Scaly Leg Mites - Need Best / Easiest / Quickest Solution - Scaley

SCRaveness said:

I am curious if anybody has ever tried using Shapley’s MTG For dipping the chickens legs? It is actually made for horses but it’s an oil based liquid with sulfur in it.
Ingredients: Shapley's Original M-T-G™ contains Sulfur, paraffinic distillates, petroleum distillates, zinc stearate, cade oil, glycerin.

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im curious too cuz im fighting leg mites right now and ive used vaseline and now i just started im using olive oil with sweet orange essential oil every 3 days so far i dont see a change yet.

I got a boy, not long ago that was suffering from scaly leg mites. I knocked those things out with the first treatment! I used warm soapy (dawn dish soap) water with a few drops of peppermint essential oil and soaked his legs for a couple minutes. Then used the same water and an old toothbrush to scrub his legs. Then I did then and coated them with vaseline. I did this every day for 2 weeks, just to make sure there was no chance of anything making it. His legs were 1000% better after the first treatment. I realy wish I had gotten a picture before the first one but I didn't want to mess around.

This was after the first treatment



After 3 days


About 10 days later

I needed to reply to this thread after reading several posts where folks recommended treating leg mites with petroleum distillates. Kerosene, motor oil, transmission fluid, WD-40 are all petroleum distillates, and they are extremely toxic to chickens when ingested.

Although all are extremely effective at treating leg mites, it isn't worth the risk when you understand what just a tiny bit can do to a chicken if they ingest it. A tiny grain of sand coated with WD-40 will kill a baby chick in just an hour or two, after rendering it paralyzed.

Should an adult chicken peck at their legs after being treated with any of these petroleum distillates, it can suffer neurotoxin poisoning, and it can go lame for the rest of its life.

Pecking at legs after treatment is a possibility given that these distillates sting and burn the already painful infested scales. It's a reaction chickens have to pain - they peck the offending body part to make it stop hurting, much as we grab our thumb after hitting it with a hammer.

The other oils mentioned, mineral oil, cooking oil, baby oil, castor oil, Vaseline are all non-toxic if a chicken should get some in their beak. Use those. Stay far away from the petroleum distillates.

If you ever saw what just a little WD-40 could do to a chicken, you would never use it anywhere around your chickens. That goes for kerosene and all the others.

I'm only up to page 16 of the thread but thought I'd ask this now anyway. One of the posters had like 100 chickens and mentioned a trough that the chickens had to walk thru to get in/out of the coop. She said put some of your treatment oil in the pan and increase the depth of oil daily as they get used to it. has anyone actually tried this? My eyesight is so bad that I have a hard time going to pick them off the roost at night and I have such a hard time catching them to do anything during the day that a pan full of oil for them to walk thru once a day appeals to me. I'm thinking the mineral oil with some tea tree in it, put it in at night so they have to walk thru it to get out in the morning and just do this every 4 days or so for a couple weeks? Any reason why this wouldn't work? I could remove the pan once they all come out every morning. I'm also going to clean the coop--dealt with these SLM all last summer and now am seeing them again as well as one hen with such a dirty butt (looks like she has runny poo that sticks to her feathers, then dust bathes and gets dirt stuck to them, like a nasty floor mop or dirty dreadlocks). I've got to get this cleared up, just have physical limitation. Don't want to stop having chickens and also have 16 6 week olds that will join them sometime in July.

Tea tree oil is toxic to chickens so I wouldn't place it where they are apt to consume it. Chickens are apt to merely fly over the pan of oil anyway. Castor oil or Vaseline works without it. I doubt the pan of oil would be effective. You need to slather oil on evenly up the entire length of the legs and over all surface area of the feet.

Can you get someone some evening to come over and help you treat the chickens with castor oil? You'd need to ask them over again in a week to repeat the treatment. The oil will attract dirt at first, but repeated dirt bathing removes it all.

If you have a chicken with especially crusty butt feathers, you can wash them off by backing them up to a small basin of water and use mild soap to loosen the grime.

I ended up getting a jug of mineral oil from TSC. Poured about a tbs of sulfur (the yellow, stinky garden stuff for bugs) into the jug and shook it up (didn't really dissolve, but dispersed pretty well). That night, when they were all asleep, I went into the coop and poured the oil into an old plastic ice cream bucket. Lifted each bird up, dunked the feet into the oil for a few seconds, then lifted a bit to let her drip off, then put back on the roost.

The rooster is the only one who gave me trouble, boy did he flap. I did manage to get him dunked, but I think he lifted one leg and hung it on the edge of the bucket so maybe not completely covered that leg. He was so agitated that I didn't put him back on the roost but just put him on the floor. Put lid on the bucket and left. It was maybe 3 am and the pop door opened at about 5:15. No one was sliding around too greasy, but they all had greasy undercarriages. And, funny, the eggs had an oily sheen. That was Sunday morning and I was going to do it again this morning and then didn't (I have a house full of guests, can't do everything).

I plan to dunk the legs again tomorrow morning and then at least once again, maybe every other day? It was much easier than I thought, except for Roscoe, and I expect he'll get used to it. He's a good boy, I just rarely handle my birds.

How often and for how long should I continue? If it's lengthy I may just switch to castor oil or campho phenique.

You did good! Depending on if you have extremely serious cases whether they will need the oil more than once more. The greasy feathers will get laundered as the chickens dirt bathe.

I did round 2 this morning around 4:30. Did Roscoe first. I lost hold of his feather and just grabbed some feathers on his back to get control and held him in the oil for maybe 15 seconds, then held him to drip off and replaced him on the roost. My god, the noise he made! So I then did the 4 ladies and only had minor flapping, so job done for today. I wonder when I'll see any result, since I know it can be awhile before the old scales fall off and I am not doing the soak and scrub. They were only lifting a little,I saw one that looked odd and figured I'd treat rather than wait. I suppose it could be dryness or age, but these birds are only like 2 years old. I still need to treat the vent gleet but just haven't had time with company, etc, to do any more than clean, give vinegar water and offer yogurt. I did sprinkle probiotic powder on their melon and may yet give them bread with tons of olive oil. That's what I did for sour crop in the past and figure it would not hurt now.

We have a hen, Emily, who has a mild case of scaly leg mites which I’d like to deal with. She refuses to roost on the perch at night and instead sleeps in one of the nesting boxes. Does anyone think it will matter if I dunk her legs in oil at bedtime and put her back in there? I mean obviously the bedding will stick to her feet and she’ll get messy, but I can’t see that it could do any actual harm? She is a nervous sort and I think it would be less stressful for her to do this at nighttime.

HollyWoozle said:

We have a hen, Emily, who has a mild case of scaly leg mites which I’d like to deal with. She refuses to roost on the perch at night and instead sleeps in one of the nesting boxes. Does anyone think it will matter if I dunk her legs in oil at bedtime and put her back in there? I mean obviously the bedding will stick to her feet and she’ll get messy, but I can’t see that it could do any actual harm? She is a nervous sort and I think it would be less stressful for her to do this at nighttime.

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I would use an old toothbrush and scrub her legs with soapy water (Dawn) and add a couple stops of peppermint essential oil, eucalyptus essential oil, and tea tree essential oil. If you have any of those, it will make treatment work very fast. Afterward, coat the legs in Vaseline. This method work extremely fast and very well.