Is Sevin Dust Still safe?

Sevin has been recently put on a lifetime withdrawal for poultry meat and eggs by USDA....
......stuffs always been one of the worst IMO. 'Safe' is a relative term.
 
Sevin has been recently put on a lifetime withdrawal for poultry meat and eggs by USDA....
......stuffs always been one of the worst IMO. 'Safe' is a relative term.

Yes, this is true. If it's not safe for the meat/egg industry, why would anyone want to use it on your backyard chickens? Let's also not forget that DDT was considered safe not that many years ago.

Permethrin/pyrethrin are "safer" alternatives, but this are still very toxic substances. It is a very very fine dust...of which any fine dust is not good to breathe. It is also very toxic to nearly all insects, including beneficial ones like bees. I use it not routinely but only if I end up with a mite/lice problem. I'll don a good dust mask and then use it directly on the roosts, but will mix it 1:5 (dust to ashes) with wood ash to dust the birds directly (again, only if needed). The instructions included with my pyrethrin claim it is "safe" to dust poultry directly, but I don't trust that...I tend to be much conservative in chemical use than the instructions suggest.

That said, the first time we had a mite/lice issue, I had no pyrethrin dust handy and I simply used pine wood ash from our wood stove. I dusted each of them thoroughly, especially around their vents. One treatment was all it took for a cure for most of the birds. A few of them needed a 2nd treatment 10 days later. I also now dump a small pile of wood ash in their run and mix it in with the dirt/bedding so they can do it themselves. In fact, once I am through this bottle of pyrethrin dust (it's expensive stuff), I doubt I will buy another. Or I may just keep the bottle for many years for the times of when I "really need it".
 

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