[Charlie's Chickens]

After a lot of searching I am begining to think my girls have a dose of 'depluming mite' 

It initially started with one of the girls looking like she was being feather pecked so followed all the advice on here, purple spray etc, but it didn't clear up.  We then noticed that a couple of the others were starting to look the same.  I never saw pecking and never found any feathers but thought perhaps everyone was now joining in on each other!  I resorted to beak bumpers for a while on all of them, but they still didn't re-grow their feathers.

5 out of 6 are are missing their fluffy knickers in various degrees with Henrietta and Lottie also missing neck and back feathers by the base of their tails.

I have checked them and can see no critters and I have scrubbed the house.

I have done some searching on the internet re depluming mite and there seems to be 2 schools of thought on treatment.  One camp suggests using Ivermectin and the other Flowers of Sulphur.

Does anyone have any experience of these critters and sucessfully treated it???

Thanks

Emma

[grinling]

Are you sure they are not  mouting? If looking for lice, look around vent, neck and under wing. Use louse powder, very mucky job. Red mite does not live on chickens, but lice do. lice are yellow/cream in colour.

[Charlie's Chickens]

Definately not moult, although I wish it was!  It has been going on since April time and Henrietta & Felicity have very sore skin  I have taken to applying vaseline to try and soothe it.

I have checked for mites but definately none about.  I did read that the depluming mite actually lives in the feather shaft which is why I possibly haven't seen anything.

[Sassy]

Whatever is causing the feather loss they will not re-feather until their normal moulting time.

[darkbrowneggs]

Northern Fowl mite are extremely small and tend to start near the bum and between the legs.  The skin looks a bit crusty and yellowish.  Do some googling. 

The other thing is that if they are pecking the feathers and eating them this is a hard habit to break, as soon as a new blood feather begins to grow they will spot it and pull it straight out. 

When this is happening they tend to have bright red bums with rather hard looking skin

It is a learned habit, so once one starts often they will all copy. 

Sometimes there is only one major culprit, and she will be the one who is looking the best, as she has eaten everyone elses feathers. 

If this is the case you will need to think it through, but first islolate her and see what happens to the others.