- Feb 23, 2014
- 5
- 0
- 7
I am fairly new to raising chickens I have 5 hens that are about 1.5 yrs old, the last couple weeks I have noticed 3 of them are losing feathers and they are coming back in slowly, I have a water system in the coop made out of pvc pipe and nipples for them and when I was filing it today I found 2 red mites in the filling pipe. I haven't seen any on my hens and I emptied out there hen house and pressure washed it and didn't see any in there either. Now I am a little worried that what I thought was molting is maybe mites and not sure what I should do next. I have always used DE and pine shavings in the hen house and it is fully cleaned out every week, we remove all shaves and apply DE and fresh shavings. My hens haven't been producing eggs like normal I have went from 3-5 eggs a day to maybe 1 a day, the 2 hens who I thought were molting haven't laid in a couple weeks my first thought was the change of weather so I set there lights to come on like I did this time last year. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!! Thank you