advice please re bold patches and how to manage with very cold weather

[shiba]

Hi, i have five hybrid chickens that i purchased about 9 months ago, this is their first winter and my first time ever owning chickens. I have popped on this site numerous times looking at questions to help me along the way but this is my first post so be gentle pls

Just gone down today and one of the chickens has a bold patch size of 50p on front of chest it was higher up and could see it as she was walking round. I've picked up all of them and shocked to see half have got quite a few patches underneat on their breasts.

In the summer i had mites after i took on three chickens from someone, so de mited everything for months, had no feather loss and managed to sort this problem out only knew i had mites as itched one day and then went on the search in coop. Looked today and think mites are back.

will de mite again but what i am really worried is that we have snow here and wondering what problems this may cause them as they have feathers missing underneath with the cold and no protection.

How do you all deal with mites any advice welcome, i powdered the birds and coop regularly every few days but did seem to take a while till it was sorted and few months later they are back. any tips pls

 

[Judy]

Are you using Sevin 5% garden dust?

You need to treat everything at once -- birds and coop -- plus change the litter. Then you need to repeat the whole thing 10 days later to kill newly hatched bugs, as the original treatment doesn't kill eggs. You can also buy Sevin in a liquid form which is handy for treating cracks, where eggs may be hiding. Be sure to treat the underside of the roost.

I wouldn't worry too much about the bald spots themselves. You could give them a good thick layer of straw so they can cuddle down into it for sleep if they wish.

Here are a couple of university writeups on lice and mites, in case they might help:

http://ohioline.osu.edu/vme-fact/0018.html

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ig140