Gotta question...

[rjrinehart]

Can birds from the wild infest my quail with mites? I have straw bedding and they usually bathe themselves in dust from it. But also can a bird that was trying to build a nest near my quail and then the nest kept not getting formed have mites in it?

 

[Finnisher]

To reduce chances of mites you should keep bedding and area where birds live clean and as sanitary as possible, as mites will manifest in bedding then transfer to the animal usually. I believe mites are transmitted from flies and mosquitoes rather than from animal to animal contact. Someone please correct me if i'm wrong.

 

[JaeG]

After doing some research after having an outbreak of mites in my chicken coop I discovered even rats can carry mites so there are many ways they can be transferred, including wild birds. And they can live for ages without a meal so they can be sitting in the environment just waiting for a new opportunity.

Always have a dustbath available to your quail and you could get some neem oil to add to water to spray inside your enclosure every now and then. Some have an emulsifier added to that it will mix easily into water. I ended up painting neem diluted 50:50 with water on my roosts and in my nestboxes it was so bad. It smells a bit unpleasant but not horrible and it did the trick. DE is useless when it comes to mites. I had a thick bed of it at the bottom of my nestboxes and the mites were still living there in their hundreds (probably thousands)! It was a nightmare that I battled for 6 weeks!

Mites don't live on birds - they hide in every crack and crevice then come out at night to feast on your poor birds. So a wild birds nest could be a potential hazard particularly when the babies fledge and the mites suddenly have no free meal. I wouldn't stress too much but just keep up the preventative measures to make your quails home unappealing to them.

 

[Tabasco Jack]

Mites can also get transferred in on the hay.