Chicken: Red Mite!

MiJodsR2BlinkinTite

MiJodsR2BlinkinTite

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With the mini-heatwave last weekend (now a distant memory as sitting here shivvering!!) our chicken house seems to have become inundated with red mite!!

It was cleaned a fortnight ago, but the horrid little blighters are all over the place in there! This is despite a good cleanout with Nettex Red Mite stuff (the pink stuff you just spray) and I've also used some diatomaceous earth over the fowls themselves.

The other night I was itching like crazy around my face and neck; and found some little tiny/miniscule black critters on me! Aaaarrrrggghhhh! :(

Anyone else gotta problem with red mite? How are you dealing with it?

And what do you do if you find yourself infested? OMG!

We have a wooden house at the moment; and in the past we did consider one of the plastic ones, the "Omlet" being the most expensive we looked at and discounted because of the cost, but now that's looking a very tempting option coz at least all you have to do to clean it is just hosepipe or powerwash.

So is there anyone out there who has a plastic hen house? Any recommendations for say 10 bantams?

Sorry, lots of questions.
 
URGH. After 3 weeks we managed to shift them.

First I pressure washed and sprayed with the pink stuff 8 Aerosol one. Still there.
Then I doused it in jays fluid. Still there.
DE. Still there.

Then I got serious with the blow torch and burnt the blighters out. They are well and truly gone now, but they are resiliant little beasts. I also had to remove the felt roof as they were hiding in there too.

We lost one poor hen to them, we were infested! Feed RedCell (for horses) to perk up any aneamic hens, I also have Diotomacious Earth at the ends of the perches, in discourages the mites from going to the birds if there are any. They can live for 6 months off a bird, would you believe!

Hope this helps!
 
It's a sod to get rid of!! I found Battles louse powder - the proper permetherin one - worked a treat!! Also loads of diatom on the birds AND all over the house drive it right into the cracks and crevices as well, We used a large soft paintbrush for the job. In my experience the sprays take a long time to work as they kill on contact and have no residual action so you should be spraying daily for a couple of weeks or so. The best time to treat the mites is at dusk when they are coming out of their hiding places to feed on your birds - vaseline on the perches is also a bit of a deterrent!
If you have felt on the roof, take it off and put diatom or such underneath it.
I would also put the birds on a vit/min supplement as redmite can make them very aneamic (can't spell it!!)

Plastic houses are becoming very popular - look at solway plastics, alot cheaper than omlet, which IMO are overpriced and aimed at yuppies!!
 
I can highly recommend a product called Duramitex. Used to be able to buy it in a concentrate but it is now banned, however i believe they now offer it as a pre-diluted spray of some sort.

Thankfully i still have a bottle of the banned stuff ;)
 
for red mite paint the inside of your hen house with used engine oil as that makes it very hard for the red mite to climb up. Avoid using straw as bedding or giving hay as that is a pain as the red mite can hide in there. And you need to use louse powder to get rid of the lice which is what you have on yourself. Each chicken has to be covered in louse powder rubbed in. I have 2 hen houses, and I swap between the two so I can give each one a really good clean out and a coat of oil approx once a month which seems to work well
 
I know maybe I shouldn't have used the Ant killer spray but I removed the chickens for the weekend, jet washed out our house, four times until the buggers stopped appearing in mass then once dry I sprayed all the crevices with the ant killer... have yet to see another mite - horrible things :(

The hens moved back 48 hours later when everything was bone dry and had been aired until then, I also use wood pellets and soaked these in a poultry shield solution :D

I used the Ant Stop Gun from B&Q and only sprayed inside the house... I do not like the fact it is toxic to bees, but the mites had to die :(
 
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Buy a sack of edible Diatomaceous Earth. It is not a chemical. It works in physical action by piercing the mites' waxy shells and desiccating them. You can take a used Fairy liquid bottle, washed out and thoroughly dried, fill it with the DE and then administer the powder by puffing it out of the bottle gently. You can puff it into the birds' nest boxes, bedding, soil outside the house, even put a very small amount in their food. If you are using an appreciable amount, make sure you do not breathe in the dust.
Hope this helps.
 
yuck! apparently they are really bad this year. i have only ever had a few before and kept on top of them but had a horrid infestation recently and had them crawling up my arms...uurrrghghh...whenever i left the coup.

i stripped the hen house of all bedding and burnt it (mine were on a base of shavngs and some hay on top to nest in).
sprayed/washed out with 'Poultry Shield' and only put down a bit of newspaper to catch the poo!
Covered every surface with Mitex which is a desicant (I think that's the word) and treated the ladies with some drops of invermectin (got it from the vet)

I went out every night with a head torch on for some time and crushed any of the little bleeders I could find or covered them with more MITEX..and at one point attacked them with a blow torch too. actually a kitchen tool so really I flambe-ed them!!!

I think I may have got a little obcessional for a while! but anyone who has had them will understand!

anyhow i seem to have cracked it as last couple of times i have checked late at night with my torch no sign. They may even get some bedding soon in time for winter but i shall be keeping it to a minimum and no hay or straw as apparaently they like to hide in that.

I think a very serious, intensive prolonged attack is required and keep checking.

Good luck!
 
I have lots of hens and several coops. After trying every spray, powder etc over the last couple of years I bit the bullet this year and painted every coop inside and out with old fashioned creosote (not the modern creocote!). Its worked a treat. The hens went straight back in after a couple of days.

I use old feed sacks or newspaper to cover the floors and line the nest boxes and add generous handfuls of diatom everywhere. The bedding is burnt every couple of weeks.

The bonus is of course that the wood is preserved too. We also replaced the roofs with onduline as the roofing felt was a lovely warm hiding place for the redmite.
 
We suffered with this pronlem earlier in the year...crawling critters everywhere.

Then i read a chicken articule about some one who had battled it for years... the answer to stopping it....was creocote. opps spelling maybe wrong...

we tried everything... but the only thing that has stopped it all was the creasote. Paint everything liberally and leave to stand for a day... get in every nook and cranny a this is were they dwell the most.

Low and behold it worked... haven't seen any of the critters since March. I also use diatomacious earth in there bed when it changed. No need for powers on the chickens etc.

Hope this helps you..i did with us.
 
Glad to hear you are mite free too Eliza, 2009. I use Practical Poultry forum for advice and was led to believe that creocote is a modern safe version of preservative but does not contain the necessary chemicals to kill the mites. If it worked for you though thats great news.

You can still track down the old fashioned creosote, usually through farm stores. The smell of it takes me back to my Grandad painting the fence when I was little, lol.

I helped with battery hen recue a few years ago and asked the Farmer how he controlled the mites. The product they used was (I think!) , Ficam W. Its really for professional use but you can get hold of it. Only problem is its very user unfriendly and you need to be masked and paper suited, hence the reason that its only really for professionals.
 
I use double sided sticky tape (the good stuff) on the roof and doors and any other nooks and crannies they get into. Once they are on it they can't get off! replace it as and when you get a few on it and burn it!
 
Another YES!

It was the only thing that got shot of the little buggers after 1.5yrs of trying :)

RutlandH2O said:
Buy a sack of edible Diatomaceous Earth. It is not a chemical. It works in physical action by piercing the mites' waxy shells and desiccating them. You can take a used Fairy liquid bottle, washed out and thoroughly dried, fill it with the DE and then administer the powder by puffing it out of the bottle gently. You can puff it into the birds' nest boxes, bedding, soil outside the house, even put a very small amount in their food. If you are using an appreciable amount, make sure you do not breathe in the dust.
Hope this helps.
Click to expand...
 
Nettle123 said:
Glad to hear you are mite free too Eliza, 2009. I use Practical Poultry forum for advice and was led to believe that creocote is a modern safe version of preservative but does not contain the necessary chemicals to kill the mites. If it worked for you though thats great news.

You can still track down the old fashioned creosote, usually through farm stores. The smell of it takes me back to my Grandad painting the fence when I was little, lol.

I helped with battery hen recue a few years ago and asked the Farmer how he controlled the mites. The product they used was (I think!) , Ficam W. Its really for professional use but you can get hold of it. Only problem is its very user unfriendly and you need to be masked and paper suited, hence the reason that its only really for professionals.
Click to expand...

It was the old fashioned smelly stuff we used.... oil based not water based.
 
we have 12000 hens and the products we use are Elector, (which has no resistance yet) just spray it everywhere & you can buy it in 500ml bottles, Mitex powder, which drys the body out and grease all beams.
 
I am still at poultry novice but you lot are making me paranoid! I have 2 hen houses so I will disinfect and creosote it. I havent notcied any mites in the house or on the chickens though. Hens havent been in the area before so fingers crossed they don't pick them up, but still. How big are they?
 
they are tiny, the best thing to find them is to go around with a small piece of white card and rub it in narrow cracks etc, if it smears red, you know you have them.
 
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