Just the other day I lost a very broody young buff orpington to chicken/red mites :-( Because she sat on the nest for so long, the mites, which I had no idea where there , had a field day on her and she died, I guess to anemia. One day she was ok just obsessing about getting back on the nest, the next day, very, very sleepy and died that afteroon. I still feel sick thinking about it and feel terrible about not seeing them sooner.
I had only just recently cleaned out the coupe and had seen no sign of pests but when I went to change the hay from the nest box she had sat it, saw thousands of mites under the floor of the nest.
Have spent the last three days spraying the coupe and nesting boxes with insecticide, dusting the other chooks with mite powder and throwing tons of powder around the coupe, especially around the nesting boxes and perches. Also go out at night with a torch and check chooks and perches for signs of mites, as this is a good way to detect them as they only come out at night to feed.
A hard lesson to learn but I will never lose a chook to those little devils again. Good luck on getting rid of them.
