with a single bite.

The Center for Disease Control lists the most common diseases as:

• Lyme disease (most commonly carried by the deer tick)
• Babesiosis
• Ehrlichiosis
• Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (most commonly transmitted by the American dog tick)
• Anaplasmosis
• Southern Tick-Associated Rash Illness
• Tick-Borne Relapsing Fever
• tularemia

Other tick-borne diseases in the U.S. include: 

• Colorado tick fever (carried by Rocky Mtn Wood Tick in Western U.S. and Western Canada)
• Heartland Virus Disease (transmitted by the lone star tick)
• Powassan Disease (encephalitis) – Powassan Encephalitis is still rare and known to be carried by ticks. Most U.S. reported cases are in the Northeast states and Great Lakes Area.
• Q fever is a vector for this; however, not often or commonly transmitted by ticks.

To understand better how these Tick associated illnesses like Lyme disease can affect humans, we’ll refer you to WebMD for trusted medical information in their Guide to Tick-Borne Diseases. 

The Nitty Gritty: Do Chickens Eat Ticks And Other Insects?

Have you ever wondered if chickens eat ticks and other pesky insects that infest your yard? The answer is yes.

Chickens are great egg layers and companions and excellent natural pest controllers.

By providing free-range access to your backyard, your chickens will scavenge. Your flock eats ticks, beetles, grasshoppers, slugs, and many other insects. This natural solution to controlling pests is sustainable and eco-friendly, reducing the need for chemical pesticides.

Additionally, having a flock of happy, healthy chickens in your backyard is a rewarding experience that is low maintenance and can even provide fresh and nutritious eggs. So, try chickens to switch to a natural pest control method.