You have my sympathy on those chigger bites - I hate them! I have gotten them really bad before - up the legs, on my back, from sitting on pine logs while eating lunch on a hike. My brother & I got our worst cases sitting on straw bales playing with kittens. I couldn’t sleep for about 3 nights the itching was so bad. Calamine lotion never worked for me - I had better luck with Benadryl anti- itch lotion.
Yeah, I’ve tried spraying my clothes with permethrin but the chiggers and even seed ticks don’t seem bothered by it and I couldn’t stand the socks. They just felt saturated without being wet or just didn’t feel like the same material or something.
Most of the itch relief stuff is based on one of 2-3 common active ingredients. What I used this morning was something the ex bought for back when there was poison ivy here. Goats took care of the poison ivy. It’s called Ivarest. Main active ingredient — overpriced calamine. It helps a little.
My defense is to generally stay out of the woods for ticks and tall grass for chiggers but I let my guard down on this one. I do also burn the place but not grass. That stuff moves to fast and this place isn’t a big open field. That and run a band of Sevin granules around the driveway plus a path from house to shop which makes a circle I call my Tick Moat. Funny how I instinctively felt the need to do a bunch of mowing yesterday before I knew I had chigger bites. Thanks God.
The chigger bites end up ozzing for me at some point which is why I said thank God none between the toes. Nothing like seeing wet spots in your socks from oozing or taking your socks off at the end of the day and they stick where it oozed and then dried. Never mind the icky stick between the toes.
Then on the ankles, I tend to scratch in my sleep and may end up with little bloody spots on the sheets.
I have colloquially named them little bastards.
Then of course Lone Star ticks can kick off my Alpha-Gal mammailian meat allergy so yeah - generally just stay away. Jump off the tractor and jump back on in no less than 5-10 seconds.
Sucks to not be able to walk on most of the property for most of the year. There’s a reason rich people have a huge yard with a house in the middle of nothing but short grass. NO BUGS
I need more yard, less forest and better mower(s).
First sign of chigger itch, take off socks and pants outside and leave them outside and come in and rub down with rubbing alcohol. I thought it was a few seed ticks until this morning which I did get but those aren’t bad.
That rubbing alcohol thing is good to do 1-2 times a day after the fact but it will sting. Dries things up quicker though.
I see farmer type guys and gals wearing rubber boots but not pure black rubber, the nice ones, and they have their pant legs tucked down in them and the boots aren’t nasty from mud/manure so I think those boots are dowsed with some serious chemical to keep chiggers from making it to the top of them.
Here’s an anti-itch trick I learned many years ago — heat. I had an odd little rash that itched like mad. Anti-itch creams don’t work, so I went in search of a better solution. I found it on a discussion forum for psoriasis and eczema sufferers. When they have terrible attacks, they’ll take a long, hot shower, as hot as they can stand it. The heat gives them a couple hours’ relief. The trouble is that, aside from being a waste of water, it washes away precious oils and skin biome. A better solution is a hand-held hairdryer. You put it on “high” and sort of wag it back and forth over the itchy spot, backing off a bit when the heat is too much. The heat causes the skin’s histamine-producing cells to “degranulate” — to give up all their histamines at once. The resulting sensation is hard to describe. There’s the slight pain from the heat (don’t burn yourself!) mixed with the overwhelming itch from all those pesky histamines. Once the itch subsides and all you feel is the heat, you’re done. The itching will be completely gone for hours. I used this technique on several mosquito bites just yesterday evening before bed. Worked like a charm! I have a cheap little old hairdryer stashed in the bathroom that I use just for this.