Tick season arrived in Colorado with a bang this year, starting both earlier and with stronger populations after the state’s mild winter, researchers say.
Colorado’s tick season usually starts around March or April, said Dr. Chris Roundy, a public health entomologist for the state Department of Public Health and Environment. But ticks emerged earlier than normal this year and have been more active, he said.
The winter months typically help bottleneck Colorado’s tick population, but this season’s abnormal weather allowed the small parasites to get a head start on looking for hosts, Roundy said. Colorado’s tick population also boomed during the wet spring of 2023 — a population increase thatap still hanging on because the parasite’s lifecycle spans several years.
After hatching from their eggs, ticks spend the first few seasons of their life feeding on small animals, like rodents or birds, Roundy said. Thatap usually when they’re exposed to pathogens.
“Once they’re infected, unfortunately, they stay infected for their entire life cycle,” Roundy said. “As they emerge into adults, they’re still infected and they go looking for a larger host. This may be a deer or an elk, this may be our dogs or this may be us.”
The risk of getting infected by a tick starts as soon as they latch on and start to take a “blood meal,” UCHealth’s senior director of infection prevention, Dr. Michelle Barron, said. Infection isn’t automatic and usually happens over the course of a few days, she said.
“If you find a tick, the first thing you want to do is try to remove it as quickly as possible,” Barron said. “If you don’t know how long itap been there, the potential risk of you having an infection goes up a little bit more.”
Ticks are small and can often be overlooked as a mole or piece of dirt before they start moving, so Coloradans should carefully check themselves after being outdoors in tick territory, she said. Barron recommended using tweezers to remove ticks or coating the parasites with clear nail polish, which will eventually cause them to fall off. No matter how itap removed, itap important to get the head, she said.
The primary risk in Colorado comes from two closely related species: the , most often found in the foothills and eastern Colorado, and the , which typically lives in the mountains and western Colorado, Roundy said.
Both tick species live for several years and can transmit and , Roundy said.
“Those are the diseases that people are most at risk for here in Colorado, though they are rare,” he said. “We only see a .”
But itap not impossible for other tick-related diseases to emerge, especially as migration patterns shift and ticks — including the black-legged tick, which carries Lyme disease — expand their geographic range, Roundy said. There’s also a chance that travelers who visit other parts of the country can bring infected ticks back home with them.
Itap rare that someone needs medical treatment for a tick bite in Colorado, but not unheard of, Barron said. People worried about a bite or symptoms can talk to their medical provider about where and when they were bitten to determine if treatment is necessary.
“The first symptoms are almost always going to be flu-like symptoms,” Roundy said. “A headache, sometimes a fever, a rash, achiness, tiredness — those will be the first symptoms that might be a cue that someone has one of these tick-borne diseases.”
So, how does one avoid getting infected by a tick?
“Well, we live in Colorado, so staying indoors isn’t really an option, as far as I’m concerned,” Barron said. The best and simplest answer is to avoid their habitats, she said.
Ticks like tall grasses and brush, Barron said. Walking through those areas allows the small creatures to crawl onto people and embed themselves, so staying out of those areas and on the trail can minimize exposure risk, she said.
Hikers can also reduce risk by wearing long pants, especially when tucked into tall socks, Barron said. The ticks may still latch onto the clothing, but they won’t get the opportunity to embed into skin and spread disease.
Good insect repellents with DEET, permethrin or picaridin can make it harder for the ticks to seek out humans by masking the chemical cues they look for, Roundy said. Ticks use an organ on the end of their front legs to taste the air and sense movement and heat, he added.
“They’ll stand on the edge of a blade of grass or some brush, and they’ll be waving those two front arms through the air,” Roundy said. “They’re actually tasting the air, trying to sense if a host is nearby.”
Itap best to conduct a thorough tick check after being in an area where there may be ticks, Roundy said.
Humans should check any crevices where the parasites can latch on, including the back of the knees, waistband, groin area, armpits or scalp. On a dog, owners will want to check pretty much anywhere with hair, but especially in and around the ears, around the eyelids, under the collar, between the legs, between the toes and around the tail.
Pets can get sick from tick-borne diseases and can bring ticks inside the home to infect humans, Barron said.
“Tick season has already been worse this spring due to that early activity and the high activity,” Roundy said. “What it looks like for the rest of the year will depend on the weather in the coming months.”
Ticks normally stay active in Colorado through June, with most species becoming dormant as the summer starts to heat up, Roundy said. If the summer weather starts mild or the state sees a lot of precipitation, this year’s heavy tick activity may extend into July or August.
