Tiny, cattle-killing ticks spread across Ohio: ‘No getting rid of them’

Farmers are really ticked off by these vermin.

The Asian longhorned tick is feasting on livestock like cattle and deer, killing them in shocking numbers as these insects invade the United States — the latest state being Ohio, new research from Ohio State University warns.

Only the size of a sesame seed in most cases, the pests began invading the Buckeye State in 2021 — sucking enough blood to kill three livestock cows on first sighting — before spreading en masse, despite the use of pesticides at the time.

“One of those [killed] was a healthy male bull, about 5 years old. Enormous. To have been taken down by exsanguination by ticks, you can imagine that was tens of thousands of ticks on one animal,” said senior author and OSU professor Risa Pesapane.

“They are going to spread to pretty much every part of Ohio, and they are going to be a long-term management problem. There is no getting rid of them.”

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The ticks — in earlier research as well.

“Managing them is not easy because of how numerous they are and how easily they can come back,” she said. 

While doing field research on a farm in Monroe County, Ohio, Pesapane and the team collected nearly 10,000 ticks in only an hour and a half. They speculate that more than 1 million existed on the 25-acre pasture.

The school described asexual reproduction as the ticks’ “secret colonization weapon” as females lay up to 2,000 eggs at a time. All female offspring are then able to do the same.

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“There are no other ticks in North America that do that. So, they can just march on, with exponential growth, without any limitation of having to find a mate,” Pesapane said. “Where the habitat is ideal, and anecdotally it seems that unmowed pastures are an ideal location, there’s little stopping them from generating these huge numbers.”

They have also developed a knack for avoiding pesticides through their ability to hide in vegetation, according to the research.

“It would be wisest to target them early in the season when adults become active, before they lay eggs, because then you would limit how many will hatch and reproduce in subsequent years,” the tick expert added.

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“But for a variety of reasons, I tell people you cannot spray your way out of an Asian longhorned tick infestation – it will require an integrated approach.”

Pesapane and colleagues are rapidly attempting to find an adequate response to the invasion — currently not a threat to humans — but right now, the ticks have experts scratching their heads.

However, in August, an Ohio man suffered a tick bite on a fishing trip that required doctors to amputate his toes.

The CDC estimates that approximately 476,000 people are prone to tick-borne Lyme disease with more than 8,000 in 2019.

On Long Island, fears of the lone star tick — known for causing a syndrome making those infected allergic to red meat and dairy — have reached a fever pitch as Suffolk County has become a hotspot for that as well.

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Even city dwellers aren’t safe, and species like deer ticks can shimmy their way into Manhattan apartments.

A Post reporter learned that the hard way last summer when he awoke to said pest latched onto, of all places, his scrotum.