mites, mites, mites

[sonshine15]

That is how I found out we had them!! One was on my arm after carrying a hen! None now though and no one is scratching. I hope we never get these again! The weather this year and overload of mice, prairie dogs etc are not helping!

Yuck, just thinking about it makes me itch LOL

 

[guineawoman]

Yes the mites can get on you, your pets and all inside your house. I've had guineas for years and just got chickens last year. I thought I saw a few sticktight fleas so I cleaned the coop and sprayed. Then I treated the chickens as well, AND after that I went to the guinea coops and wormed a couple.

I had sprayed all my clothes with deet before treating the chickens and coop also threw my clothes in hot wash and showered straight away. I woke up with things crawling all over me. Omg!!! It's been hell trying to get these things off me. 20 freaking showers a day and 10 bottles of tea tree oil later. So needless to say I spread these mites to my guineas as well. I've never had this issue in all my years until I got chickens. I always keep my coops dusted with DE and they still infested. Never saw one of them on my birds but they were pecking, scratching, and shaking their heads. However I did get my microscope out and found them on myself.
Anyone that says these don't live on people have no clue. Just google it and read all the horror stories about them infesting houses.
I've been cleaning until my fingers are bleeding from sun up to sun down everyday. It's a terrible nightmare. These things are awful. My chickens free range and I'm just wondering if I should build them a run to keep them away from all the wild birds? I can't do this again.

My guineas take dusts baths and I add ash in them from the fire pit. My chickens however don't take dust baths? Well, i saw them do it once. I have no idea why??? I want to keep my chickens but treating guineas for anything is quite ummmm dangerous.....unless you're wearing something like a bear proof suit. And treating 100 of them is even worse. Try picking up a guinea and dusting it, get back to me and let me know how it goes. Hehehehe

 

[pslane]

I'd like to know exactly what type of mite you are seeing. It's rare for them to get that out of control. Mine are northern fowl mites and on my chickens, they only hang out around their butts. Untreated, they will suck the life out of your chickens and cause huge scabby sores. The feathers will be matted with egg clusters.

I'm sorry you are having to deal with this after having nice clean guineas and I suspect you just brought the mites home on the chickens when you got them. I had that happen to me once. Got chickens from some guy, never had mites before bringing them home. Had to bathe each one individually in a tub with dog shampoo.

But I don't understand why they would hang around in your house since there is no host or blood source for them to live on.

 

[skullgrrrl]

Coldwetnoz - when my chickens had scaly leg mites I would find them on my arms, crawling on my body etc. The worst experience was when I was lying in bed reading and the mites started emerging from my book and they were all over my arms. Its easy enough to kill the ones you see on your body, but every time I went to the nest boxes to pick up eggs I was wary. I had external nest boxes and when my hands were full I used my shoulder to close the boxes and the wood was crawling with mites! I don't know if they would have lived very long on me on in my house but the whole experience was disgusting.

 

[lilyeti]

We've encountered our first case of northern fowl mites! What a nightmare. I'm embarrassed to admit we have them in our house as well now.

Totally my fault, I had a broody bantam cochin in our hallway for about a week without knowing she had them, and they've since gotten into EVERYTHING... linens, our couch, and they've been crawling all over me for the last 3 weeks. Not only will I never bring a chicken in the house again, but I will never judge those people on those Discovery Channel shows with infestations... they can happen to anyone, even those of us who fancy ourselves neat freaks

So long story short, we've been washing all of our linens, vacuuming, hot steaming, taking 3 showers a day, and spraying with tea tree oil around the house and that seems to be helping. We also have a cat and bunny who have been treated with Revolution to prevent ear mites. Now I'm just waiting for the ones inside the house to die off and putting all my energy into treating the chickens and coop outside.

Outside, my husband sprayed down the entire run and coop with Bayer's 10% permectrin II spray 7 days ago. We also sprayed the diluted amount on the 3 bantam's vents, as outlined by the back of the bottle. Now, seven days later, I'm noticing they're all starting to scratch again, and we see them on the white feathers of our silkie (not sure if those are the dead ones or if they're still alive, it's hard to tell with those little buggers!). Now that I've researched the Northern Fowl Mite, it seems their life-cycle is 5-7 days, so you're supposed to treat as often to kill the eggs that have hatched since the last treatment.

My question is- do you think spraying the entire coop with the 10% permectrin mixture today (7 days after we sprayed last) AND giving the 3 bantams a treatment of Frontline Plus (instead of the permectrin spray) is a good plan of attack? I've tried DE in the dustbath (doesn't work for an infestation.. only for preventative), I've dusted them once with Sevin 10 days ago which kind of worked, and they were treated with Revolution per our vet's instructions about a month ago, but that didn't seem to work (she's not super experienced with chickens, so I'm wondering if the ingredient in Revolution is not appropriate for killing the NFM specifically?). The only things I haven't tried yet are Frontline and Ivermectin, and it seems like I see the most people saying Frontline worked magic for them, so I'm ready to try that. SO.. we will treat the run today and AGAIN in 5 days with the 10% permectrin spray, but I didn't know if we should dose the chickens tonight and then AGAIN in 5 days with Frontline Plus, as it's supposedly a once a month treatment? I just wanted to make sure this one treatment of Frontline tonight will kill the hatching mites for the next month... what do y'all think? Anything else I should be doing on top of all this?

Please let these evil little sons of bitches be gone!

 

[BayBay Peepers]

I had great success with permethrin. It outdid the sevin and definitely the de. I sprayed everything and then a week later sprayed again. Then as maintenance for a while I did every three weeks until I was satisfied they demons died.

In your case I would spray the coop again and treat the birds. I would retreat again in about two weeks with permethrin to make sure hatchlings die.

We also had them in the house. I had a sick rooster and hen that ended up being infested with mites. The only comfort was they couldn't live on us or the dogs and eventually the creepy crawly feeling went away.

 

[guineawoman]

I have those disgusting red mites. They're so tiny you can't see them unless they're on something white and then they just look like a piece of sand. The nymphs are so small you can only see them with a microscope.
I never saw any on my birds or any crusty stuff, nothing around there vents. I felt them crawling on me though. I didn't get any bites just crawling, that's enough to make someone go insane.
I was treating my keets taking and putting them in a plastic dog crate and then putting them back in the coop after I cleaned it. So I went to clean the dog crate and I saw them crawling around in there. Ugh, how gross. I dosed my big birds with frontline and my keets with ivermectin. It's an on going battle. I live in the woods and wild birds are everywhere. My chickens go deep in the woods and I spotted a couple of wild birds flying out of their coop. I suspect that's where these nasty bugs came from. I hope to get this under control because I'm so Burned out. The dogs go and lay where the chickens lay and even though they're on meds for fleas and ticks plus heartworm meds with ivermectin they were still itching. I've given them baths with flea and tick shampoo and that seemed to help.
I'm sure I'll be battling these things for weeks and I don't want to even think about it. While cleaning the coops I smothered my skin in dawn and left it on while cleaning and spraying. I didn't get any on me this time. Those things love me for some reason. I hope no one ever has to go through this.

 

[BayBay Peepers]

I'm sorry you're going through this. Keep your head up, you will succeed over the creepy demon bugs eventually. We fought them for a long time, but just think how relieved you will feel when it's all over.

good luck.

 

[guineawoman]

Ok I forgot to mention in case this helps anyone. I treated the keets several days ago with Adams flea and tick spray, washed them off and put them under the heat lamp. Then I cleaned the coop, sprayed with permethrin, put down poultry dust that contains permethrin and several days later I still found them. So I dosed with ivermectin, and cleaned the coop again. Have to wait and see if this works. I also sprayed all the coops and the rest of the birds with permethrin and they were still itching so I tried the frontline and ivermectin.
The thing is, I have my guineas for natural pest control so I wouldn't have to use chemicals around my property. This makes me furious and defeats the whole purpose.

 

[lilyeti]

Thanks BayBay Peepers, that's really helpful. So we'll spray down the coop again with permethrin, and then keep up maintenance. I'm so irritated with these little buggers I might just do once a week for a while, which hopefully isn't overkill.

Do you suggest treating the birds with a few squirts of the diluted permethrin spray in the vent area, or instead doing Frontline? It seems to me the Frontline will last longer (30 days hopefully) so I won't need to keep reapplying. But these little jerks are resilient!