Lice infestation!

[Folly's place]

Me too. Who knows what was used?
Mary

 

[Kiki]

I could guess...but that's no fun.
I will wait.

 

[Cindyloo]

Okay, So the "Medical" Bath is really easy. You get some dog shampoo(perfectly safe for chickens) Have some warm water, not hot or you can and will harm your birds. You grab one of your hens, just wet her feathers slowly, get her used to the water(my hens love this, sometimes they relax and it's cute) Then you lather her well with the dog shampoo, wait a few minutes then wash EVERYTHING off, don't leave any shampoo on un-supervised. For the other questions I have that very fine powered dirt and I do have the spray, (very expensive.) This week I have mucked out the bird coop, washed and scrubbed it with hot water, washed that out and then dried it. So far no lice! I placed a nice plasctic tub in the back were the hens don't go/stay away from and filled it with the dirt stuff and regular dirt. This has been working amazingly! I am so happy with what I am seening with my birds.

 

[Folly's place]

If I had three chickens, maybe bathing each one would make some sense (at least to me, not the chickens!).
Because I now have ninety, individual baths are out. Permethrin spray is my friend!
Mary

 

[MichelleT]

So, I’m going to jump in with a couple more questions...

I have one hen (yes, only one) on which I can find both feather damage and lice/nits. I have been using the lice and might spray that I got at the pet store. Yes, it does contain pyrethrin. Anyway, I doused her pretty good with it the first time and then unfortunately 10 days later we were out of town, so it was more like 15 days until I was able to give her the second round. So, I’ll hit her again in a few more days.

I’m really curious though if I am getting all of the buggies. She is dripping wet with the spray, and yet I feel like I haven’t really got them all. After reading that a lot of people use poultry dust and dust bath areas and nesting boxes, I went ahead and bought some of that too. Unfortunately, the label explicitly states NOT to put it in the nesting boxes. So, after cleaning all the bedding out of the nesting boxes and spraying it with yet another spray (permethrin .5%) I just don’t know what to do with the darned dust.

I also have one other hen that has feather damage that looks like it might be some sort of lice/mite, but that’s it. Everyone else is crystal clean. I’m gonna go ahead and treat hen number two as well, just to be safe.

 

[Folly's place]

When one of your birds has one mite or louse, you need to treat EVERY bird, and the coop, walls, roosts, floors, everything. And repeat in ten to fourteen days, usually.
Piecemeal treatments will fail every time!
There will be birds who have two 'bugs', and birds who have hundreds, or more, but they all need the same insecticide treatment!
Mary

 

[MichelleT]

When one of your birds has one mite or louse, you need to treat EVERY bird

On Georgia, the definite lice host, I have been spraying deep in her feathers... and I’m sure I’m missing some. I mean, I can’t possibly spray every nook and cranny of a bird. So how much is enough?

And on the ones (there are 10 more) that show no signs yet, where do I spray them? Do I just mist them with the stuff? I guess I need to understand how it (the spray) works exactly so I know that I’m doing it correctly.

And yes, I have deep cleaned the whole coop and nesting boxes twice now... spraying every roost and wall and crack. At least I got that part right.