House mites?

[wallawu]

I couldn't find what I was looking for using search, so I apologize if this has been covered. Yesterday when I grabbed the eggs out of the duck house, I noticed one of them has a small 8-legged spec on it. I blew that off and started looking at the pine shavings, which admittedly needed changing. I noticed some of these other reddish brown pests in the shavings, but not in large groups or clumps. I used my extra hour of daylight to empty the shavings, spray it with an all natural cleaner that bugs hate (we use it to keep them off plants), let it dry, and put in a nice amount of new pine shavings. I threw food grade DE in on top of the pile and then spread it out all over the house. It has 3 windows, so I'm not worried about ventilation. They all look healthy and happy. No bald spots or weird patches around their eyes.

Is there more I should do? They have their kiddy pool to preen in that gets dumped and refilled every other day. Is that why they aren't showing signs?

This is my first experience with this in almost 4 years of having ducks, so I'm flying blind here. Any help is much appreciated!

Tried getting pictures but they were too small.

 

[Miss Lydia]

When my chickens had mites only my chickens had them.none of my ducks an they slept in the same house. I did pull all bedding out bagged it up an carried it down the road an dumped over the bank. You don’t want it around the house. The mites my chickens had on them were very tiny and blk look like pepper but they crawled. I could stick my hand in the shaving and they crawled on my hand so I used a spray and sprayed the entire house top to bottom all cracks and crevices. Took safe poultry dust put it inside of a paper grocery bag slipped my chickens in feet first whole body but head closed the bag up around the neck and held one hand around the neck ( top of the bag) and one under to support the chicken and gently shook the bag till the chicken was coated in the dust. Then I took the dust in my fingers and rubbed over head and around face avoiding eyes and nares. I’ve always heard that water fowl unless kept in horrible conditions don’t get external parasites if the have plenty of bath water too. I believe it was in Dave Holddreads book

 

[Ratchnick]

The fact that you found a bunch of them is a sign of a full on infestation. If Your birds are happy you could do nothing, if one of your birds looks ratty or under the weather you need to take additional action.

 

[DuckyDonna]

Cedar shavings are bad for ducks!

 

[Isaac 0]

Ducks usually don't suffer from most external parasites, since unlike chicken's they have a more effective way of killing them, drowning them. How deep is the kiddie pool? Do they use it often? DE, in my opinion, is not very effective, I like to use either Garden poultry spray dust or more recently I have been using " Permethrin 10 Livestock and Premise Spray". Dust and spray the birds with these and the coop very well, under the wings and vent especially.
Any excessive preening behavior? I would not use cedar shavings..

 

[wallawu]

What am I looking at?

I little red spec in a bunch of brown specs!

 

[wallawu]

Could you use a shop vac to clean the coop? Suck up all the dust and mites.

If I see more I'll probably give that a shot. Hopefully the clean deep litter and DE will do the trick

 

[Isaac 0]

De may help kill bugs in the coop, but wont get any that are in the down of your birds. Swimming or bathing wont help either because ducks are waterproof. The down (and mites) stay dry and cozy. Pyrithrium will likely kill them. Are Your birds healthy? They may be fine and you dont have to worry about it. Ducks are pretty resistant to parasites and disease, but you don't have to hang around here very long to see ducks still get sick.

If swimming in water doesn't help them what other defenses do ducks have against external parasites? And why are mites/lice most prevalent with ducks that don't have access to swimming water?

 

[chickens really]

Go get a mite and lice spray that's safe for poultry. Reclean the house out. Spray the birds too. DE will not help.

 

[wallawu]

If they don't seem to be itching there heads, I would assume it's just a bug in the coop.
It's hard to know without clear pictures of the bug. Don't know where you are but migratory birds have been flocking around my house, that's when you need to watch out for parasites.

I'm in Arkansas, and I live in the city. When I put them up last night I looked around with my flashlight and saw two of these things on the outside of the house, but none inside. Doesn't mean they aren't there, but they were easy to find before. I'll get some stuff to spray around the house as a preventative measure.