Help needed to identify and eradicate probable mites?

[Syntaxidermy]

Hello!

I've went to check my egg box this morning for eggs, to find a bunch of tiny, black, spider-like insects crawling over three of my freshly laid eggs.

Upon further inspection, I also noticed some smaller, creamy white insects gathered around crevices near the hatch for my egg box and the opening where their window is. These were moving, so they couldn't be eggs, but they were definitely smaller than the black insects I've seen.

This is the first time I've seen them... and have never spotted them on my hens. (Though admittedly, I wasn't exactly looking closely for them.) My hens' feathers near their vents seem to look quite healthy at this stage, but there are definitely a lot more feathers scattered about my coop and run than there had been over the winter.

It seems like these might be likely to be Red Mites or Northern Fowl Mites - though they never seemed red in colour to me. (The adults looked more black?) And it's unclear to me whether they're feeding on my hens.

This is the first I've seen them all summer, and I'm not sure how long they could have been there for! I've heard from other forums that it's difficult to actually spot them, or even see them a lot of the time.

I would really appreciate any input on what type of mite or pest I might be dealing with - and what the best way to treat my chickens/coop would be?


In terms of my chickens, I have 5 hens who are about a year old. They don't seem to be lethargic or in any obvious discomfort. I have handled them over the past couple of months, and they don't seem to have drastic feather loss or bald patches that I've seen photos of other chickens develop from mites. I've also never seen any obvious signs of mites on their legs or crests. Their feather colours don't seem to have changed in most of my hens (4 of which are white) except for one bird, who is a golden-brown colour. Her feathers seem to be much more dull in recent months, with some feathers becoming much more pale at the tips on her back.

However, I have noticed a couple of months ago that they became hesitant to go into the coop at night to sleep. I assumed this was because of my living in Scotland and having long daylight hours in summer, but now I'm beginning to think it could possibly be because there have been mites in the coop... They have often gone broody over the summer, stopping laying eggs and keeping themselves cooped up for weeks on end, and I thought that this was to do with the sudden heat! They've definitely been shedding more feathers than usual... and again I thought this might be due to their first molt or high heat, but looking back I worry that these might all be symptoms of the mites.

In term of the coop, we have a quite small raised coop. It's this one here: https://www.chickencoopsdirect.com/dorset-chicken-coop

Outside of the coop, we have built a large run out of fence posts, chicken wire, and fruit netting. There is also a smaller metal run inside of larger chicken wire run, (something like this one: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71dgYYVsbDL._SL1000_.jpg) so we might be able to use this if we need to move the chickens to another part of the garden.

I've heard that using a smoke bomb can very effective... but because of the size of my coop.. I'm unsure as to whether it would be safe to use one? There seem to be a lot of chemical solutions - are there risks of these doing damage to my hens?

I'm also unsure how likely they are to be in other parts of the run?

At present I've got about 2kg of DE and fresh bedding on the way in the post... really worried about my girls!

Thanks for much for any of the potential help. Xx

 

[Shadrach]

The red mites here are translucent white until they feed; It's the chickens blood that makes them go red. One way to check for red mites is to get a clean white tissue and wipe the underside of the perch at night, if the tissue has red spots on it after you've got red mite.
The red mite lives in the coop,not on the chicken and it's favorite place is on the ends of wooden perches and end grain wood in the coop.
I've tried various cleaning chemicals some better than others. I don't bother with cleaning chemicals anymore, I use a blowtorch; death for the mites is instant, you don't have to worry about how long to leaves the chickens out of the coop to avoid inhalation of the chemical fumes and gas canisters are reasonably cheap.
Torch the ends of the perches, along all the seams of the coop structure and I do the floor as well usually. It takes a bit of practice, get the blue part of the flame on the job and move the torch quickly so as not to char the wood too much.

I don't know what people here recommend for the chickens themselves.
The chickens here are less enthusiastic about sleeping in a coop with a mite infestation.

 

[coach723]

This site may help you with identifying whether you have mites, lots of pictures to help:
https://the-chicken-chick.com/poultry-lice-and-mites-identification/
Red roost mites live in the coop and only come out at night when the birds are roosting to feed on them, you have to check at night with a flashlight to find them.
In the US we commonly use permethrin products to treat both the birds and coop, treat and clean out the coop and dispose of any bedding, and you will need to do both at least 3 times at 7 day intervals to kill the mites, and any eggs that hatch. Not sure what kind of products you have available there, DE is terribly ineffective unfortunately, so if you indeed have them, I would go with a product that works. Some treatment options available in the US are also discussed in the link above.
Another possibility, just to cover the bases, of feather loss is molt. Not sure of your seasons there, but decreasing hours of daylight can trigger it. Look the birds over for any pin feathers coming in on their bodies, usually easiest to find on the head/neck, under wings, around the tail and vent. If you find pin feathers, then molt is contributing to the large amount of feathers you are seeing.

 

[rebrascora]

Hi

My guess would be red mites. I'm not far south of you and have a similar coop and have been battling them for several weeks now but it is an annual battle. They live and breed in the coop and just climb onto the chickens at night when they are roosting to suck their blood, but if you have a broody hen, they have 24/7 banqueting opportunities and together with the warm weather it provides perfect conditions fro them to thrive. If you lift the lid on your coop and the nest box lid and check all round the contact surfaces that the roof has with the coop walls and also the roost bar sockets.... lift the roost bars out and check the ends. Sweep these areas onto a dustpan and then tip onto a sheet of white paper and fold it in half and squash them. If the dark ones are red mites they will leave a bloody smear on the paper. Similarly the ones on the eggs.... use your finger to squash them against the shell and you should see a red smear. I have clusters of red ones in the crevices of the coop as well as the immature white/buff ones that have not yet started feeding. The problem I am finding with my coop is that the roof is lined inside with plywood which is starting to delaminate and they are breeding in the gaps created making treating them very difficult. I use a combination of treatments including dusting with Smite which is a branded DE product. I've had success with Smite whereas food grade DE didn't work, so I'm not sure what the difference is. I also use Nettex Total Mite Kill which contains Permethrin.... comes ready diluted in a trigger spray or as a bottle of concentrate to dilute..... I bought both and just reuse the trigger spray. The concentrate is better value. I marked the dilution levels on the trigger spray bottle to make it quick and easy to dilute the concentrate. Unfortunately this particular chicken coop is quite close to my bee hives so I am very reluctant to use it there but have found it necessary to take the risk on occasion but reapplication over a period of weeks is necessary to get on top of the problem. I have also painted the inside of the coop with creosote which is an old fashioned method, but it is not easy to get hold of real deal creosote these days and not sure how effective the alternative "Creocote" is. Something I haven't tried yet is Neem oil. That might be on my shopping list soon. I also squash as many as I can with my fingers every time I see clusters of them.

Good luck.

 

[Syntaxidermy]

Hi

My guess would be red mites. I'm not far south of you and have a similar coop and have been battling them for several weeks now but it is an annual battle. They live and breed in the coop and just climb onto the chickens at night when they are roosting to suck their blood, but if you have a broody hen, they have 24/7 banqueting opportunities and together with the warm weather it provides perfect conditions fro them to thrive. If you lift the lid on your coop and the nest box lid and check all round the contact surfaces that the roof has with the coop walls and also the roost bar sockets.... lift the roost bars out and check the ends. Sweep these areas onto a dustpan and then tip onto a sheet of white paper and fold it in half and squash them. If the dark ones are red mites they will leave a bloody smear on the paper. Similarly the ones on the eggs.... use your finger to squash them against the shell and you should see a red smear. I have clusters of red ones in the crevices of the coop as well as the immature white/buff ones that have not yet started feeding. The problem I am finding with my coop is that the roof is lined inside with plywood which is starting to delaminate and they are breeding in the gaps created making treating them very difficult. I use a combination of treatments including dusting with Smite which is a branded DE product. I've had success with Smite whereas food grade DE didn't work, so I'm not sure what the difference is. I also use Nettex Total Mite Kill which contains Permethrin.... comes ready diluted in a trigger spray or as a bottle of concentrate to dilute..... I bought both and just reuse the trigger spray. The concentrate is better value. I marked the dilution levels on the trigger spray bottle to make it quick and easy to dilute the concentrate. Unfortunately this particular chicken coop is quite close to my bee hives so I am very reluctant to use it there but have found it necessary to take the risk on occasion but reapplication over a period of weeks is necessary to get on top of the problem. I have also painted the inside of the coop with creosote which is an old fashioned method, but it is not easy to get hold of real deal creosote these days and not sure how effective the alternative "Creocote" is. Something I haven't tried yet is Neem oil. That might be on my shopping list soon. I also squash as many as I can with my fingers every time I see clusters of them.

Good luck.

This is great advice! Thanks so much for detailing all of that. This is my first summer with them - really didn't expect it to be such a problem this far north!

I've ordered the Total Mite Kill concentrate... should have it by tomorrow. Just to clarify though, do you just use this on the coop? (I.e, not on the chickens?)

And use the powder on the chickens? I've ordered another kg of Smite as well... will try to use that in combination with the food grade DE.


Going to clean out the coop for today while I wait for products to arrive. <3

 

[Syntaxidermy]

This site may help you with identifying whether you have mites, lots of pictures to help:
https://the-chicken-chick.com/poultry-lice-and-mites-identification/
Red roost mites live in the coop and only come out at night when the birds are roosting to feed on them, you have to check at night with a flashlight to find them.
In the US we commonly use permethrin products to treat both the birds and coop, treat and clean out the coop and dispose of any bedding, and you will need to do both at least 3 times at 7 day intervals to kill the mites, and any eggs that hatch. Not sure what kind of products you have available there, DE is terribly ineffective unfortunately, so if you indeed have them, I would go with a product that works. Some treatment options available in the US are also discussed in the link above.
Another possibility, just to cover the bases, of feather loss is molt. Not sure of your seasons there, but decreasing hours of daylight can trigger it. Look the birds over for any pin feathers coming in on their bodies, usually easiest to find on the head/neck, under wings, around the tail and vent. If you find pin feathers, then molt is contributing to the large amount of feathers you are seeing.

Great advice! Thank you. I'll try to check my chickens feathers more thoroughly soon to see if they are indeed molting.

Also glad somebody told me DE doesn't work very well.. I was about to order 10kg of it XD

 

[Syntaxidermy]

The red mites here are translucent white until they feed; It's the chickens blood that makes them go red. One way to check for red mites is to get a clean white tissue and wipe the underside of the perch at night, if the tissue has red spots on it after you've got red mite.
The red mite lives in the coop,not on the chicken and it's favorite place is on the ends of wooden perches and end grain wood in the coop.
I've tried various cleaning chemicals some better than others. I don't bother with cleaning chemicals anymore, I use a blowtorch; death for the mites is instant, you don't have to worry about how long to leaves the chickens out of the coop to avoid inhalation of the chemical fumes and gas canisters are reasonably cheap.
Torch the ends of the perches, along all the seams of the coop structure and I do the floor as well usually. It takes a bit of practice, get the blue part of the flame on the job and move the torch quickly so as not to char the wood too much.

I don't know what people here recommend for the chickens themselves.
The chickens here are less enthusiastic about sleeping in a coop with a mite infestation.

Is it possible that they might have just looked black to me because of how small they are? Also a but confused as to why I spotted them in the coop during the day.

I'm pretty worried about using a blow torch, but that does sounds pretty satisfying! Not sure how I would do this without burning my coop to the ground hhaha!

 

[Shadrach]

You'll get the hang of it. 400 degrees (the blue tip of the flame) kills everything, mites and eggs and you don't have to find a chemical for this and another for that.

 

[rebrascora]

I've just been out and blow torched mine this afternoon. I keep bees so I have scorched hives before to sterilise them but didn't give it a thought for a chicken coop. You have to be careful if you have Plexiglas windows in your coop and the delaminating plywood on the roof of mine was inclined to char a little too easily and I'm pretty sure there are mites beneath the surface but will see if there is any improvement tomorrow. Obviously I need to strip that out and replace it but just haven't got the time at the moment to do a refit like that.

 

[Shadrach]

Kind of satisfying isn't it and for me anyway it's fast and effective.
It's almost impossible not to char the wood a bit but if you're used to tackling wax moth and cleaning propolys (?) off bee hives you'll get thorough and fast quite quickly.
One further general point about mite control and coop hygiene. I build my coops with sheets of plywood, often with an exterior frame. I'm not a fan of the tongue and groove flat pack coops, there are two many nooks and crannies for pests to hide in.
I'll get some pictures up later.
Thanks again for taking the time to post.