Lice and other pests - please help!

[LMeyer97]

I'm pretty new to backyard chickens (since April), and we have been fighting poultry lice for months now. 3 rounds of poultry dust every 10 days seemed to help one hen, but we've started noticing the other 5 getting the same black markings on their combs as the first one. I've been doing a lot of research: we've fully dusted with permethrin (all 6 hens and hen house) multiple times, I have bathed and redacted each hen, they have been getting monthly ivermectin drops (3-4 between the shoulder blades) once per month for the past two months, and we just recently treated them with fipronil. We also put a kiddie pool in their run containing a mixture of sand, wood ash, and our clay soil for their dust bathing, although the can pretty much dust bathe anywhere in their run (and they definitely do). And they still have lice. Is there something that we're doing wrong, or should we use something else?

The 'other pests' that I just found this morning were small, long and slender whitish worms in some chicken poop. I thought that ivermectin was good for both external and internal parasites. Is there something else they should be getting?

Thank you for any advice, I really just want our girls to be happy and healthy.

 

[halleyd591]

I see this post is from last year but I am struggling with the same thing! I cannot get rid of them. My girls dust bathe all the time in their sand run with DE sprinkled in the holes they make. I have tried Epsom Salt/Dawn Dishwashing soap bath, Permethrin spray, DE baths and NOTHING has helped. I now have 2 babies that are almost 3 weeks old that now have them. It's annoying. I would love to hear input on a solution.

 

[Folly's place]

There's no reason to use unapproved products or bother with stuff that doesn't really work well! Permethrin spray concentrate, applied per directions, works great for mites and lice. The very expensive approved alternative is spinosad, mail order. Cleaning out the bedding and spraying or dusting the coop before adding new bedding helps too. Don't add infested hay or straw! Wild birds bring these critters in, and reinfections will happen, hopefully not often. No way am I bathing over fifty chickens!!! I try to check a few birds every week, at night with a flashlight, and treat everyone if I see ONE bad bug on one bird. Mary