Swimmers Itch is caused by parasites that are carried by migratory water fowl, usually ducks and geese. As part of this parasites life cycle snails are the other host that is necessary for the cycle to be completed. The reason this adversely affects swimmers is that the parasite on its return trip to the ducks and geese will mistake swimmers as it's final target, causing an itching in the area where it penetrates the swimmers skin. Swimmers Itch will show up as little red pin pricks on the swimmers skin that has been exposed to water that contains this organism. Swimmer Itch is seldom serious, yet it can cause itching and discomfort up to 7 days. Swimmer Itch is commonly found in many fresh water lakes and ponds that are visited by the water fowl.
Here in Wisconsin and Illinois we seldom find Swimmer Itch to be a problem in ponds, we feel the reason for this is that most of the ponds in our area are stocked heavily with Large Mouth Bass, which is an excellent predator of snails. Larger lakes however with lower concentrations of large predator fish, can often be plagued with Swimmers itch.
Snails are usually found in large weed beds that are found around the shoreline of larger lakes. The only treatment that we are aware of is to treat the weed beds where the snails are with 40 pounds of Copper Sulfate and 80 pounds of lime per surface acre, which will kill the snails and stop the cycle of the parasite. This treatment can be very effective on larger lakes where that area to be treated represents only an extremely small portion of the over all area of the lake. This treatment done in a pond less than a couple of surface acres could kill off all aquatic life and damage the environmental balance of the pond for a long time.If you have any questions please give us a call at 1 866-442-0420.
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