Help for a newbie! Could my brand new chickens have mites??

[erinnyes]

Well, I have found that my chickens definitely DO have mites now. Today when I was playing with them I found feathers with eggs attached to the fluffs. This is SO discouraging, mainly because for one they're my very first chickens and they came to me sick, and for another thing, now all my chickens are likely infected. I will search the site for ways to treat these things but I have to admit, it's disheartening because I did NOT want to spend my first week raising chickens having to go through this kind of thing. Furthermore, I am almost 100% sure the person who sold me these chickens knew they had mites... how could they not? If a newbie who didn't even know what chicken mites WERE before thought there was something wrong with them, how could an expert not know? That in itself is discouraging because I really wanted to believe that nice, honest people sold them to me.

If anyone has any tips for me about the mite treatment process, or ways to do it more easily for someone who isn't used to handling the chickens a lot yet, let me know! Thanks!

 

[erinnyes]

Updates! Well, my poor chickens are losing feathers. Two days ago I bought Sevin and DE and planned to dust them all with it, but I sorely underestimated how much Sevin I would need to clean their house with (right now because their coop is still under construction, the chickens are free ranging and go to bed every night in a cinderblock horse stall). I used up almost all the Sevin just dusting the room after I cleaned the bedding out of it, and had to suffice with dusting the chickens themselves with the DE, which seems as though it may not have been enough. I presently see no egg clusters or lice (after a little more research I think it's poultry lice they have, not mites. Still could be wrong though!). Then again, my one old chicken has a very balding bottom right now, so the lice might be retreating to the belly area where I can't easily find them.

Presently I am thinking of re-cleaning and dusting once I get ample Sevin and just using Ivermectin on the chickens. From everything I've seen on here Ivermectin seems like it will be a surefire kill for whatever is "bugging" my babies, and I won't have to worry about dusting them again (which is tricky for someone not used to handling chickens yet!!)

Any advice?

I know a lot of you out there have done this before. Is there a different way you'd do it?