Mites (maybe)

Crabby1

Hatching
5 Years
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
 
Most chickens over a year will be molting, or soon to be molting, some drop them fast others are slower and can take months. For mites I like to give my chickens a quick dust with one of the many poultry dusts that are available for chickens, personally I'm not a fan of DE, and I don't believe it's as effective as most people say. Make sure your chickens also have a patch of dry dirt to dust bathe in as it's a natural way to control mites and lice.
 
I thoroughly cleaned the hen house, and coop pressure washing and treating it, held each of my hens and inspected them but found no mites on them but I treated them also. I only found 2 red mites in the water system and have cleaned it out fully also. As a precaution I treated everything for mites better to be safe than sorry. I will just keep watching for them my big question is I have read that you have to treat more than once, wondering if I should treat again in a week if still not seeing any mites on my hens or in the coop and run?
 
I very seldom treat, and even more seldom retreat, I would say do what you are comfortable with, it's normal for them to have a couple of mites, that's why they dust bathe, and because of the wild birds they may get them again.
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom