[Tinkers]

We have had our chickies for almost a year now and have just found beasties in their house. We were alerted to this by one of our hens refusing to sleep in the house. I'm not 100% but I don't think they are red mite - but have read through my books and browsed the internet but can't find a clear description of what they might be anywhere.

The are tiny, almost round creatures (almost like a teeny tiny ladybird shape - but with out the little legs coming out the side) and to the naked eye look brown in colour. They move quite quickly and when I squash them with my thumbnail they are just a mass of blood - just like a flea I suppose. But these things don't jump.  Argh!

We have checked both our hens and they don't 'seem' to have any of them living on them but obviously we will be checking them daily just in case they have eggs that haven't yet hatched. 

We only have Red Mite Powder available to us, as its 9pm on a Sunday evening, so we have thoroughly dusted our two hens and cleaned and dusted their house out. I understand that this may be only the start of our problems, which is worrying me slightly! I feel quite bad that this has happened and would like to find out if anyone might know what these beasties are so we can get rid of them ASAP!

Thanks J

[Tinkers]

Actually - having said all of that, I have just been reading a thread where 'Roughlee Handled' had some pictures of red mite next to a 5p piece and I think they are the blighters! Damn Damn Damn!!

So apart from the powder what can we do??

Any help is more than welcome

thanks J

[GrannieAnnie]

Hi Tinkers, it took me a fortnight last time I had them in the layers house!  I shut the girls outside on a nice sunny day, cleaned out the entire house, removed the perches and nest boxes and washed and sprayed everywhere with jeyes fluid.  I've got one of the hoselock garden sprayers especially for jeyes and I've got one especially for poultryshield too!

Once the shed is dry after a couple of hours, I then spray again with poultryshield, concentrating on the tiniest cracks imaginable.  When that has dried out, I get a tub of petroleum jelly, just the cheapy stuff, not proper vaseline and smear it in all the cracks I can see and on the perch ends.  then clean bedding back in and dusted all over with mite powder.

Our biggest shed is creosoted inside and out, but you need to be able to keep the girls out of it until all the fumes have gone, or you'll kill the chickens with the fumes!  Saying tht, it could do with another coat, but awkward as it's booked for the rest of the year for chickens!!! 

Red mite are nasty little things.  We even had them in the metal and plastic nest boxes I bought to try to stop them breeding in there!!!

[Tinkers]

Hi Grannie,

Thank you for your positive reply, as you can imagine - we are in a quite negative mood  We are going to get going with it tomorrow evening after work. We have poultry shield but will need to get some Jeyes fluid in.

thanks again and will let you know how we get on!

J

[GrannieAnnie]

Good luck with it tinkers!  I hate the little things.  drinking all the blood from our chickens!!!  Grrrr   

[MontyTom]

Yes, good diagnosis.

I use poultry shield, one spot (directly onto birds), Johson;s mite spray and a blow torch.  They are terrible.  Just keep at it.  Not so bad if only a few birds.  Just be vigilant of going from shed to shed though.  They are horrible.

Good luck!

[joyfull]

Hope you manage to sort it soon, nasty things. Someone on here mentioned doing a lime whitewash inside the shed, although I've never had them (touch wood) but want to do all I can to prevent it,  am going to get a bag of lime this week.

[Tinkers]

Thanks for all your methods of getting rid of the little nasites - We will be working on this and will let you know how it goes

Thanks again

[Rivereden]

Just to let you know of a cheaper method that we have used for the last couple of outbreaks last year.........Dettol mixed at about 10 parts water to 1 of dettol. This has worked brilliantly for us.

We now use Diatom powder spread on top of the shavings after cleaning out they dont like this and we have been mite free for around a year.