Ahh Crud, Mulch Mites?

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DellaMyDarling

DellaMyDarling

Songster
Dec 13, 2017
631
876
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Mass Hilltowns
My run is a stinky, wet, nasty mess.

Get to Home Depot, climb up a pallet to get my 12 heavy butt bags of mulch, load onto cart, repeat with some rocks for duck side (thanks, lack of employees,) struggle to push cart through checkout, start unloading into minivan...

Suddenly I'm crawling with little white mites.
Mites are all over a few of the bags of mulch.
They look exactly like red mites I'd possibly find on chickens prior to them sucking blood.


ZOMG.

Am I panicking over a different and totally harmless arachnid? Or are these parasites about to reinfest the flock I just rid of mites?!
 
I get my wood chips from our county tree trimmers. They are usually very happy to drop it somewhere for me and it is free... just a few calls and a bit more work depending on where they dump. I find it best to scoop/shovel into one of my garden rubbish cans and load into the back of my truck. I also do empty feed bags, easy to manage.
Local tree trimming company's may offer you a better deal than HD or Lowe's too and once you get their groove it is quite nice to deal with them. Sometimes for a six pack of beer that they may be happy to see after a hard days work. Also lessens the carbon footprint and with less plastic to float around.
 
We have done the same thing and when working in our area, the county will drop off the stuff they grind up from trimming trees along the power lines but here the pieces are pretty good size and often attracted bugs, but everything gets ground up, the different trees they trim as well as the leaves. They are very happy to drop it off where we want it and it is free here too. We put it in our compost. I buy compressed pine shaving for $6.00 a bale for the coops. I'm sure the stuff from the county is fine but here the pieces are pretty big. We do have a chipper/shredder that fits on the back of our tractor and runs off of the PTO that we have done our own chipping with. It's for sale.
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