I need to treat my 6 hens for lice/mites very soon.... DO i clean the coop first, then treat the birds? And, If I compost the coop bedding... am i spreading the mites/lice to my property? Can I burn it? Or treat it with Sevin/Adams then discard? Thanks in advance for the helpful replies!
In the past when I used shavings as bedding, I would do it all the same day. In the morning, catch them all one by one before letting them out and dust them. Then clean the coop. I always have dumped the shavings without being concerned about the bugs in them. However, I take them far from the coop- where the chickens don't go. If you have a small yard I don't know what to tell you. I think if it were me I'd dig a hole and bury them...but certainly they would just come out of the ground again I would think. Now I just use shavings in the nestboxes and sweet PDZ on the floor (treating the floor as a poop board with daily scraping). I personally treat my chickens every 4 months (am changing to every 3 months now to be safer) for mites to keep them away. The Northern Fowl Mite can live 3 weeks off the chicken. The red mite (comes out at night and lives in the cracks of the coop- make sure you spray your coop) can live 34 weeks with no meal. Lice also die fairly quickly but I don't remember the stats. Also, make sure you go easy on those shavings since they should be thrown out again when you do your retreatment of the chickens and the coop. For lice retreat at 2 weeks. For mites retreat at 7-10 days. Spray under roosts and in cracks of coop too.
