and bloodwork, that they told me that I had been exposed to Lyme Disease (and at the same time, when we took our one dog at the time for a checkup too, she had been exposed to Lyme Disease too). Neither one of us had any ill effects.
So, you may not feel ill or something like that, but you may have been infected. Doesn't hurt to check. And we did regular tick checkups too, but still they got us. Best bet is to stay out of the woods 100% if you can. That's why we burned the leaves, try to mow down the weeds as often as possible, sprayed ourselves, mow the yards and the edge of our gravel roads as much as possible, to prevent or reduce the tick presence. In the Ozark woods, this is just about impossible. We also sprayed anti-tick sprays in somewhat populated areas, near the houses, the mobile homes, the roads that we sometimes walked in going to the mailboxes and getting the mail.
We didn't have chickens or anything like that, that would have helped keep the ticks down, but in hindsight, I think I would have spent a little money in putting up fencing to keep the chickens fenced in, and thus, did more of a preventative job in keeping the ticks down to manageable levels.
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