Please help with mites!

[jayde88]

My banty rooster has been not crowing, perching or eating properly, and has been having trouble balancing and walking.
I believe the reason may be mites.
The poor bird is covered with red fowl mites. He has egg clumps everywhere, weighing down his feathers so they drag and get more gunk stuck to them. Birds with mites are loose feathers, but this rooster is not loosing feathers
We got some Diatomaceous Earth dust and have been dusting him regularly but it did not seem to be improving much, so we put him in an area all by himself where he can have lots of food without having to compete with other chickens and have been dusting him and his area dailly. Again, no real improvement.
I know it is not going to be instant, but, am I doing something wrong? Should I be using Sevin Dust instead of DE? Is their a technique I don't know about?
Any help you have would be more than welcome!

EDIT: The rooster's seperate enclousure is about 10 feet away 6 week old chicks in a seperate enclousure. Would sevin dust get in their enclousure and be hazardous to their health? The rooster is about 50 feet away from the main chicken coop, we sell our eggs, would the sevin dust find away into the coop and make the eggs poisonous?

UPDATE: I got some 5% Sevin Dust and put it on the rooster in a sock, a few hours later on brief inspection a vast majoraty of the mites were already gone. I plan on doing it again in a week to get rid of the mites that hatched from eggs. Thanks everyone for your help! I really appreciate it and so does my rooster!

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'd strongly recommend the Sevin Dust. Put the dust in a garbage bag, put the chicken in the bag with his head out, hold it loosely around his neck, and shake the bag well. I'd suggest wearing a face mask for added safety. It's not the end of the world if you or the chicken breathes some of the Sevin dust, but I'd sure be as careful about it as I could.

Some people put the Sevin in a sock and powder the chickens with that. It works as well.

I'd treat all the chickens. If one has it, the others do to. The Sevin dust should be very close to instantaneous. And retreat in 10 to 14 days as this will not stop the eggs from hatching. You'll have to get the new hatch of mites.

Good luck.

 

[jayde88]

Thank you, I will definitely try that!

Again, thanks so much!

 

[a2ms4chickens]

You will definitely want to use the Sevin dust.

We had a mite problem last year and the Sevin worked really well. I put some in a sock and patted the birds under their wings, vent and belly. The mites were dead the next day. I would dust all of your birds.

You may also want to be sure you don't have roost mites which only come out at night. You need to check your roosts with a flashlight, but looking for blood spots on your roost will be your first clue. We had these last year, too, and it took me 2 weeks of dusting the pens and roosts with sevin and DE and still couldn't kill those things. I finally picked up some Permethryn dust which killed them by the next day.

Just something to look for. Hopefully, you won't have the roost mites.

Good luck!!

 

[Sillystunt]

yeah, i hear the sevin dust is awesome for mites. I know you should change the bedding and wash down the coop. Then spray some in there as well. He might need some poly vits to perk him up. Good luck

 

[jayde88]

Thanks for your help, everyone!

I really appreciate it! I got some Sevin Dust and put it on him doing the sock thing, hopefully it will work!

 

[lil_chick]

Ok, I never heard of 'sevin dust', I use lime dust and spray the dust around the walls, works great also - or is it the same thing???

 

[jayde88]

Oh, thanks! Maybe it is the same thing, I don't know.
I checked on the rooster breifly and I didn't see any live mites (though I did see plenty of dead ones). Wow, that's pretty good for after only a few hours! Hope this keeps up!