Hey all,
I have three hens - 1 polish, 1 red sex link, 1 Black sex link. We’ve been battling a bad case of mites since January on and off. Because it’s still cold here (Illinois) I’ve been using Prozap garden and poultry dust with permethrin. I was able to use a mite spray last week when it reached a whopping 48 here. I have a dust bath out for them with DE, prozap, and cedar wood shavings. I use the cedar wood shavings as their bedding and that alone *should* help deter mites and lice but alas, no such luck for my hens. I’ve cleaned out the coop in it’s entirety and sprayed and powdered the coop multiple times. It does seem like the mites are dying down so I’m hoping I can give them their final push out in the next couple of weeks.
Last week I noticed my polish had some small black crusted spots on her waddle. I didn’t think too much of it because it had frosted and become cold again and I figured it was probably frostbite, although looking back it was clearly not, since it was not on the ends of her waddle and was spots/bumps. Her spots are already healing with yellow-tan scabs in a matter of days, but now my black sex link has quite a few black spots on her comb. I then became concerned and figured the two were linked. I couldn’t find any good pictures of mite bites on chickens and it seemed pretty odd to me that just suddenly they would start appearing on 2/3 birds when we’ve been dealing with this issue for months. Then a couple of days ago I notice all of their combs and wattles are losing color. Today their combs and wattles even looked dry. I’ve read this can be an indicator of a serious health issue but how do I know what?? Again, I find it odd that all at the same time they’re losing color. It doesn’t appear that they’re molting at this time either. Could this be fowl pox? What could be the other causes besides that or mites? It seems odd it would be the mites when suddenly they’re all experiencing the same symptoms at the same time. My hens are being fed all flock crumble at 18% with oyster shells. I recently have been integrating more scrambled eggs with crushed egg shells. I also added probiotics and electrolytes to their water yesterday. It’s been getting to about 35-40F during the day and 16-20F at night. Any help is greatly appreciated! Also, I will try to add pictures tomorrow. Too dark to get good pics at this point.
I have three hens - 1 polish, 1 red sex link, 1 Black sex link. We’ve been battling a bad case of mites since January on and off. Because it’s still cold here (Illinois) I’ve been using Prozap garden and poultry dust with permethrin. I was able to use a mite spray last week when it reached a whopping 48 here. I have a dust bath out for them with DE, prozap, and cedar wood shavings. I use the cedar wood shavings as their bedding and that alone *should* help deter mites and lice but alas, no such luck for my hens. I’ve cleaned out the coop in it’s entirety and sprayed and powdered the coop multiple times. It does seem like the mites are dying down so I’m hoping I can give them their final push out in the next couple of weeks.
Last week I noticed my polish had some small black crusted spots on her waddle. I didn’t think too much of it because it had frosted and become cold again and I figured it was probably frostbite, although looking back it was clearly not, since it was not on the ends of her waddle and was spots/bumps. Her spots are already healing with yellow-tan scabs in a matter of days, but now my black sex link has quite a few black spots on her comb. I then became concerned and figured the two were linked. I couldn’t find any good pictures of mite bites on chickens and it seemed pretty odd to me that just suddenly they would start appearing on 2/3 birds when we’ve been dealing with this issue for months. Then a couple of days ago I notice all of their combs and wattles are losing color. Today their combs and wattles even looked dry. I’ve read this can be an indicator of a serious health issue but how do I know what?? Again, I find it odd that all at the same time they’re losing color. It doesn’t appear that they’re molting at this time either. Could this be fowl pox? What could be the other causes besides that or mites? It seems odd it would be the mites when suddenly they’re all experiencing the same symptoms at the same time. My hens are being fed all flock crumble at 18% with oyster shells. I recently have been integrating more scrambled eggs with crushed egg shells. I also added probiotics and electrolytes to their water yesterday. It’s been getting to about 35-40F during the day and 16-20F at night. Any help is greatly appreciated! Also, I will try to add pictures tomorrow. Too dark to get good pics at this point.
