Female deer ticks are larger than male deer ticks. They are the vectors, or carriers, of a number of tick-borne diseases. The one disease they are most associated with is Lyme disease. Lyme disease is painful and debilitating and can be transmitted to humans, as well as dogs and cats.
Female deer ticks will contract Lyme disease in the nymph phase of its life. Like other ticks, the female deer tick will feed on an infected host and then pass the disease on to its other hosts as it goes through its life cycle.
The life cycle of a deer tick typically lasts 2 years. Depending on the availability of hosts, the life cycle can extend to 4 years. In the winter, adult deer ticks will mate and continue to feed from their host. The male deer tick dies after mating, and the female will spend the winter on the host, feeding and preparing for spring. Female deer ticks will expand when feeding to many times their original size.
The females drop to the ground in the spring and look for a place to lay their eggs. Female deer ticks will look for a moist area to deposit the eggs, about 3,000 of them. The female will then die.
Female deer ticks will feed for longer times from their hosts, so you can sometimes find them still attached. Deer ticks, in all of their life stages, are extremely hard to see, due to their size. Remove any tick you find on yourself at once. Deer ticks spread their diseases usually within 48 hours of biting their hosts.
Keep any tick species you remove for identification, if it has bitten you or your pet. Female deer ticks are fairly easy to identify due to their size and coloring. Identification of a vector is critical to help diagnose tick-borne diseases.