has all her feathers on her

[proud mama m&L]

My chicks are now 10 weeks old. One has all her fethers on her now the other 2 are a little behind but are gettin there, not sure why. Anyways. Since the weather has been nice i let them go outside in the babygate to run around and play. Yesterday i went to change their water and noticed these VERY TINY brown bugs all over te top of the cage and inside of it as well and all over the chicks. From what i have read i think tese are mites. I have read some things about the DE stuff and i think that will help but i am not sure of the exact name that i need to look for while looking for it. I do know that yo are suppose to use the food grade one not pool. I also heard someone saying seven dust will work. Is this true? and if so can anyone help me as to how to go about getting rid of them. Im not sure if they harm the chicks of not.

 

[CMV]

There are several types of mites. Some are harmless to chickens and some are not. I would make sure the bugs are actually on the chickens before I treated them. At 10 weeks the chicks are pretty easy to handle still, so wait until after dark and do a bug check on the birds themselves using a flashlight to shine on their skin (especially around their vents). If you see bugs crawling around on them then I would treat for mites. DE (diatomaceous earth) will do little good if your birds are infested. DE is more used as a preventative measure. If your birds have mites you will need to look at an insecticide such as Sevin dust. (I use Eprinex on my birds because they are layers and I don't want to discard their eggs. Eprinex also treats a variety of ills- worms and bugs at once.) You will also need to clean out their housing very carefully. They will need to be re-treated in 7-10 days to get any newly hatched bugs, too. The whole process is a pain and time consuming, which is why I am recommending you make sure your bugs are fowl mites and not just harmless wood mites.

Good luck.