Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Poultry and Pets => The Hen House => Topic started by: orchardlady on May 09, 2011, 20:41
-
I have been given a rather sad hen who is an approx. three year old eyes are brown or similar. She has really bad scaly leg mite and is clearly in pain, with cracks and sore areas and is struggling to walk with ease. I've treated her with Frontline today and painted her legs with liquid paraffin from the horse feed merchant. I have never needed to deal with Scaly Leg Mite before and I am concerned that (as I understand it) the old scales will not fall off until the next moult and that her legs will remain sore and lumpy. Any help on this clearly debilitating condition would be very gratefully received. What have you found successful?
Orchardlady.
-
I'm sure I've read somewhere on here Vaseline is useful in scaly leg maybe because it's not water soluble.
-
I used frontline then vaselined for about a week. Some scales peeled off but eventually the legs became less painful and mine walk fine now.
One of mine was in complete agony but she is now absolutely fine. her legs still look horrible but she is fine
-
We slathered vaseline generously over the legs at bedtime, every other day for a week. I think it's supposed to suffocate the mites, so generous is good.
We found that not only did it deal with the mites, the scales were softened so they came off and the girls looked as though they were wearing pink stockings. The girls haven't moulted yet, but their legs have hardened off a bit.
Worth treating everone if it's a small coop and small flock - and cleaning out the bedding & scrubbing perches with disinfectant then coating perches etc with DE slurry - just to make it very unwelcoming for the little blighters!
-
The wormer I used for my chickens was Moxidectin - it treats all internal and external parasites including worms, lice and mites. I understand it has a different active ingredient to the Frontline so both can be used at the same time.
The advice I read was that a systemic treatment like Moxidectin (sold as Cydectin and various other names) would kill off the mites under the scales much better than a topical treatment that can't soak in. But then you can use a topical treatment like vaseline more like a moisturiser - to keep the scales on the legs a bit supple and comfortable for the poor girl.
-
Well I though I would give you a little update. So I put a few dabs of Frontline under her wing and painted her legs with liquid paraffin the first day. The next day and each day since I've slathered her legs with Sudo Cream. Quite amazingly her legs are starting to look better. There are nice pink areas of skin as the scales fall away, of course there is still a great deal of encrusted scales but I'm quite amazed at the results so far. No scrubbing or picking involved. :)
Orchardlady