Please comment: Mites in food

[Nugget]

I pulled a mostly empty bag of feed out of the metal container it's kept in to check the label. I put it back and felt itchy. Washed my hands and saw in the mirror I had mites in my hair! I scrubbed them off then returned to the coop to find where they came from. I re-opened the can and it is COATED!!!!! on the inside of the can and all over the bags of feed with mites! I caught my black australorp and rooted through her feathers, belly, head and back and saw none.

Could I have come home with some kind of grain mites? I am going to throw the bags away and scrub out the can and change out the whole bloody coop (AGAIN!).

Any words of wisdom/caution/or care? I am grossed out over the literal COATING of mites in the can!

 

[mtnhomechick]

Well, if you don't usually have mites......which btw I have never seen and couldn't even identify........I would take that bag back to the store for a full refund then write or call the company and demand more for the time and effort it took to clean everything up. Disgusting un

 

[Nugget]

I am as confident as I can be that these are mites... it looks like dust, but if you look closely the 'dust' is moving. When I parted my australorp's feathers I was looking for the moving dust and saw nothing at all. (I have a closed flock, raised from day-olds so do not have any external parasites... unless these food mites end up on them!)

 

[WoodlandWoman]

There are different kinds of mites. Some eat plant material, instead of feeding on birds. It sounds like you have that kind. Some people have mentioned adding a little DE sprinkled over feed, to deter insects. You could try that, after you do a clean-up of the storage can. Some aromatic herbs or essential oils may help in the can, too.

 

[silkiechicken]

That sucks... I'd DE the can and probably just use it if it looked ok... but that's personal choice.

Do know that even with a closed flock, wild birds can drop off feather mites... that's how I got them once.

 

[Nugget]

Well, my friend was visiting when I posted about the grain mites. She was here to pick up her first little day old chicks and got to see my feed bin covered in tiny moving dust particles. She took her little chicks home to her brand new coop. She had everything bought and set up 2 weeks earlier. Remembering what she had seen in my feed bin she looked closely at her own and she has them too.

From what I've read and heard, they don't get on the birds, and they aren't entirely destructive to the feed. I still don't want them. I triple bagged the leftover feed and took to the curb, cleaned the coop, bleached everything my chickens come in contact with and bought new feed. My husband told them at the feed store, their reply was 'yeah, it happens sometimes. It's not been a problem here'.

They're really hard to see. I wonder if they're more common than we all think. Sadly my feed was infested!!! And if my friend hadn't seen what to look for would not have found it in her own feed. She did not bring it home from my place (we were extremely careful).

It sounds as though this isn't something many people have experienced... I wonder if people wouldn't mind taking a closer look at their feed bins and post if you see pale-beige moving dust particles. In my bin they were all over the inside of the bin and covering the bag. Mostly visible on darker and metal surfaces. I would imagine this would be a darn hard thing to eradicate from a feed mill! I wonder if they're everywhere? Do any feed mills sterilize their feed (UV light? I'm not sure what would work) before sending it to the stores? Gross.

 

[Nugget]

oh, Silkiechicken, I realize about the wild birds bringing mites to even a closed flock. I have stopped putting out bird feeders to try and minimize chances and I've been rooting through by birds' feathers. I've not seen any yet but I know it's always a possibility

 

[fishnet1971]

This morning when i was scooping feed into the girls feed bowl i lifted my hand out and found it COVERED in white crawly mites. These sound like they may be bigger than yours though. Bout the size of a pin head. I am scared to death that these may be on my birds now. Its a new bag of about a week or so, Purina chick feed stuff with the antibiodics. Seems like they have sneezed a few times lately to. What are these???? I am going to take a picture of them today when i dispose of the feed.

 

[smurfette]

OH GOD could this be my problem too. Could it be from my feed?