Ticks

Protect us against fleas and ticks!

Ticks

Ticks are small acari. Those external parasites live in the environment and grab hold of your pet’s fur at the park, in the woods or even in your garden. They then find a nice spot to settle (around the head most of the time) and attach themselves by biting the skin with their anchor-type mouthparts. They suck their host’s blood (animal or human) for several days, dropping off once engorged.

They can be hard to detect when your pet is infested since the parasite remains very small before it starts to engorged.  We usually see them on pets after their bood meal when they are bigger. 

Furthermore, both pets and people rarely feel anything when bitten by a tick.

Protect your animal against ticks!

It is important to regularly protect your pet against ticks, as they feed on your animal’s blood. In case of heavy infestation, severe anemia can occur. Ticks are also vectors of serious diseases to your pet such as tularaemia, ehrlichiosis, but also to you, causing lyme disease, anaplasmosis, Q fever, tick-borne encephalitis. 

Tick life cycle

Ticks feed 3 times during their existence, on different hosts.

1. Tick eggs: a female tick can lay up to 3000 eggs at a time in dense vegetation.
2. Tick larvae: once hatched from eggs, the larvae feed on small animals such as birds.
3. Tick nymphs: after their first meal, larvae become nymphs. At that point, they need to feed on the blood of larger hosts, such as a rabbit or mice.
4. Adult ticks: nymphs molt to become adults, when they start feeding on larger mammals, such as dogs or cats for several days.