maryn7
Songster
I've recently gotten chickens for the first time - they're just over 5 weeks. A couple of things have happened at once, and I'm not sure if it's chicken-related.
I've been throwing pine shavings and poop from the brooder into my composter, which usually doesn't have a lot going on (I throw some food scraps and fall garden clean up in there, but I've never had enough browns to really make it work - which is why I'm excited about the pine shavings). Yesterday, I gave the composter a good turning and we've also had a tremendous amount of rain over the past week, so the compost is pretty damp.
This morning, I went to put something in the composter, and there were thousands of tiny arachnid-like bugs all over the composter, and the hose that sits next to it. They're a reddish orange, but definitely have legs towards the back (and 8 of them), which from my forays into googling 'chicken mites' doesn't seem like the leg structure they have. Unfortunately they're too small to capture useful photos to show to you.
Many of them have now been broiled in the sun on the composter (yay!), but at the other end of the yard, I can now see that much smaller number of them have headed towards the garage and the chicken run. And some of them are now on the wooden structure of the run.
Doing some research on the forums about chicken mites, I ran a piece of paper under their roost to check for mite residue, but there was nothing at all there.
I *think* I might have just popped a spider egg sac in the composter, but I've never seen anything like this before. (I thought they all put out little floating webs and went away like Charlotte's babies.) They could also be clover mites based on the coloring and shape, though I've never been aware of any issues with them in my yard previously.
I'm only concerned about this if it impacts the chickens at all. They're so young, I find it hard to believe that their poop in the composter could have triggered such a LARGE number of mite offspring, even if they somehow had mites, which I see no evidence of. Is that even a thing? I.e. if they did have mites, would I find a big burst of them just running around the yard?
I feel like there is probably a googlable solution to the "is this spiders" question, but - and I *cannot* stress this enough, I am VERY arachnophobic and can't do the image searches I'd need to do around "spider babies" to check it out. I should also say, please, if you think it's a spider thing and you know what species of spider it is - pics of the baby spiders are fine (kinda), but please no photos of the momma spider...... I will actually vomit. It's embarrassing, but is also a true fact.
I guess the real question i have is: is this the behavior of insects that impact chickens? Are springtime mite and/or spider composter infestations a thing? If none of this sounds like something that will harm the chicks, I'm very happy to just chalk it up to another thing in my yard I never would have noticed if not for being home for the last eight weeks. [There is also a sparrow and blue parakeet team that hangs out in the back bush and a family of squirrels living our gutters; one of the babies fell down a downspout and we had to rescue it. An absolute world of previously-unseen goings on happening in this yard.]
Thanks for your help, and have a great weekend!
I've been throwing pine shavings and poop from the brooder into my composter, which usually doesn't have a lot going on (I throw some food scraps and fall garden clean up in there, but I've never had enough browns to really make it work - which is why I'm excited about the pine shavings). Yesterday, I gave the composter a good turning and we've also had a tremendous amount of rain over the past week, so the compost is pretty damp.
This morning, I went to put something in the composter, and there were thousands of tiny arachnid-like bugs all over the composter, and the hose that sits next to it. They're a reddish orange, but definitely have legs towards the back (and 8 of them), which from my forays into googling 'chicken mites' doesn't seem like the leg structure they have. Unfortunately they're too small to capture useful photos to show to you.
Many of them have now been broiled in the sun on the composter (yay!), but at the other end of the yard, I can now see that much smaller number of them have headed towards the garage and the chicken run. And some of them are now on the wooden structure of the run.
Doing some research on the forums about chicken mites, I ran a piece of paper under their roost to check for mite residue, but there was nothing at all there.
I *think* I might have just popped a spider egg sac in the composter, but I've never seen anything like this before. (I thought they all put out little floating webs and went away like Charlotte's babies.) They could also be clover mites based on the coloring and shape, though I've never been aware of any issues with them in my yard previously.
I'm only concerned about this if it impacts the chickens at all. They're so young, I find it hard to believe that their poop in the composter could have triggered such a LARGE number of mite offspring, even if they somehow had mites, which I see no evidence of. Is that even a thing? I.e. if they did have mites, would I find a big burst of them just running around the yard?
I feel like there is probably a googlable solution to the "is this spiders" question, but - and I *cannot* stress this enough, I am VERY arachnophobic and can't do the image searches I'd need to do around "spider babies" to check it out. I should also say, please, if you think it's a spider thing and you know what species of spider it is - pics of the baby spiders are fine (kinda), but please no photos of the momma spider...... I will actually vomit. It's embarrassing, but is also a true fact.
I guess the real question i have is: is this the behavior of insects that impact chickens? Are springtime mite and/or spider composter infestations a thing? If none of this sounds like something that will harm the chicks, I'm very happy to just chalk it up to another thing in my yard I never would have noticed if not for being home for the last eight weeks. [There is also a sparrow and blue parakeet team that hangs out in the back bush and a family of squirrels living our gutters; one of the babies fell down a downspout and we had to rescue it. An absolute world of previously-unseen goings on happening in this yard.]
Thanks for your help, and have a great weekend!
. Thanks for your thoughts. Regrettably, I think spiders are my best bet.
