mites on my hens face and how to clean around eyes.

[adriscluckers]

my hen has some brownish flea lite things around her eyes and one eye is swollen and oozing a little. i cleaned carefully around with rubbing alcohol and removed what looked like mites. what is safe near her eyes to clean and should i try and put the ooze out of her eyes carefully? should i just let the swelling go down on its own and just clean and remove mites? she is fine other wise. the rest of my flock is fine, i have sprayed with the bug spray for mites and have not seen any bugs. we just cleaned the coop on Sunday and it is only Tuesday. should i clean more often. is there anything else i can? we do spray weekly and clean. we also check the flock 5 times a day. thanks any help would be great.

 

[dawg53]

my hen has some brownish flea lite things around her eyes and one eye is swollen and oozing a little. i cleaned carefully around with rubbing alcohol and removed what looked like mites. what is safe near her eyes to clean and should i try and put the ooze out of her eyes carefully? should i just let the swelling go down on its own and just clean and remove mites? she is fine other wise. the rest of my flock is fine, i have sprayed with the bug spray for mites and have not seen any bugs. we just cleaned the coop on Sunday and it is only Tuesday. should i clean more often. is there anything else i can? we do spray weekly and clean. we also check the flock 5 times a day. thanks any help would be great.

It sounds like you're dealing with stick tight fleas, tough to get rid of. You can put a very thin coat of vaseline on them to smother them, but you'd still have to pluck them off. It's possible your hen had scratched around the eye area and it became infected. I dont recommend using rubbing alcohol. Try fushing the eye with saline solution, then apply terramycin eye ointment or neosporin to the eye til it clears up. Hopefully there isnt any permanent damage to the eye. If it's mites, use sevin dust and redust her again in 7-10 days...same with the coop, nests etc.. You'd want to put the dust on your fingers and gently rub it in the affected areas around the head.
Here's some links to help you identify what you're dealing with:
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ig140
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/mg236