It’s that time of year again! Spring has truly sprung, and the animals are beginning to make their way out of the forest, moving through the more human populace areas in search of fresh greens. As the lingering snows transition to warmer rains and the temperatures climb, the spring shag coats are being shown in all their glory along with a more detrimental symptom of the long, cold season.

While this article could be deemed a “wintry” theme, we typically do not see many moose through the depths of winter as they tend to keep to the deeper forests. With spring settling in, they begin to emerge with greater frequency in their own hunt for fresh new growth to nibble on. One of the more common and oft misunderstood conditions we see transitioning in spring is the white-splotched, sparse coats on moose. When first encountered, one might assume that the poor animals are suffering from mange, when the animals are actually being affected by an insect phenomenon known as winter ticks, or moose ticks.

These parasites took an interesting evolutionary turn towards winter survival when most other bugs are falling dormant or dying. As the autumn rut season kicks into gear and the moose are on the move looking for a mate, the tick larvae make their way to the tops of vegetation in clusters, waiting to latch on to a passing moose. Over the course of the rut a moose can pick up 10’s of thousands of larvae, and will provide hosting through all of the life stages of the pest.

In the spring, the adult ticks fall off to lay eggs for the next year’s round. It is understood that due to climate change, the tick populations are growing with a longer fall season allowing for greater proliferation of the larvae, coupled with shorter, warmer winters. Like the pine beetles, it takes a long, severe cold snap to reduce their numbers, which is not happening as much on a global scale.

Winter ticks affect all manner of mammals, but with most animals they are typically groomed off with ease or picked off by birds like magpies. Sadly, moose don’t have the same grooming skills when it comes to the ticks, and they can suffer greatly. An infestation will cause anemia, severe blood loss in bad cases, and massive hair loss as the animal scratches on any surface it can find to assuage the itchy torment. This hair loss leaves the patches of white we see, which can prove deadly during a long, cold winter. In severe cases from Maine, deceased moose were found to have as many as nearly 100,000 ticks on one animal alone.

As mentioned, these ticks are rarely that detrimental to other mammals, and while they might latch on to the occasional human, they do not carry any known diseases that affect us. Moose on the other hand can be dramatically impacted. Here in Colorado, we see the results of the ticks, but the infestations are nowhere near the levels seen elsewhere and most of our moose survive.

New England has been hit extremely hard by the parasite over the course of the last decade. In the spring of 2022 a Maine study surfaced that made a claim of nearly 90% of the year’s new generation of moose having been wiped out by ticks in the 2021 - 2022 winter. A few seasons with that kind of mortality rate can signal the beginnings of change in sustainable population numbers.

Recently I have seen images on the local social media pages showing a young cow frequenting downtown Nederland that is suffering through a rough case. Much of her head and front half of her torso is looking badly affected by lots of hair loss. Thankfully she survived the worst, and by now the ticks are dying off. The bull seen in the article image had a moderate case, with white splotches dotting a good part of his body, but thankfully not a drastic loss of hair.

In both cases, only a bit more loss will occur as the last of the winter coat is shed, making way for a brand new shiny and healthy coat for the approaching summer. As with all things spring, it is a sign of “out with the old, and in with the new”, and a great example of the tenacity of life in the wild!

Additional information for this article came from these articles https:// cwhl.vet.cornell.edu/disease/wintertick and https://www.mainepublic.org/ environment-and-outdoors/2022-05-18/most-moose-calves-in-part-of-maine-died-this-year-as-a-tiny-predator-benefits-from-warmer-weather.

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