lice in my large flock...

paoniapoultry

In the Brooder
10 Years
Jul 21, 2009
36
0
32
Paonia, Colorado
i have read the other posts regarding poultry lice, but i still have a few questions...

i probably have a few more chickens than most people on this forum... about 100... and they free range all the time over about 3 acres. they go in at night into a few different movable coops. i am pretty sure they all have lice...

how do you dust 100 chickens? i have been putting diatomaceous earth and wood ash (i heard this is supposed to work) in their common dust bath areas and in their coops, but i just don't see how i could pick up each chicken and dust it. even if i did do this, what does that look like? throwing a handful of DE on their vents (that seems like mostly where the lice are)? every 5 days or so? that's a lot of work... but i am willing to do it if it will kill the lice...

i want to stay away from the harsher chemicals and try to just use DE... does anyone have any opinions on this? will i be able to get rid of them with just DE? any other natural home remedies that works?

please help, i am concerned for my poor birds and it doesn't seem like a huge problem right now, but if i let it go, i know it will debilitate my flock. soon winter will come here and everything will be covered in snow so they will have fewer places to roam and dust bath... i thought if they are contained more in the winter i can treat it better by throwing DE everyday in the snow free areas...

any comments are helpful for me as i am concerned, and just thinking about it makes me itchy... ewww! thanks in advance!
 
I had the same problem and I have 88 chickens. This is what I did:

Dusted the coop with 5% Sevin dust and sprayed the hens with Adam Flea and Tick. Neither are very cheap but when I checked a couple of days after spraying there were no signs of mites or lice. It took me over two hours to get all accomplished.

I do not have DE available but am locating a source and will put in the coops in the near future. From what I read DE is good for maintaining but does not kill the bugs on the chickens. I may be wrong about this since I have never used it. I had a person in my area swear that it helped her to be bug-free this year by maintaining the coop and chicken runs with the stuff.

Hopefully someone else will answer too and give you another source of information.
 
thanks for the info. did you spray the hens multiple times to make sure all the lice were dead or just once?

anyone else know anymore info on DE? thanks!
 
I also have about a hundred chickens and turkeys. I don't free range mine except for when I turn them out for short foraging, quality of life time, around an hour or two depending on how long I spend on chores. Anyhow, this is how I do it. I get someone to help. I dump the poultry dust into a knee high panty hose and tie it off. I use the hose like a powder puff and get the other person to hold their wings and face their belly toward me, puff puff under each wing a few times, hold their comb, do under their neck, on top of their heads, where the neck joins in, flip them over, puff puff on their fluffy butts, and a couple for good measure on their backs. NEXT! lol. You need to have a very VERY good friend to help you do this. By the way...
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I would like VERY MUCH to visit Paonia. I considered moving there earlier this year but just couldn't pull it together. I only know one person in that town and would love to know someone else. One of these days I'm gonna visit, but before I move there, I need someone to teach me the best way to set up for chickens in Paonia. I have never had birds in snow before. I'm SO GLAD you posted!!!
 
thanks... that's very helpful, what do you mean by poultry dust? is that a product from the store?

paonia is a beautiful place, i love it here so much. many people here have chickens. in the winter the chickens do what the rest of us do - eat a lot and wait for spring. i have mostly "cold hardy" breeds and breeds with small combs so they don't freeze. this winter i am building a simple chicken house with a roof and hay bales around the sides so they have a snow free warmish place. they don't like the snow, but it is almost always sunny, so they can often find a snow free place to peck around and get some sunshine during the day. they eat a lot and i throw them flakes of alfalfa hay for some green material. when it gets really cold (like the few nights in dec/jan when it can get to -10) i turn on a heat lamp. i could elaborate on how much i love raising animals in paonia, let me know and we could connect.
 

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