Leg Mites

rachele30 said:

I have a rooster that had a terrible case of leg mites a while back. Each night when he went to roost, I would apply a good thick coating of Vaseline to his legs and feet all the way up to the start of the feathers. I did this for approximately 2 weeks, every night. It did the trick and no more leg mites and his legs look great! After a few days of applying it, his legs became really pink but didn't seem to bother him and about a month later he had no more leg mites and scales were all new and fresh looking. Hope this helps.

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klmclain1 said:

Yes...that's leg mites... NO, DE WILL NOT HELP!! Look up leg mites on here and choose your treatment. I haven't had to deal with it yet, but the usual treatment I've seen has been to soak the legs in warm water to soften the scales up, then SLATHER in some sort of oil - vaseline, olive oil, vegetable oil, coconut oil, whatever. The goal is to smother the little buggers. I do not remember for how many days you have to do this, but like I said, just do a search. There is a lot of info on here about it.

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cluckitall said:

What a great site this is! I was able to get a lovely, generally healthy adult laying flock very cheap -- my first-ever flock and no chickens at home to worry about, so no fears about cross-infection -- and to her credit the lady warned me they probably weren't parasite-free (she was practically giving me the birds, so I'm sure not complaining!) Now, never having heard of scaly leg mites before, it wasn't something I thought to look for, but after reading around on the boards to see what assorted bugs and cooties they *might* have, I saw this post and went "hmmm..." Yep, went out to check them and they all had some degree of leg mites -- and my two partridge rocks were just awful! Poor things. Their legs looked like gnarled tree trunks, twice as thick as they should have been and with encrustations all over. Four days of soaking in hot water and vaseline and oh my gosh what a difference! The poor PRs' legs look bald and pink, because all the dead scales and massive built-up crud (it really was unbelievable, once I knew to look for it) have fallen off. Everybody else's scales are starting to settle back into place, too. I'll keep dipping for a while yet, just to be sure. On the upside, handling them individually like that let me inspect them all pretty closely, and I'm not seeing much else of concern I did flea/mite them as soon as a got them home -- a drop or two of Frontline each, and I'm not seeing any sign of other infestations.

Question, though -- will my poor PR's scales grow back?

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