Wanted: Fair Feathered Friends

I am sad to announce that C-J was confirmed on Friday as having contracted Lyme Disease. She will be taking a month's worth of antibiotics to attempt to destroy the disease, and please pray that her treatment will be successful. I've learned a lot about Lyme recently and it can be very very nasty. She seems in perfect health, so hopefully we caught this early enough.

So what of my title, Wanted: Fair Feathered Friends? Well, it is very possible that she contracted Lyme right here in our own yard. So I am now looking for some feathered pets who love to gobble up ticks. We are considering which feathered pets would be most suitable for our family.

One possibility is the (in?)famous guinea fowl.

Apparently voracious tick eaters, and quite legal, but also rumored as so noisy they might drive someone insane, for example, unsuspecting neighbors. As we are still the new kids of the block, this may not be the Best Choice. Plus, they are apparently not too friendly to toddlers and infants, which would be a third of our family. So I think the most obvious choice is out.


Another possibility is the adorable creature pictured above, available from the cutely named website, My Pet Chicken. Unfortunately, OPH ordinances do not allow chickens. A variance might be possible for a small number of these feathered friends, being that there is a health risk involved. Another possibility is getting an ornamental breed of chicken since that would make it clearly a Pet.

A final possibility is raising quail.

Quail also like to eat ticks, according to Lyme Disease PA, and they are completely legal here. On the other hand, except for eating, I'm not sure what else could be done with a quail?? Hmm... so many choices.