[capax]

We had a bad infestation a year ago and tried all the usual things, it was a nightmare, in the end we actually varnished the whole of the chicken house which basically traps the blitters in there, now if we see anything we varnish again with a low odour varnish that dries quick, getting into all the little cracks.  Makes the house eaiser to clean too.  The whole process didn't take long (we have a old converted shed) and less stressful for the hens, and helps keep the house in good condition too! If you have a bad infestation, it can take a couple of applications but definately a good alternative approach.

[barley]

I don't wait to even see them - my house is sprayed religiously every 2 weeks all year round
( we use poultry shield ) it come in 5 litre bottles and is applied using a spray bottle 

[Tigerwren]

I cleaned out our coop before going on holiday.  Our eggs have reduced recently and I thought nothing of it as our neighbours eggs have all reduced too.  Yesterday though I found literally thousands of the RM.  It took two hours of poultry shield and lots of DE to even get my girls to think about going to the coop again.  I checked again last nigh with a torch and there are still a few dozen.  I am going to make a thick paste today and cover the whole coop.  Then another full taking apart this weekend and repeat next week.  Hopefully that should do the trick, but they are quite resilient little beggars!

[HAPPYCHICKENHOME]

As they have a waxy exterior the other thing I used was hot\warm water with a good helping of washing up liquid to have a nice soapy mix the breaks down the exterior of this blighter and sprayed the inside of the hen house with that when the weather was clement enough for it to try quite quickly as well as Jeyes Fluid and hour or so after with a fling about of powder when it was all dry ready for the chickens on a night - I can manage this because my chickens are not in the house all day they are out in the garden roaming and lay eggs generally on a bag of sawdust in the garage - after such a large infestation it did take several weeks, but, have had no sign since as I do empty the shed, burn the sawdust and poop then disinfect once a week in the winter and generally twice in the summer

[RubyR3d]

Whenever I have problems with my hens I have a lovely old chap in the village who I take them to. He advised me to use frontline cat strength. A couple of drops at the base of the neck and between the wings. Also I put a couple of drops on
A piece of tissue and leave it in the nest boxes where they roost. Very effective and isn't systemic so you can carry on eating the eggs. He breeds and sell his hens all over the country and is very knowledgable.

[joyfull]

As Frontline isn't licensed for poultry you should really go to your vets and ask for kitten strength and then sign a disclaimer for it. Some people say you shouldn't use it incase it passes into the eggs but your vet can advise on that - my vets prescribe the frontline spray.

[Sideshoot]

I had a horrendous red mite problem, tried allsorts of solutions then hit upon an idea...
My dad in spain has a problem with palm beetle and uses an insectcide spray to kill them, brilliant stuff he said so i accuired some to try in the coop. Took all precautions with the birds, the results were immediate. After two treatments applied with a hand pump pressure sprayer they had been wiped out, not just the live ones but the eggs too.
It works out sooo much cheaper than the official marketed products too.

[joyfull]

As a responsible forum we can only advise you use DEFRA recognised products.

[RubyR3d]

I've read some ppl use lime. Is that gardening lime used for cabbages etc thanks

[ChicKenKen]

Hi, we keep just 4 hens and like most have had the occasional invasion of red mite, however with the warm humid weather we, or rather our hens have been overrun with the little monsters.

Having spent in the last few weeks around £40-£50 on diatoms, sprays, washes, etc. and following the instructions to the letter we made no progress and our hens decided that they were not going in to roost at night and frankly I cannot blame them, even putting my head near the door had me scratching and I decided that new and drastic action was needed and I came up with the idea of using steam from my wallpaper stripper, this is a 2.5 kilowatt model that holds about a gallon of water, I removed everything from the hen house, closed the doors, blocked the vents, and put the steam hose in through a gap and then watched it heat up like a steam room, after about half an hour I was amazed to see the mite appearing on the outside in their thousands, coming from gaps smaller than you would think they could get into and in such quantities even from under the felt roof that they fell like damp dust. While they were trying to escape they were sprayed with mite killer. After an hour the outside of the coop was averaging about 50 degrees and inside was around 80 degrees measured with a thermal imaging camera.

Afterwards, wearing gloves I used the steam hose in every crevice as steam gets where even water cannot and then finished off by going over the ground with the steam plate to finish off any others. Today I can see not a single moving mite, and in theory at least I should have killed the eggs off too. I will now repeat this weekly for a while to make sure no stragglers find their way back, the hen house survived very well with no warping.

One thing I have not seen mentioned about red mite is that the little horrors as well as crawling around also float very easily even in light air movement, they are really like living biting dust , I discovered this when I put a bag of rubbish into a bin with used bedding already in there, within seconds I was itching just from the mites that were blown up into the air from dropping a bag in, its no wonder they end up in our hen houses.

ChicKenKen