I'm covered with itching pink welts right after holding a chicken.

[mark3208]

have you been in the weeds?sounds like chiggers

 

[WoodlandWoman]

I thought of chiggers, too. That's what they look like on me. They itch like crazy!

If it's an allergic reaction to something and it's a case of hives, then it could be anything. Plants or bugs. I got a case of hives, after being exposed to poison ivy.

If your chickens have parasites, you'd only get a reaction like that if you had a bad allergy to them. Although mites are small, they are still visible, so you should be able to see mites or lice on your chickens, if they have them.

If it's from plant residue, then the only thing you can do is check your property. There are lots of images online for identifying plants.

What a miserable problem.

I use a calahist lotion for things like this.

 

[Dutchgirl]

Thanks for your replies,

I'm going to look into chiggers. I know it's not something I touched, because it started and continued under my clothing, and I wasn't even out in anything, but the lawn to the birds. This happened right after holding a chicken that was brought into the house by someone else.

I have a lot of small welts on my ankles, but most are on my legs and torso- bigger ones. A few on my face.

They seemed to have left my hair alone and my arms are almost bite free, but they really like the rest of me!

 

[Chicabee19]

This same thing happened to me on my grandpa's farm when I was little, then on my dad's farm when I was grown up.

Tiny red bugs (I mean really tiny) were crawling all OVER me and biting -- it really hurt too.

Then I discovered that my dad's bathroom was literally covered with them, wall to wall.

He let off a bomb or two in the house and chicken coop, and they went away.

 

[wishin4chicken]

Could it be red poultry mites? Michele.

 

[Dutchgirl]

What ever it was, I am glad to say, the biting hasn't continued. The bites are very itchy at times and it wakes me up at night, but often I hardly have any itching.

Strangely, there are marks on my upper chest and neck that look like 2 and 3 inch scratches from claws, but they are also bites.

I also braved it out and picked up the same chicken, at arms length. (Both times it was daytime.) She didn't appear to have any mites, but I didn't get a magnifying glass.

She does have some feather lice; beige easily seen bugs crawling on the feathers, not near the skin. I never saw anything like that on me.

Is it possible that she got into chiggers, right before my son handed her to me, and they crawled onto me from there?

 

[rizq]

I hope you figure out your itchies, no fun.

I had to reply about the poison ivy. Water does NOT wash off or deactivate urushiol (the oil in poison ivy/oak), it will spread it around nicely for you however. Soap must be used within an hour or two to remove the oil, after that it is too late because the oil bonds with your skin. Alcohol will remove the oil from your skin after it bonds, but at that point it is too late to prevent the rash. Removing the oil will help to keep it from spreading though. And whatever you do, if you have poison ivy on your legs DON'T SHAVE THEM In my defense, I had no idea I had been in poison ivy, but boy was I miserable. I had it from my ankles to my knees and anywhere else it decided to spread from there. The spots on the inside of my legs near my knees where about 6-8 inches long and 4 inches wide. That stuff hurts when it is on areas that bend! I had it BAD! It took almost 2 months for it to go away. I still have scars.

Anyway, I just had to comment on the poison ivy because I know how miserable that stuff is. You don't want to wash it with just water, you will spread it.

 

[rizq]

Quote:
That sounds like chiggers. I hate them, too. I was always told to put clear nail polish on the bites as it would close up the holes and suffocate them. It never helped the itching for me, but the trails of the polished ones always seemed to be shorter than those I left alone.

 

[NancyDz]

Wow Chiggers sound nasty... I dont think we have them here, I've not heard about them before.


We do have Poison Oak ( similar to Ivy) luckily I'm immune to it since i got it a lot as a kid but my boyfriend
gets it at least once a summer. The best thing we've found is washing with Fels Naptha soap. It really dries
it out and gets rid of the oil.

I hope you figure it out and it goes away soon.

My brother recently came home from vacation and apparently brought bed bugs back from a hotel...
he ended up using DE to get rid of them and it worked well... those things are nasty and apparently
becoming quite common in the US again in nice hotels even. You don't start feeling the bites until
a few hours later and then they are really irritating and itchy. He was going nuts for a couple days.
I told him not to come over until he got it under control!

Good luck and keep us posted!

Nancy

 

[chilling in muscadine]

Chiggers bite along cloths lines like waist line or bra line. They don't ramdomely bite. Have you been around a dog that has the mange? You can catch scabbies from a mangie dog. It resembles poison ivie.