Mites or Lice?

[Swiftbow]

Hello,

While closing up the coop tonight, I suddenly discovered a bunch of little tiny bugs crawling on my arm from the nest box. We then discovered them on the coop wall. I thought they were mites, but now I'm thinking they were chicken lice, from examining some photos online.

Was unable to get a photo tonight, will try tomorrow. We did empty the nest box and coat it with a 50/50 blend of kerosene/vegetable oil. (Supposed to be good against mites) Whichever they are, the mixture did seem to kill them.

One of our birds has been losing feathers, too. She'd initially lost them during mating and hasn't molted before, so I thought it might be that. (And I haven't been able to find bugs on her previously when I've checked.) But now I think that's the problem. The other two girls haven't seemed to be bothered, though I noticed one of them picking at her chest feathers briefly tonight.

The little bugs did crawl up our arms and legs and onto our clothes. (And they were on the eggs.) They were squishable, but quite small. We took hot showers and hot washed our clothes... seems to have done the trick. They didn't seem to bite (yet), but they did tickle. I know chicken lice don't like humans, but I heard the mites might?

Anyway... the birds seem healthy otherwise. We have some wood ash from recently that I can also mix into their dust bath area. We plan to clean out the coop again (we just cleaned it two days ago), coat everything with the kerosene/oil and put in new straw.

Any other advice is very welcome!

 

[Queensilkie]

I've had mites crawl on me from my chook's shavings. I believe mites are more likely!

 

[Chicken Whisperers]

You can dust your chickens with a chicken mite/lice dust; it gets all in between their feathers and pulls the bugs off, and I think it kills them afterwards. Just a suggestion: you could try it to see if it works

 

[sawilliams]

Red mites live in the wood cracked ants shaving, lice usually stay on the host as they can't survive long with out food. But if you have one type there's a pretty good chance you might have both type.

I would not user karosene or anything flammable as not only is it a fire risk but the fumes could be very dangerous for the chickens. Go to the feed store tomorrow and get premitherine spray and dust. While the girls are out to play clean everything off you can hose out or vacuum the coop then soak it with the spray. Once everything is dry if there is still time I would spray a second time. Dust the girls especially under the wings and around the vent. And before you put nesting back in the coop once it's dry again dust all the cracks, corners, across the roosts and in the nesting boxes...

 

[ronott1]

Treat with permectin. The coop needs to be cleaned out and sprayed too. You will want to repeat every 7 to 10 days for three weeks.

There are detailed instructions in the articles. You want to do this ASAP and do not use DE

 

[Swiftbow]

Thanks everybody... I expect we can get that stuff from our supply store.

These critters weren't red, they were a very light color, slightly lighter than my skin.

Interestingly, I was in the coop cleaning it two days ago and nothing got on me. Lucky? Or maybe they hadn't multiplied so much yet.

Why shouldn't we use diatomaceous earth? I don't have any, but I thought it was effective in dust baths?