Mosquitoes Reproducing in Waterer

[frenchiegirl21]

Also, this water fount in question happens to be in the shade. Would putting it the sun help or make things worse?

@ChickenCanoe facts don't bother me. Please refer to my previous post about the information I found out about the mosquito species that live where I am located. The information I found out came from Texas A&M University's research teams, so I do believe it is accurate and unbiased.


Edited by Staff

 

[centrarchid]

I did research last night and quite a few species of mosquitoes in Texas can go through their entire lifecycle in 4 days. So, from egg to adult in 4 days. Which means that if I were to clean/disinfect the water fount on Saturday and did not have time to "adequately" (I use that term loosely since I feel that I clean everything adequately on a daily basis) clean it again until Wednesday after work there could be an entirely new generation of mosquitoes completely grown and ready to fly away. Please do research on the mosquitoes found in my state before you tell me that I am only cleaning my water founts once every two weeks because it takes 7-10 days for a mosquito to hatch and grow up.That may be true where you live, but is not necessarily true for where I am located. 

I try and limit how much organic material is in the water founts but I cannot be out there 24/7 checking to make sure the water is perfectly clean. I am currently the only person residing in my house that includes multiple flocks of chickens, 10+ hives of honey bees, and 4 dachshunds. I work full-time and can't always spend time cleaning/disinfecting. So yes, maybe I need to do better, but I only asked for a workable solution.

This is the waterer we use: http://www.scruggsfarm.com/little-giant-plastic-poultry-water-fount-ppf3,-ppf5,-ppf7.html?gclid=Cj0KEQjwiN6sBRDK2vOO_vaRs5cBEiQAfsnJCT3eJEDqTlDnZw6VYoGgJhaMe0xgCyL4wOFq1Xj4jQsaAiDm8P8HAQ. My best guess is that the little wrigglers are slipping through the spout and that's why there are adults when I open the top. 

For those that use the nipple systems, how long did it take your chickens to figure the new system out? It is currently the middle of summer here (well, and elsewhere too) and I'm worried that they won't figure it out quickly enough and might get dehydrated and die. It's happened before when I was working and my brother did not give the chickens enough water for the day. Does that make sense?


 
@Ridgerunner
 will those dunks hurt the chickens or the bees? That's the first thing I thought of but I wasn't sure if anyone had tried them with their chickens.

@centrarchid
 the wagon is a really good idea, but I live in the city and the chicken pen is about 100 yards from my house. Would bleach work as a chlorine source to dip the founts in? And how long do you let your founts rinse/dry to make sure the chlorine doesn't hurt the chickens? Or does it not hurt them?

My pens are all more than 100 yards from house and some 100 yards from each other which has been part of reason for adopting use of a wagon. I often use a lawn tractor to pull the wagon especially when I take about 30 gallons out to rinse / fill waterers. I am not so certain if chlorine / bleach has negative health effects in its own right but feel risk is worth controlling what grows in waterers. I have not seen any evidence for harm to birds even though chlorine smell is evident when water first applied. Chickens do not seem to restrict intake when smell aparent. Some parties are much more liberal with the use of chlorine than I am and claim no health effects. You can make for a strong bleach dip, a rinse dip, then add clean water to minimize chlorine exposure for birds. Wagon platform helps with that a lot.

 

[frenchiegirl21]

My pens are all more than 100 yards from house and some 100 yards from each other which has been part of reason for adopting use of a wagon. I often use a lawn tractor to pull the wagon especially when I take about 30 gallons out to rinse / fill waterers. I am not so certain if chlorine / bleach has negative health effects in its own right but feel risk is worth controlling what grows in waterers. I have not seen any evidence for harm to birds even though chlorine smell is evident when water first applied. Chickens do not seem to restrict intake when smell aparent. Some parties are much more liberal with the use of chlorine than I am and claim no health effects. You can make for a strong bleach dip, a rinse dip, then add clean water to minimize chlorine exposure for birds. Wagon platform helps with that a lot.

Thank you for that info. It seems to make sense that the chlorine wouldn't hurt the chickens since they use chlorine in normal drinking water to prevent microbial growth. Do you have any advice on amount of bleach/gallon of water for the dip or is that pretty much up to me?

 

[Luke 13V34]

In the Texas sun, the water would probably get too hot and your chickens wouldn't want to drink it, so I think keeping it in the shade would be best. I live in Ohio, and I still keep mine in the shade for that reason. We had 7 inches of rain the last 21 days of June, so we have had our share of mosquito issues, but they finish their water before they get in there.

Don't worry about the rude people on here. As is the case on any forum on any website, everyone is a tough guy behind a computer screen. There is no way any human being is going to tell a complete stranger "check your calendar" or anything else like that when asking for advice on mosquitos in their waterer. It is best to just ignore those people.


I am about to try using a much bigger waterer but it will be a closed system (nipple waterer), meaning the mosquitos will have no way of getting inside of it.

 

[wlantry]

Quote:
People who have never lived in Texas have no idea what conditions are like. I used to garden in SouthEast Texas, and oh my goodness: mosquitoes are the kings of the hill there. It's so extreme a fair amount of the food chain depends on them. Not so many decades ago, serving in the military in Houston qualified you for 'hazard pay,' precisely because of the mosquitoes...

 

[centrarchid]

Mosquitos are not restricted to Texas or the gulf states in general. I can go out at night and see 200 mosquitos on a single bird. Most of the problematic mosquitos are breeding in waters I can not control. More effort is invested in making certain birds can resist the mosquito load. Mosquitos more abundant further north but disease is more a problem at lower latitudes.

 

[centrarchid]

Dunks are an organic approved method to control mosquito larva. It is a specific form of BT that targets mosquitoes that is perfectly safe for your chickens. It gives the larva a belly ache so they stop eating and starve to death. It’s basically a disease that only affects mosquito and fly larva. It’s not a disease that will affect chickens, fish, or anything else.

We need to watch for mosquitos developing immunity to BT. Has already be demonstrated with corn pests in the Midwest. If use against mosquitoes kept on small scale and done carefully it should delay development of resistant strains.

 

[frenchiegirl21]

We need to watch for mosquitos developing immunity to BT. Has already be demonstrated with corn pests in the Midwest. If use against mosquitoes kept on small scale and done carefully it should delay development of resistant strains.

That is a very good point. If I treat once a month/every other month would the develop resistance?

 

[pdirt]

It's also very possible that the dozens of mosquitos that flew out of your waterer were not adults that just hatched inside your waterer, but adults that had hatched elsewhere and were laying eggs in there.

 

[frenchiegirl21]

It's also very possible that the dozens of mosquitos that flew out of your waterer were not adults that just hatched inside your waterer, but adults that had hatched elsewhere and were laying eggs in there.

My only question is how the heck did they get in? The top is securely screwed on... It is possible, I just dunno how the little buggers did it.