Quill or feather mites??! Picture

[wildorchid053]

the parchment you are seeing is the outside shell of the feather.. if you take your fingernail and scrape or break it , it will fall of in chunks or flakes. my little parrot gets it too..he actually re eats the stuff..

 

[CTChick]

Quill Shafts! Yes -- they are called Quill Shafts!!!
This is the sort of thing that keeps one up at night ...
Laura

 

[dimple d]

Hey I did it!! I finally got into a post, Im excited!! anyway I think I have feather mites. How do I kill them? will the permethyn?spray hurt the chicks if I spray when I cant open doors because of the weather? Also can mites kill my chicks? Egg production way down,is that because of mites? Im new at this never imagined that chicks could get mites. Just seems weird to me? Also how do I introduce younger chicks into the older flock?

 

[jenjscott]

Hi dimple welcome to BYC. Glad you found your way here, even if you did end up in a post from last year. If you want to start your own post you go to the forum that is about your post, like Emergencies, diseases and cures, and on the top right is a box for start new topic. Put your main question in the subject box, write your details in the text box, hit submit, and you have your own thread.

Feather mites depending on how organic you want to go you can use sevin dust, or DE in the dust bath, How old are your chicks? A really extreme infestation could kill young chicks and definitely affect laying. Where are you located? Younger chicks need to be pretty much full sized before attempting to mix. The should be housed next to each other for a while. The best is to either mix them while free ranging with a lot of space if you do that, or many people put the younger ones in the coop at night, so they all wake up together one morning. You will usually have some tiffs, and will probably take a few weeks at least to get them semi integrated into the flock. It also depends on numbers.

 

[myarodafarm]

So you seen to be smart about this...how about my rooster has lost his fluffy tail feathers but not his tail quills. The quills are bare of the feathers. Any ideas?????