Are these lice or mites? - How should I treat them.

[Arlen]

Butchered a rooster today and found these wee things crawling around the vent/thigh crease area. A couple crawled onto me but I smooshed them as soon as I saw them.

If they are lice, which I think they are, I'm guessing it's early because I didn't find any trace of eggs.

First off, can I catch these lice? My dogs/cats? I scrubbed the rooster and myself and washed the clothes right away to be safe, but we had a huge flea problem with our house pets last year and I'm not eager to repeat it.


Second, how should I treat this. I'm going to make a wild guess and say I can't use spot-on like we do with the pets.


Just want to be sure of the issue and what to do before I start clearing the bedding etc.


Thanks for the help!

 

[orionburn]

Looks like lice to me. That's a good sign if you haven't found egg sacks, but the quicker you act the better you will be. Check your other birds (look around the vent area) to see if the appear clean. I've never taken chances. If one of our birds had lice we treated the entire flock, cleaned the coops out and dusted in there as well. Sevin dust is pretty easy to come by.

 

[HenThymes]

Not exactly which one they are but you can use Seven dust to treat both, just give your chickens a good powdering over there entire bodies and really good around the vent, then sprinkle it in the coop, nest boxes and perches too. You can also use Frontline "Spray" under each wing and that will treat both as well as fleas.You can also you pymethrin spray. I know there are a few other products as well but you may have one of these on hand.. Good Luck.

 

[DTRM30]

Pretty sure it's lice.

http://entweb.clemson.edu/cuentres/cesheets/poultry/ce216.jpg Here is a link - they look the same.

I had lice - they were fairly easy to rid as long as you keep up with it. I used poultry dust - I put some in a baby powder thing - and it was easy to apply that way. (be sure you mark your baby powder container CLEARLY though - so no one mistkes it for baby powder !).

Anyway - follow directions for whatever method you use. Normally it's dust your bird every 7 days - so you can kill any eggs that are hatching - and kill them before they can breed again. The dust won't kill eggs.

Not sure about any of the other methods.

 

[hudsonhousechicks]

I'm new to this and have never seen lice or mites. What do the eggs look like? I know with cats when they have ear mites the inside of their ears has a black coating. Are chicken lice/mite eggs black? are they clustered?

 

[DTRM30]

Here is a photo of the lice eggs ...

http://entweb.clemson.edu/cuentres/cesheets/poultry/ce217.jpg

http://www.ksre.ksu.edu/library/lvstk2/mf2387.pdf This is an article about mites.

http://www.backyardpoultrymag.com/issues/2/2-5/Laura_E_John.html This one has a photo of mites - they are much smaller and tend to congregate around the vent area - looking like dirt.

 

[Oven Ready]

You can't catch them - yes, they might walk on your skin for a while but you are not the right kind of host for them. Too cold, wrong skin, not enough feathers (hopefully). They might still try a bite though but they can't survive on you or your dogs/cats.

If they have six legs they are lice, if they have eight legs they are mites
I think general lice/mite treatments will kill them all. You need to do it regulalry because they live for weeks tucked away in nooks and crannies round the coop and if you free range then they'll get exposed daily from ones dropped off from wild birds.

Ooooh - makes me itchy just thinking about them

ETA - Yes you can use Spot-On/FrontLine. Put it somewhere under each wing and in the middle of the back between the wings.

 

[DTRM30]

Quote:
as Oven Ready says - you cannot catch them, nor will any of your other household pets - they are host specific - meaning they will only live and breed on chickens. They may get on you and crawl around, but will die. No worries there. Still creepy though ! ewwww. My birds had them, but I never had any on my skin thank goodness ! I think I'd feel like my skin was crawling for weeks !