[brenda]

Hi Everybody,
I really need some help!!
I have just been out to the hen house and this is no exageration, it is walking in red mite, and so is my poor hens.  My husband feeds the hens every evening and we use the diatom powder on a regular basis, but this last while my husband has been comming in complaining that he feels that he has things crawling on him. We had a good look at the the hen house earlier this evening and it seemed to have a lot of tiny little grey things crawling around and when we did the white tissue thing it just looked dirty.
However I have just been out to the hen house and I put my reading glasses on to have a real good look and the place looks as if it is infested!! and my poor hens are crawling in them too   :(could somebody please tell me what to do, I have a smaller hen house I could move them too for a night or two but I would need to treat the hens first.
Thanks
Brenda

[grumpydad]

lots of people on the site use diatom on the chickens, there is also a red mite solution that you can use on them.
give the chickens extra food and protein to make up for any blood loss that they may have had, and keep an eye on their combs to make sure they do not loose colour and become anaemic.
there is another post on the site from someone who has used a steam cleaner ( wallpaper stripper) to clean his coop, i suppose one from argos would work. alternative may be creosote, which would kill them, if it is the oil based, not the water based. chickens would need to be kept out for a few days, as it can harm their breathing.
i have started with the steam cleaning method. only takes a few mins to do a small coop, and no harmfull side effects.
dry then dust with diatom again.
good luck
 

[mad mark]

Try using the pillow case trick after a wash down and dust them in red mite powder put the chickens in another area and then scrub down the infected chicken house with outside cleaning disinfectant, they sell one in the coop I use in a tin, forgotten the name but it says it cleans bird flu and is very good for cleaning steps of moss also. Then let the house dry, then dust it with red mite powder and then check it the next morning and repeat if required then check the birds and then if okay back to normal.
Bonne chance and more power to your elbow........
Its Jeyes fluid, its just come back to me, senior moment there.......but make sure the house is dry before you put the birds back in.

[Flowerpower136]

Or indeed, more powder to your elbow.... 

[brenda]

Hi
Sorry for not getting back to you,
 and thanks for the help,
Flowerpower 136,
Mad Mark and grumpydad!! Just to let you know how things are going, we have moved the hens into a different house at the moment. Hubbie has been blasting the little critters with a blow torch but had to stop, there was so many thought he would have to burn the whole house down!!.  We have cleaned it out and dismantled the perches, my husband built the house out of tongue and groove and so has plenty of crevices. He used some wd40 and sprayed around the joints and crevices, you would not believe the amount of critters that came out but the wd40 seemed to kill them. We have set off a flea bomb in it and it the morning Im going to wash it all down. Im trying to find Milbenex can anyone tell me can you only buy it from Bowden and Knights direct?,
Brenda

[dizzylizzie]

hi, we havent had our hens long, but poultry sheild is whats been recommened to me. hope this helps

[iwantanallotment]

Wow Brenda, good luck with that. Are the hens clear now?

Milbenex is available at some pet shops apparently, but being a German product it may not be easy to find.

Steam cleaner/wallpaper stripper sounds good - how long does an average coop take to dry after treating, grumpydad? I've never used one so no idea how "wet" they make surfaces?

[brenda]

Hi All
just been out to hen house the flea bomb seemed to have killed a lot off now Im gona scrub it down. We haven't dosed the hes yet but will later on today, the vets recommended panomec you put one drop onto the back of the chicken making sure it gets on the skin. Vet said one drop kills anthing that is on the hens including scaley mite .
Brenda :happy:

[woodside farm]

Hi,
Make sure that you remove ant spare bits of wood that your OH may have used,, We had a big problem this year with a 6X4 tongue and grove shed, we wondered why they kept coming back so quickly, then we removed the spare bit of wood over their entrace, it was crawling with them.
This is the worse year I have known for red mites, I have been useing thick bleach with a splash of Jeyes fluid, watered down to use in a power sprayer, I used to just use thin bleach and that kept them under control.

Michelle xx

[brenda]

Thanks for that Michelle!
Hubbie built the hen house earlier this year, he got a little carried away, he built it 8 x8 square and its about 8 foot high and all out of tongue and groove. He realised afterwards that he had built it too high!! never mind!! :happy:  e have had hens for about 5 or 6 years and have never seen red mite till this year.
Brenda