[Prod]

Has anyone heard of or used Red Stop solution. It is for treating red mite infestation but you put it in the chicken's drinking water & it supposedly makes their blood indigestible to the mites ? 

[rogersimons]

looks cheap enough good if it works   http://www.sprcentre.com/Online-Shop-Categories/Poultry-Parasite-Control-Products/SPR-Red-Stop-Solution-50ml

[pipandjack]

Last year I had terrible problems with Red Mite.
 
I tried everything to get rid of the b******, without success. I used diatomaceous earth, total mite kill, cleaned out the coops with an obsessive zeal and incinerated all the bedding. Even so, nothing would eradicate them. I used to come in from cleaning out the coops and mites would be crawling on my arms and neck. Ugh! In the course of three months I had three Pekins become anaemic and despite isolating them from my other birds, one after the other, they all died.

I read posts on this and other sites about Red Stop, which were all inconclusive, but,  despite being of a cynical nature, in my desperation, I decided to give it a try.

I have to say, that I now use every preventative measure I can think of to avoid a re-infestation: I've lined all the coops with 6mm marine ply, sealing all the joins and cracks with silicon so there are no hiding places; all the interior surfaces are painted white so that any mites will show up: I still incinerate all the bedding ; I spray the coops with Smite liquid at every clean-out and use Smite powder as a paint on slurry and for dusting. I also use Red Stop in the drinking water, taking care to ensure that the chicks can't access any other water from puddles (not easy!!) or other sources.

It may be that all the other measures have solved the problem, (although most of them I tried last year) plus the cooler weather this Summer may also have helped, the Red Stop being unnecessary.
In my opinion, however using Red Stop has had an extremely beneficial effect. Since I started to use it I've only found red mites on one occasion. Cleaning out the Wyandotte bantams' coop, one morning about a month ago, I found a cluster of mites at each end of one of the roosting bars. They were grey and not red, as I would have expected them to be, if they had been feeding overnight.
I have no vested interest whatsoever in Red Mite, but if you have a mite problem, and as long as you continue to use other hygiene methods, I can suggest that it is worth a try. I will certainly continue to use it.