The project purpose was to reduce health and economic risks to farmers by producing a series of presentations, videos, and posters that show how to: avoid ticks and tick bites, safely remove and identify ticks, and how to manage farms to reduce tick numbers.
Early in the project, before Covid-19 restrictions ended in-person meetings, we met with more than 200 farmers and heard their questions about how to manage ticks on their farms. In-person meetings identified farmer concerns about the safest tick pesticides, and about pets and livestock carrying ticks.
With the help of farmer input, we were able to create 4 tick disease prevention videos. These videos had more that 425,00 views during the grant period. The videos were: Identifying Tick Habitat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0VHpQz6okA&t=14s, Removing Ticks, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlkQ1tQb8Xk&t=23s, Avoid Disease with Tick Repellents, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGupNHBxIeY&t=24s; Dress to Avoid Ticks, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e0QOH-9nvM.
We also created a series of posters showing farmers how avoid ticks and tick born illness available in English and Spanish at http://ccechenango.org/. These posters were viewed by 12,080 people during the grant period.
We also created a full Ticks and Tick Borne Diseases Webinar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjbwjw2t-kY&t=21s. More than 140 people participated in or viewed the webinars