Depluming mites

[Jenniferconway54]

Hello everyone. I need some advice/help. I think we are dealing with depluming mites. At first about a month ago we thought it might have been our rooster being aggressive when mating so we separated him. That wasn’t the case. Then we thought we had a couple bullies cause we saw them pulling feathers out of each other. So we separated them. That still isn’t the case. We have searched high and low on the birds (even at night time) and haven’t found anything bug wise. So this is leading me to fully believe it’s a case of depluming mites. I have searched high and low for ways to treat and everything is so conflicting. I will attach just a few pics of our worst hens. I feel so awful that it is takin this long to realize what it may be. I just know winter is coming and I’m afraid they are going to freeze without some of their feathers. They are too young to fully molt (that’s what I read anyway). They are roughly 8 months old. I’m just so stressed out cause I want my babies fully feathered. They don’t seem stressed. Still producing 14-18 eggs a day from 20 hens. Hence why I didn’t think of mites at first cause I heard they would slow down on eggs. This is our first flock of chickens. So we are still fairly new at this. Any insight on what I could do is much appreciated

 

[nuthatched]

What have you tried so far?
Depluming mites tend to strip feathers to the shaft and makes them look ratty, this looks more like normal mites or picking.
How many birds do you have for how big a coop? What's their diet?

 

[Jenniferconway54]

What have you tried so far?
Depluming mites tend to strip feathers to the shaft and makes them look ratty, this looks more like normal mites or picking.
How many birds do you have for how big a coop? What's their diet?

We have only tried separating three that we caught picking feathers out of the butt areas. And separated the rooster for a week also. Not exactly sure on the coop and run my hubby made it. I wanna say 8x8 on the coop. We have 21 chickens. Started with just 13 and a neighbor stopped and asked if we would take there 8. So now we have 21. I believe the run is 8x6x24 foot maybe. We have switched them to an organic feed a while back from the local mill. Past few days we been feeding them feather fixer pellets to try to get feathers back on them. Their run is nothing but dirt. So they dust bathe all the time and we put barn lime down like once a month to freshen it up. Their coop is construction sand also. So there really isn’t any bedding for bugs to hide in. I’ll attach some pics of the coop and run that we have. I just haven’t treated them yet with anything cause I’m just not 100 percent sure and I don’t want to treat unless I know.

 

[nuthatched]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/mites-lice-treatment-and-prevention.64597/
Completely clean out your coop, apply permethrine based powder or spray and get all new bedding and litter.
Nice coop.