Northern fowl mites

I love straw, but not that stuff you get for landscaping and such, Chopped Straw. My three cents in experience is things love to live in hay and straw thats cut locally.
 

I noticed a few mites on my hands after grabbing eggs from the coop. After more investigation, in the day time when we touched the wooden perch they roost on got tons of mites on our hands so that seems more like red mites? Definitely got more on us touching roost than touching hens. I did not take a pic with our digital microscope but we still have the ziploc we put the mite in so might be able to get one. Under scope it looked more like NFM. But from what you all have posted sounds likes red mites. I checked several hens vent areas and didn’t see anything obvious on them. However I have noticed their feathers looking a bit dingy lately. So... I’m confused! Not sure which ones they are. 😬
 
Here is a pic I took with our microscope. Not sure it’s helpful since the mite is dead now and they two types look similar. Going to do more investigating today/tonight to try to determine the main location of the mites.
B30B4A7D-2209-4469-9B5B-9D70E7E31B47.jpeg
 
I’m going to treat my chickens and coop both to be safe, but I’m curious about what these are anyway. Yesterday in the middle of the day my daughter touched their perch inside the coop and tons of mites were crawling on her hand. Does that lead to NFM because they were active in the day, or red mites bc they weren’t on the bird? I looked in the daytime today and only saw one mite on the nesting boxes but I cleaned and put DE in the coop yesterday. My hen who was sitting on the eggs let me check her and there were mites in her tail and vent area that were moving around. It’s fairly dark in the coop even in the day time so I’m not really sure what this points to 🤣. I don’t know why I care at this point but I’d like to at least have a decent guess as to which type I’m dealing with. Any thoughts? I love my hens and hate to see them be bitten up. Would like to do my best at getting rid of these pests.
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom