Mites: I've tried EVERYTHING

[Betsy57]

My wife and I have a barred the seemed to be that way. Skin and Bones. He had been sick and we brought him in away from the others. now every time we try to put him out he quits eating. He ok now just spoiled rotten. Will not eat if we put him out with the other birds. But bring him in the house and he begs from your plate along withj the dogs and cat. Sitting next to them. could it be anything like this going on?

I do have her downstairs trying to get her to eat. She'll take food in her mouth and spits it out. I've tried fresh tomatoes from the garden, raw ground beef, worms, dried meal worms, yogurt. All their favorite treats. I've tried to tube feed her but it is just me and I can't get it done. Will plan on putting her down tonight. Her crop is empty and her breast bone protruding. She does have some energy but just not eating. She can't have much energy left in her. I've had one do something similiar to this a year ago and was able to get an autopsy done on her through the state lab (which they have closed now) and that one had her kidneys/liver calcified for an unknown reason. Maybe this is what this gal has. The rest of the flock seem fine. Thanx for your kind comments. She's downstairs being kept company with my bunny rabbit. She makes a good 'chicken sitter'.

 

[Dustieburk]

My chickens had mites and I just put sevens dust under there wings and on there but and they were just fine . So you could try that and see . Hope something works !

 

[gwenakinyi]

There have been so many great suggestions on this post; unfortunately I stopped receiving notifications about updates, so I lost track of it about a week after I posted the initial question. Hopefully other people with mite problems have gotten some useful tips from this thread. I saw a lot of votes for Frontline (dogs & cats), so there seems to be good consensus that it works. After much trial and error, I found a tactic for mite treatment that worked very well for us. I wrote a blog post about it, which I'll copy below:

10/9/2013

Mites, part 3, final answer

Just in case anyone else out there is aggravated by a mite problem that refuses to be ethically exterminated, I want to share with you what ultimately worked for us.
Stuff we tried:
Ivermectin: This chemical is usually used as an antiparasite medication in livestock, but has an off-label use to treat mites in poultry when applied topically. Everything I read about treating chickens with Ivermectin warned against eating the eggs for weeks afterward. On the scale of toxicity, this was the most toxic thing we tried, and it didn’t work at all.
Permethrin (i.e., poultry dust): Some people swear by this stuff, but we didn’t see much effect. It might have killed the mites on the birds, but they came back from where they were hiding in the bedding almost immediately. It’s also messy to apply and bad for your lungs and eyes and every mucous membrane.
Neem oil: Every 7 days, we would clean out every scrap of wood shavings in the coop and spray down the entire coop, nest box, and chicken run with diluted neem oil concentrate. Repeated 3 times to fully destroy the egg-laying cycle. But the mites always came back, either by hiding in nooks and crannies in the wood, or because they were freshly delivered daily by the sparrows.
Diatomaceous earth (DE) is one of the most common treatments for mites, but it’s only useful as a preventative measure. It won’t help you out once you’ve got an infestation. I’ve seen poultry dust bath “recipes” for equal parts sand, wood ash, and DE, but I haven’t been able to find wood ash anywhere, so I just mix the DE with sand in a buried kitty litter box in the chicken run.
What ultimately worked:

1. Poultry Spa: The easiest way to get the mites off the chickens is to give them a bath. It was so much less messy than the permethrin dusting, and we were able to scrub the casings from the nits off the feather bases and be SURE nothing was going to hatch in a few days. We dunked each chicken up to her neck in a 5-gal bucket of warm water mixed with a 1/4 c. Dawn dishwashing soap, scrubbed vents and tail feathers thoroughly, then rinsed them in a 5-gal bucket of warm water mixed with with 1 c. of apple cider vinegar. I gently wrung out the feathers as best I could and set them up in the sun to dry. This approach could be more difficult on a cold winter day, since chickens easily catch cold without their feathers to regulate temperature.
2. Poultry Protector: It’s an enzymatic product that really does kill ‘em dead, and it’s safe for you and the chickens. It comes in a ready-spray bottle and a liquid concentrate. The diluted product can even be sprayed directly on affected chickens, so every other day for a week after the chicken bath, I sprayed their hind ends with poultry protector. I also diluted the concentrate in a garden sprayer and sprayed down the cleaned out coop (after numerous attempts with the Neem oil). If we had gotten a hold of this product sooner, we could have also used it in a higher concentration in a bucket bath, as described above, but that should only be necessary in very extreme cases (like ours). For most mites, a spritz from the spray bottle should be enough to take care of the problem. http://www.mannapro.com/products/poultry/poultry-protector/ I couldn’t find this product locally, but my local farm store was willing to order it for me.
3. Sand: This was perhaps the linchpin. As thoroughly as we tried to clean out the coop every 7 days, there were just too many nooks in the rough wood where mites could hide, and the wood shavings litter in the coop was a very comfortable home for mite reproduction. After cleaning out and spraying down with Poultry Protector, we poured in 3 bags of playground sand as bedding (about 1 in. deep), with just a light layer of wood shavings on top in the nest box. I keep a kitty litter scoop in the coop and regularly remove the droppings. The mites do NOT like the sand, and our problem is solved, at long last. The downside to sand as bedding is that it’s definitely less convenient than the deep litter method, where the droppings just decomposed in the litter. Also, wood shavings absorb a lot of odor, and I’ve noticed that our coop is a bit stinky since we switched to sand.

Once we finally got the mites under control, the chickens all started laying again. Whew!

 

[pen saver]

I am just starting out and will try the yeast on them. They will be about 3-4mos old thank you for the info. noblesville

 

[zteagirl71]

Congratulations! I'm currently battling lice! My little Black Australorp Myrtle had them really bad, and I wasn't prepared to treat her. [gasp!]

I know, I'm a bad chicken mom! After the horrible discovery, I slowly walked into the house and had a good cry.

Then I went to work and researched which product to buy, and Manna Pro's Chicken Protector was the winner.
That stuff is AWESOME!

The lice instantly croaked after getting doused! The only thing is I wasn't sure if it would kill the eggs.

My sister [a duck mom] came to help me eradicate the little monsters. I held my girls, while she sprayed and carefully cut off the feathers that were encrusted with the vile lice eggs, and then we powdered the girls with DE to help their soggy little bums dry. I still see some lice a week later, but I feel confident that I'll win the war thanks to Manna Pro's Chicken Protector. If the girls aren't lice free by mid week, then I'll try the spa treatment. After going through this ordeal, I have learned that an ounce of prevention is worth MORE than a pound of cure!

 

[Betsy57]

Congratulations! I'm currently battling lice! My little Black Australorp Myrtle had them really bad, and I wasn't prepared to treat her. [gasp!]

I know, I'm a bad chicken mom! After the horrible discovery, I slowly walked into the house and had a good cry.

Then I went to work and researched which product to buy, and Manna Pro's Chicken Protector was the winner.
That stuff is AWESOME!

The lice instantly croaked after getting doused! The only thing is I wasn't sure if it would kill the eggs.

My sister [a duck mom] came to help me eradicate the little monsters. I held my girls, while she sprayed and carefully cut off the feathers that were encrusted with the vile lice eggs, and then we powdered the girls with DE to help their soggy little bums dry. I still see some lice a week later, but I feel confident that I'll win the war thanks to Manna Pro's Chicken Protector. If the girls aren't lice free by mid week, then I'll try the spa treatment. After going through this ordeal, I have learned that an ounce of prevention is worth MORE than a pound of cure!

I'm battling lice too. My gals nearly stopped laying and so I started checking them. About half were infested. My rooster has tons of egg things around his chest and back. So I am spraying weekly until they all hatch out and I kill them. From what I've read, just spraying those little nest things on them does not kill the eggs so you have to keep spraying each generation until they're gone. It is very hard for me to catch 50 chickens and spray them but I've been able to do it! Good luck! I use the Manna Pro too but add a little Permethrin to it.

 

[emanuele]

dove posso aquistare lo stomoxin per cavalli?mi date un sito dove comprare lo stomoxin,grazie.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

Yep, nestbox shavings were all removed, and the nestbox was sprayed with neem oil as well.

What an interesting idea! I've never heard of this. We use the deep litter method, but maybe I should try sand instead.

"It seems impossible to get around the fact that the whole coop and nest box are made of wood! There are just so many crannies to hide in. I've tried drenching the interior with neem oil, but apparently I'm missing them somewhere.

What do you treat with? Permethrin? DE?

Mix GuardStar40, a 40% liquid Permethrin insecticide with a gallon of burned or used motor oil at the same ratios as recommended for mixing it with water for a premises spray. If its too thick thin the oil with Diesel fuel. Use a paint brush to paint the exposed wood inside your coop or hen house. Be sure to pay extra careful attention to all wood joints, but joints, lap joints, corners, overlaps, knot holes, split boards, cracks, and especially the wooden roost poles. I also like my hen nest to each be a freestanding and portable unit so I can remove it for a good cleaning and airing. But I am more interested in hatching and raising super healthy chicks than eggs now even though in the past I produced (or at least my hens produced) commercial eggs.

The motor oil carries the Permethrin and holds it close contact with the wood and fills the cracks, crevasses, and voids where the mites hide, breed, and lay their eggs, thus helping keep the Permethrin where it'll do the most good. Because the oil isn't going to dry up right away and because it will slowly flow and penetrate the wood and cracks, the mite killing action is long lasting, even plain used motor oil has some mite killing value it covers their bodies and suffocates the buggers. When it comes to killing mites I find suffocating them emotionally rewarding.

Now there are more than one type of chicken mite and several kinds of chicken lice, flees, ticks, chiggers, and stick tights that all live on the bird for most if not all of their life cycle. Treating the coop will have little or no benefit to you or your chickens and will not kill these pests. But the same strategy still applies. Whether you want to kill mites, mice, or crabgrass you got to kill'um where they live. So to control the other external parasites you'll have to use either an oral, or a topical treatment. Once a year at the start of the molt, dipping every bird is an effective treatment. Use Permethrin and water in a large plastic trash can, grip and hold both wing butts over the chickens' back with one hand and control the feet and legs with the other hand. Plunge the bird down in the dip solution about midway up its neck. There is no need to hold it down and don't get water or dip solution in the chickens lungs. Then every 90 to 180 days spray your birds at night while on the roost. Use a one or two gallon pump up garden sprayer and give each bird a shot of the solution between the legs, around the vent, on the back, & under both wings. Try to do both the spraying and or the dipping with just enough ambient light to get the job done. If you go waving a flashlight or torch around inside your chicken coop at night, you will be chasing your hens and roosters all over Hell and the better part of Georgia. Use a rubber long gauntlet trappers or commercial fisherman's gloves if you want to keep the dip off your skin.

In the USA there are no withdrawal periods for poultry and eggs that I am aware of if you use Permethrin. Permethrin also has a high insect repellant value. But since Sevin 5% dust and 50% wet able powder are both used on things like green beans with a recommended washing before cooking and eating I don't see Sevin negatively effecting your fowl. But you could run afoul of the regulatory thing. I hope this helps.

Oh, BTW Permethrin is safe enough to be used as a drench under and around bee hives to control Small Hive Beetles.

I hope this helps.



The above photo shows how hard it is to get into every nook and cranny in a chicken coop to rid it of Red Mites. Used motor oil will help you do the job.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

dove posso aquistare lo stomoxin per cavalli?mi date un sito dove comprare lo stomoxin,grazie.

 

[uaj0sh]

here is a great article I used, and got rid of them in less than 48 hours. http://www.fresh-eggs-daily.com/2013/02/mites-how-to-prevent-them-and-treat.html

Hope it helps you guys!