Best coop cleaner?

[cmom]

I bought a 50# bag of DE and it didn't appear to me to do anything. My coops were also loaded with flies and in one coop I realized I also had a problem with mites. The mites seemed to thrive as well as the flies no matter how much DE I put down. After doing some research I bought some permethrin and after a few weekly treatments no more mites and no more flies. It doesn't kill the mite eggs so weekly treatments were necessary for awhile, but it worked. I think if you use one product too much the pests will become immune to it. I also discovered that some manufactures of ear tags for cattle use permethrin for the flies.

 

[chixrus2013]

The link you posted was a journal article written by NCAP. They no longer publish the journal but they still have a website. They have info on their website for natural alternatives. Outside of using DE, which I already mentioned, nothing else seems to be practical for chickens/livestock. They strictly talk about how to deal with fleas inside homes with cats and dogs. Here's a link to that. http://www.pesticide.org/fleas

There are a couple of discrepancies with the references the in the journal article. That's irrelevant because the bottom line is that there are people who would like to use more organic methods to control pests and I feel it's very important to respect other peoples rights and opinions.

Yes no disrespect of opinions here. We all have to find the best thing that works for us. I don't really know what I would do if I had that problem because it sounds really nasty to get rid of them. I understand there may be some issues with that particular article that I posted, but, there are many, many posts online regarding the dangers of Sevin. It only makes sense. Any of those insecticides that are strong enough to kill insects, have to be toxic in order to work. You see this even with "natural" bug sprays we use for our bodies. The ones without "deet" don't ever work as good as the ones with "deet". However, deet is very toxic. All these things need to be weighed out. I only brought it up so that people were aware of the toxicity, and took the correct precautions if still going ahead with it's use.