[Mutemonster]

touch wood not had the blighters yet
but iv preperd
my girls living quaters is an old shed i realised sheds probly are bad idea as lots of cracks
so iv stapled large sheets of plastic on the inside.floor is compleaty coverd and walls up to a meter high
cost quite a bit at 7.89 a sheet from B N Q i know not the cheapest place im gonal seal the joins so less places the * can hide

[Kym503]

Sounds great but to be honest I'm not sure that a metre is high enough........

[GrannieAnnie]

Bits of plastic won't keep them out, and they will go EVERYWHERE!  Roof, walls, floor, perches, nest boxes.

Onduline roofing helps as one of their favourite places is under the felt.

[hillfooter]

touch wood not had the blighters yet
but iv preperd
my girls living quaters is an old shed i realised sheds probly are bad idea as lots of cracks
so iv stapled large sheets of plastic on the inside.floor is compleaty coverd and walls up to a meter high
cost quite a bit at 7.89 a sheet from B N Q i know not the cheapest place im gonal seal the joins so less places the * can hide

Well I hope you haven't wasted your money Mutemonster because plastic per se doesn't do the trick its just that plastic eg Eglus are more easily cleaned than wood as well as providing fewer hiding places. Red Mite will still crawl over plastic no matter how high and the space between the walls and the plastic might provide a perfect home for them.  Your sealing might need to be very good.
HF

[joyfull]

I agree you would need to seal the edges and joints thoroughly in order to stop the redmites getting underneath it -they can get in the smallest of spaces - this is the first year I have had red mites so believe me I know they can get anywhere. The good thing about your plastic sheeting is that it will be very easy to wipe down with a disinfectant. You would need to check your sealant every week just to make sure that it hasn't moved, been pecked etc.

[ehs284]

Just a comment on pesticides as people are using/trying different ones. Please use ONE, then if you decide to change, clean out the coop before using another ONE. Mixed insecticides will soon give a resistance problem. BTW for people reluctant to jump to Ficam, then permethrin might be useful. It is residual and is used as the insecticide on mosquito nets. It's relatively safe, cheap and available for amateur use. It is not safe for aquatic life (it was a replacement for organophosphates in sheep dip and leakage into watercourses caused many problems). Nor is it safe to use on cats. I've used it for many pests and on myself for hair lice (it's in many special shampoos) but have not yet used on hens. It is used in USA for RM, Northern Mite and lice so I'll try it later in the summer, but if anybody has used it in coops in UK, I'd be interested to know how effective they found it.

[Chookiechook]

I am using Mite Kill and it has so far killed anything it touched....

there will be a couple of people on here that will remember a post I made about a week ago saying I didnt have redmites and was worried about taking another persons birds on..... well I didnt take the birds and I neednt have worried as I found it all by myself.... IN MY COOPS..... I am gutted.

Speaking to a vet today ... I was told that permethrin was the active ingredient in Deosect (used as a horse fly repellent) and that was safe to put on the chooks in a diluition of 1/100...

And that Ivermectin was the same (I think).....

So I have cleaned the coops with Mite Kill..... and dropped Ivermectin 0.8% on the hens shoulders and backs.... so far so good....

Remains to be seen how quickly they come back though....

Just when i thought it was safe to say i didnt have them .... hrmphhhh

[joyfull]

Oh no  so sorry chookiechook - this year is the first time I have had them as well 

[hillfooter]

I am using Mite Kill and it has so far killed anything it touched....

there will be a couple of people on here that will remember a post I made about a week ago saying I didnt have redmites and was worried about taking another persons birds on..... well I didnt take the birds and I neednt have worried as I found it all by myself.... IN MY COOPS..... I am gutted.

Speaking to a vet today ... I was told that permethrin was the active ingredient in Deosect (used as a horse fly repellent) and that was safe to put on the chooks in a diluition of 1/100...

And that Ivermectin was the same (I think).....

So I have cleaned the coops with Mite Kill..... and dropped Ivermectin 0.8% on the hens shoulders and backs.... so far so good....

Remains to be seen how quickly they come back though....

Just when i thought it was safe to say i didnt have them .... hrmphhhh

I wondered where I'd come across permethrin.  I've used Deosect too and it's very expensive at £30 for 250ml which makes 12L of spray.  It's quite unpleasant to spray in the close confines of a chicken house and it doesn't appear to have a longterm residual effect needing repeated applications at intervals of a few weeks and so was quite expensive to use.  I wasn't impressed with Deosect for red mite control but whether there are more effective formulations which use permethrin I don't know.   

Permethrin is highly toxic for cats and fish.  It is used in dog flea collars and has been recorded to have killed cats which have worn them.
HF

[Carla]

I dont get my ex-batt girlies until next Sunday, but am already having a heart attack at the thought of getting red mite in their coop. Just HOW common is it, and is it pretty much a sure thing that at some point your chooks are going to get them, like a dog catching fleas?? Is there any particular weather/areas/terrain when you're most likely to get them and should I stock up on some sort of powders/sprays (so many have been mentioned, I dont know which one to use!!!) so I'm ready for the inevitable?? Already got some diatomaceous earth to paint the inside of my coop with, going to gloss the inside, remove all felt and try and seal as many cracks and crevices as poss.
Its putting a bit of a dampner on my excitement, as I'm a first class stress head when it comes to parasites......eeeuuurrgghhhhh. I nearly died when my son had nits!!! 

[hillfooter]

I dont get my ex-batt girlies until next Sunday, but am already having a heart attack at the thought of getting red mite in their coop. Just HOW common is it, and is it pretty much a sure thing that at some point your chooks are going to get them, like a dog catching fleas?? Is there any particular weather/areas/terrain when you're most likely to get them and should I stock up on some sort of powders/sprays (so many have been mentioned, I dont know which one to use!!!) so I'm ready for the inevitable?? Already got some diatomaceous earth to paint the inside of my coop with, going to gloss the inside, remove all felt and try and seal as many cracks and crevices as poss.
Its putting a bit of a dampner on my excitement, as I'm a first class stress head when it comes to parasites......eeeuuurrgghhhhh. I nearly died when my son had nits!!!  

Yes red mite is a very common pest and appears to be more common these days than it was in the past.  I think this is due to effective treatments and creosote now not being available due to modern safety regulations.  At one time I used derris dust and never saw a red mite.  

New wooden houses which use tanalised wood and are treated with preservative often are immune for a couple of years.  Tanalising agents prior to the mid 2000s included arsenic as a pesticde which was very effective against RM and kept new houses free of RM for several years.  From about 2004 the use of preservatives containing arsenic was withdrawn after environmental concerns.  I'm not sure how modern preseratives perform but they do inhibit infestation. to some extent.  Unfortunately the general public don't have access to these tanalising presevatives to retreat houses so after a few years RM can infest them.  You then need to use an effective pesticide to restore it's protection.   You should consider this when deciding to buy secondhand or buying DIY made houses, was tanalised wood used or has painted on preservative been applied after build.

Non pesticide treatments (such as cleaning or diatom powder) don't have a residual effect and need to be done regularly to break the life cycle of colonisation.

If you want to give yourself the best chance of not getting RM, plastic houses have fewer hiding places for them to colonise and are easier to clean effectively so Eglus & Omlet Cubes and others of this ilk are worth considering.  If you prefer wooden houses get one which is well designed and uses sheet material (but probably won't be tanalised) so there are fewer seams and definitely no felt.   Treat each year with a pesticide like Ficam W or Milbenex and you will be well protected.  So RM isn't inevitable but can happen even with the best hygeine if you don't use pesticides.
HF

[hillfooter]

I am using Mite Kill and it has so far killed anything it touched....

The key words here are "anything it touched".  As I said RM are really easy to kill if you can get to them so access is the key and this is where plastic houses score the lack of seams and ease of cleaning make access easier tham wood which have many seams.

I saw someone was proposing gloss painting the house interior and I wouldn't advise this as it will stop pesticide penitration of the wood and won't seall up the cracks to any extent and any flaking will provide even more harborages for RM.  It will need regular and tedious maintainance as the birds will pick of any flaking and in short is a very bad idea.  You would be well advised not to use gloss paint anywhere on a chicken house.
HF

[hillfooter]

But wouldn't power hosing though would just blast the mites out onto the ground where they can live for weeks and then find their way back into the coops. Whereas steam cleaning would hopefully kill them. keep us informed HF, thanks.

Borrowed the steamer yesterday which turned out to be a handheld spray bottle shaped device which you can buy on ebay.  I had envisaged a much more industrial type unit rather than this small spray gun shaped device.  It came with a host of different attachments.   I chose the one for my test which looked the most likely to use in a seam.  I placed a whitish egg box in the nestbox where I'd seen  RM and stirred the litter to encourage them to crawl on it so obtaining a small zoo of Red Mite which I took to a white stone sink  in the stables and blasted them with the steamer.    I expected a steam output like the "Fishermans Friend" fueled collective exhalling of the Liverpool Kop on a freezing January afternoon after a a near miss, but instead got the wheezing asthmatic output of the over eighties chior on the first rehearsal after Christmas!

It blew them all over the sink but to my dismay they were still crawling about.  A few of the larger adults were steamed but most including the tiny ones still were untouched.  I put this down to the pathetic little steamer which wasn't man enough for the job.   The results were so poor I wasn't inspired to even try the other nozzles which were for special applications.

I suspect if you can get them in a seam so they aren't quickly spread and hold it on them long enough to heat them it might work.  On an exposed surface it just blows them about and doesn't have enough thermal capacity to really cook them as soon as it touches them.  I envisaged a more industrial steam cleaner and this device was just hopeless.  It only held 175ml of water and the steam was very minimal capacity and had little heat once a few cms away from the nozzle.  A vigously boiling kettle would probably have generated more steam.  The steam quickly condensed on any surface it was used on and the layer of water it produced protected the RM from further heating.  Used on a surface it is more likely to spread them about which makes zapping them much more difficult.  

So in short this wasn't a success and if steam cleaning is going to work a much higher capacity industrial steamer would be needed.  Maybe my friends good results were due to the thorough cleaning and use of diatom she also used at the same time.

HF

[bantam novice]

I am sorry to highjack this topic but I have something to add from recent bitter experience.  I have a broody silky who was sitting happily on eggs (due to hatch Sun or Mon) and yesterday she raced out of the house and abandoned her eggs.
I took them in and kept them warm and tried putting her back on them last night but she raced out of the coop again when I opened the hatch.
Lo and behold when I checked carefully the bedding the eggs were on was full of redmite.  I had dusted hen and house before but please take this advice and make sure to use the diatom and poultry spray and frontline broody hen before sitting.  It needs belt and braces.
a contrite and hopefully wiser bantam novice