Hello from Maine

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MainelyChickee

MainelyChickee

Chirping
7 Years
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I recently acquired 5 one year old hens ( 2 rhode island reds and 3 plymouth barred rocks) and am enjoying them immensely. They free range during the day and are extremely good about putting themselves to bed. I have a question for the group - how do I handle them to exam for mites or whatever? I viewed a you tube post of how to pick up a hen by acting rooster like so the hen will just squat down and can be lifted one handed. This did not work for me :) do I just grab them gently while they are in the coop? Any tips would be appreciated.. Thanks
 
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Nice to have you here!

I would pick them up gently and look all over under feathers all over the chicken. I just had a silky that had fleas. I was holding her and they started crawling on me. So I looked her over and found them around her neck.

In case you find any here's what I did.

I kept dusting her with DE every few days for 2 weeks. Seamed to completely kill all the fleas. Have seen any on her sense. I put the DE in an empty soap bottle and used it to puff it all over in her feathers. I also put a lot of it in the coup and did my other chickens and their coup just in case.
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some people swear by DE and some swear against it. I've never known it to do much of anything. I would choose products made for chickens and also treat their coop etc.
 
My question was more about getting their trust in allowing me to handle them. They will eat cracked corn or treats out of my hand but as soon as I go to hold them to pick them up they dash away. Do I have to wrangle them?
 
Hello! Welcome to BYC!
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To gain their trust I usually hand feed them treats, so they must approach me. As time goes on, they will be running up to you knowing that sometimes you have yummy things! Just take it slowly and get them used to being handled. Once you hold them a few times and they realize it's nothing scary, most of them should tolerate it fine. I always feel like it's much easier to get chickens used to being handled younger, so if you do ever have a problem that you need to be inspecting, they aren't fighting you every step of the way. Good luck!

 
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just pick them up and hold them securely while checking for mites, that will be the safest way. They probably won't appreciate it but you have to do it to check. Good luck.
 

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