Sydney Acres
Songster
I totally agree with using Elector PSP. I live in the Pacific NW, and my free range flock interacts way too closely with lots of wild birds. The Northern Fowl Mites (NFMs) are resistant to almost everything. There are two things that I found that work well.
1) When it's warm out, I use Elector PSP. It is labelled for use directly on the chicken for NFMs, and also for spraying in the coop. It comes in a strong concentrate, and requires dilution. The directions are for dilution of a larger amount than I need, so I did the math and use 9 cc diluted in one gallon of warm water. I also add a small squirt of dishwashing liquid per gallon, as it doesn't stick to the skin and feathers very well otherwise -- it's just falls off like water off a duck. Add the dishwashing liquid and it sticks well. After dilution, I put some in a one quart plant sprayer (labelled to use only this product in it to avoid accidental contamination with other products). That allows me to spray each bird quickly. You can also make up a 5 gallon bucket worth of it, and quickly dip each bird (not the head). According to the manufacturer, birds are dipped instead of sprayed in Japan, and it is safe. It can be used to spray the coop, and the spray can be powerfully infused into wood cracks to hopefully kill the NFMs hiding out of sight. Elanco (the manufacturer) is currently working on getting Elector PSP approved for use against Red Mites. It is not yet approved, and they are finding that they will need to use a higher concentration, but so far the results are promising (last I heard they were testing it 5 times more concentrated than for NFM, but you only need to spray the coop and roosts for Red Mites, not the birds directly). Here is the best place I have found to order Elector PSP: https://www.valleyvet.com/ct_detail...pmt|bb|&kwid=bcf5befb161a4067a916269241961145
2) When it's cool out and I don't want the birds to get wet down to the skin, or when I don't want to make up a whole gallon of Elector PSP, I use sulfur powder. There are many different grades of sulfur, and many different ways to make it. The least expensive is agricultural grade, which is a diesel byproduct, and has lots of contaminants in it. I personally would not use agricultural grade on birds, but many people use it successfully. If is quite inexpensive. A step up is industrial grade, which has most of the contaminants removed, and is considered acceptable for feed grade. It is also quite inexpensive (https://smile.amazon.com/Ground-Ele...444&sr=8-1&keywords=sulfur+powder+DUDA+ENERGY). A truly pure product is ACS reagent grade sulfur, which is more expensive but has all the contaminants removed. (https://smile.amazon.com/Sulfur-Pow...=1469165947&sr=8-2&keywords=ACS+sulfur+powder) It is a fine powder, with the consistency of corn starch, so there will be a few clumps. I gently sift it (outside), and put it in a squeeze bottle with a narrow opening to act as a puffer. (https://smile.amazon.com/Vestil-BTL...d=1469166287&sr=8-21&keywords=plastic+bottles) The tip can be cut back a few mm to enlarge the opening just a tiny bit (not too much). Then I put the tip of the bottle underneath the feathers and squeeze the bottle. The powder dusts the skin, and is mostly trapped underneath the feathers, so there's not a dustcloud for the birds to breath. It takes some practice to get it just right, but usually after 2-3 birds you can get the dusting done well without as much of a mess. The nice thing about this is that you don't have to do every bird at the same time. You don't have to dilute down a concentrated product every day (Elector PSP only lasts for 12-24 hours after dilution), so you can just have a squeeze bottle sitting on a shelf and grab it for 1-2 birds as you catch them. Sulfur takes 1-2 days to kill the mites, and for a really badly infested bird I sometimes get impatient and treat them again a second day, but I've never had it fail (so far). It can be irritating to lungs and eyes, so I don't apply it around the head, but that hasn't been a problem.
For Red Mites, here's a copy and paste from Jeanette Green in Australia, who is very successful and control mites naturally:
Make up an amount of the citrus vinegar..this is soaking citrus skins into vinegar and seal in a jar leaving in the sun for as long as you can...i use the skins of fruit i have juiced already and frozen in icecubes for later culinary use....the oil from the skins is the repellant..Ive used my Mukrut/Kaffir Limes....
Take about a litre of the citrus vinegar and pour into a bucket....
add a bottle of Tea Tree Oil (about 50 ml)....
add a bottle of Eucalyptus Oi (50-100 ml).....Rosemary/Lavender Oils are welcome but arent bug killers but odourous repellants...
Mix it all up ,with a litre of cheap oil...sunflower for example ..veg oil of some sort...
Dilute it with more white vinegar until you have it stirred up and thin enough to paint around...another litre or two..depends...
Wear gloves and preferably glasses...i had a splotch in the eye and it stung badly...
Paint all the wooden surfaces..posts rails,perches,wooden nest boxes....
The shed floors can be sprayed out with the solution of citrus vinegar and TTree/Eucy....
1) When it's warm out, I use Elector PSP. It is labelled for use directly on the chicken for NFMs, and also for spraying in the coop. It comes in a strong concentrate, and requires dilution. The directions are for dilution of a larger amount than I need, so I did the math and use 9 cc diluted in one gallon of warm water. I also add a small squirt of dishwashing liquid per gallon, as it doesn't stick to the skin and feathers very well otherwise -- it's just falls off like water off a duck. Add the dishwashing liquid and it sticks well. After dilution, I put some in a one quart plant sprayer (labelled to use only this product in it to avoid accidental contamination with other products). That allows me to spray each bird quickly. You can also make up a 5 gallon bucket worth of it, and quickly dip each bird (not the head). According to the manufacturer, birds are dipped instead of sprayed in Japan, and it is safe. It can be used to spray the coop, and the spray can be powerfully infused into wood cracks to hopefully kill the NFMs hiding out of sight. Elanco (the manufacturer) is currently working on getting Elector PSP approved for use against Red Mites. It is not yet approved, and they are finding that they will need to use a higher concentration, but so far the results are promising (last I heard they were testing it 5 times more concentrated than for NFM, but you only need to spray the coop and roosts for Red Mites, not the birds directly). Here is the best place I have found to order Elector PSP: https://www.valleyvet.com/ct_detail...pmt|bb|&kwid=bcf5befb161a4067a916269241961145
2) When it's cool out and I don't want the birds to get wet down to the skin, or when I don't want to make up a whole gallon of Elector PSP, I use sulfur powder. There are many different grades of sulfur, and many different ways to make it. The least expensive is agricultural grade, which is a diesel byproduct, and has lots of contaminants in it. I personally would not use agricultural grade on birds, but many people use it successfully. If is quite inexpensive. A step up is industrial grade, which has most of the contaminants removed, and is considered acceptable for feed grade. It is also quite inexpensive (https://smile.amazon.com/Ground-Ele...444&sr=8-1&keywords=sulfur+powder+DUDA+ENERGY). A truly pure product is ACS reagent grade sulfur, which is more expensive but has all the contaminants removed. (https://smile.amazon.com/Sulfur-Pow...=1469165947&sr=8-2&keywords=ACS+sulfur+powder) It is a fine powder, with the consistency of corn starch, so there will be a few clumps. I gently sift it (outside), and put it in a squeeze bottle with a narrow opening to act as a puffer. (https://smile.amazon.com/Vestil-BTL...d=1469166287&sr=8-21&keywords=plastic+bottles) The tip can be cut back a few mm to enlarge the opening just a tiny bit (not too much). Then I put the tip of the bottle underneath the feathers and squeeze the bottle. The powder dusts the skin, and is mostly trapped underneath the feathers, so there's not a dustcloud for the birds to breath. It takes some practice to get it just right, but usually after 2-3 birds you can get the dusting done well without as much of a mess. The nice thing about this is that you don't have to do every bird at the same time. You don't have to dilute down a concentrated product every day (Elector PSP only lasts for 12-24 hours after dilution), so you can just have a squeeze bottle sitting on a shelf and grab it for 1-2 birds as you catch them. Sulfur takes 1-2 days to kill the mites, and for a really badly infested bird I sometimes get impatient and treat them again a second day, but I've never had it fail (so far). It can be irritating to lungs and eyes, so I don't apply it around the head, but that hasn't been a problem.
For Red Mites, here's a copy and paste from Jeanette Green in Australia, who is very successful and control mites naturally:
Make up an amount of the citrus vinegar..this is soaking citrus skins into vinegar and seal in a jar leaving in the sun for as long as you can...i use the skins of fruit i have juiced already and frozen in icecubes for later culinary use....the oil from the skins is the repellant..Ive used my Mukrut/Kaffir Limes....
Take about a litre of the citrus vinegar and pour into a bucket....
add a bottle of Tea Tree Oil (about 50 ml)....
add a bottle of Eucalyptus Oi (50-100 ml).....Rosemary/Lavender Oils are welcome but arent bug killers but odourous repellants...
Mix it all up ,with a litre of cheap oil...sunflower for example ..veg oil of some sort...
Dilute it with more white vinegar until you have it stirred up and thin enough to paint around...another litre or two..depends...
Wear gloves and preferably glasses...i had a splotch in the eye and it stung badly...
Paint all the wooden surfaces..posts rails,perches,wooden nest boxes....
The shed floors can be sprayed out with the solution of citrus vinegar and TTree/Eucy....
