BackYardChickens Forum

Sounds like you've got lice and perhaps mites too. To fix it, you'll need to pick up some poultry dust from the feed store and treat them accordingly. Preventative measures like DE might not be effective enough to rid of the problem if they are already well established.

Go to the Feed Store and get "Garden and Poultry Dust". It has Permethrin in it. Lice will come to surface feathers of chicken and will just die right there and fall off. Wear your muck boots and clothes that you will be able to wash and take off right away. Not only because of the dust but also because of the lice and mites and preventing from house or other animals becoming infected with them. I just read in one of my older books on chickens that you can put some of the dust in a plastic bag and then the chicken. Gather and hold the bag around the chickens neck and shake the bag-not the chicken-and dust the chicken. Container of dust says it will treat 100 birds. I think this might be best with 2 people. Also build a dust box and put in wood ashes for birds to dust in and have available on a daily basis. Also can use tobacco or chewing tobacco in nesting area and works well to ward off bugs. Also can paint roosts with kerosene and use a mixture of 2/3 kersone and 1/3 mineral oil and dip or paint chicken legs with this mixture to ward of and rid of scaley mites. Then coat legs in petrolum jelly. This acts to kill and smother mites. Do this every 5 days for a few weeks as well as the roosts and it will help control the red mites

hens & chicks wrote:

Go to the Feed Store and get "Garden and Poultry Dust". It has Permethrin in it. Lice will come to surface feathers of chicken and will just die right there and fall off. Wear your muck boots and clothes that you will be able to wash and take off right away. Not only because of the dust but also because of the lice and mites and preventing from house or other animals becoming infected with them. I just read in one of my older books on chickens that you can put some of the dust in a plastic bag and then the chicken. Gather and hold the bag around the chickens neck and shake the bag-not the chicken-and dust the chicken. Container of dust says it will treat 100 birds. I think this might be best with 2 people. Also build a dust box and put in wood ashes for birds to dust in and have available on a daily basis. Also can use tobacco or chewing tobacco in nesting area and works well to ward off bugs. Also can paint roosts with kerosene and use a mixture of 2/3 kersone and 1/3 mineral oil and dip or paint chicken legs with this mixture to ward of and rid of scaley mites. Then coat legs in petrolum jelly. This acts to kill and smother mites. Do this every 5 days for a few weeks as well as the roosts and it will help control the red mites

Thanks guys... They are all free range birds... well, sortof, they live in a pen that is 150 X 150 feet.

P.S. hens & Chicks, Love this line of your post... "shake the bag-not the chicken"

Both lice and mites tend to be species specific.  They may try a taste of you or your animals, but will decide that you (and other mammals) taste icky and stop feasting pretty rapidly.