I decided to try persistently using a blow torch every morning on the perch ends and under the roofing ridge were i saw the most evidence of red mites. Fry! you evil swine's, fry! harr har. dedication to a task always pays off, i told myself... Dam persistent things either had fireproof jackets or as I found out today, after the third bottle of blowtorch gas ran dry, I was only killing a small insignificant portion out of their vastly superior civilisation!.
I went to the store and bought the full arsenal of chemical, spray, powders etc and stripped down the shed bit by EVERY dam bit.
WOW! these thing are amazing, EVERY and I mean EVERY single piece of wood that had a join or crack was home to hundreds of the little buggers. even the plastic 'shoes' the hut came with, when i prised them off, found they were also hollow, and to my horror, was rammed full of red mites. I'd never normally thought of looking inside plastic feet.
No wonder my feeble attempt at genocide didn't pay off.
I've spent 5 hours stripping every single piece of wood apart today, millions of screws and gallons of poutryshield scrubbing and jet-washering later, I've got a big pile of wooden bits in the corner of my garden, nice and clean. or so i thought..
I've just locked the freshly D.E 'ed powdered girls into the spare coop on the far side of the garden, and went to examine my handiwork on the old coop and yes you guessed it... loads of little mites 'LOVIN' the nice new clean house i made for them, running around on top of the sorry bits of soggy wood that once had been a respectable coop. 'Come on! bring us the chicken' I can hear them shouting now.
Guess they're just waiting for the dinner ladies to come back.
So wish now I'd taken advice from another article I read on mite control:-
Move the girls to a nice new home as far away from the original as possible and just burn down the old coop, were it stands, with a gallon of petrol, sounds extreme i know, exactly what i thought and what a waste of wood. then i started adding it all up.
I've just looked on eBay and I can get almost the exact same coop for £150 delivered, brand new, clean and MITE free! Whereas I've just spent £70 on chemical napalming with 5 hours heavy intense labour, so far, and probably another 10 hours to go, repainting another £70, and putting back together my old coop. and it still looks like I'm going to have to wait 6 months for the evil things to give up hope and look elsewhere, before i can move the girls back in.
So that's it! I'm sold
Guess what I'm going to be doing Guy Fawkes Bonfire night every single year now?
Unless i can find a 100% metal coop that you can just light a fire under once in a while, hey what a great idea.. Dragons Den anyone?
I went to the store and bought the full arsenal of chemical, spray, powders etc and stripped down the shed bit by EVERY dam bit.
WOW! these thing are amazing, EVERY and I mean EVERY single piece of wood that had a join or crack was home to hundreds of the little buggers. even the plastic 'shoes' the hut came with, when i prised them off, found they were also hollow, and to my horror, was rammed full of red mites. I'd never normally thought of looking inside plastic feet.
No wonder my feeble attempt at genocide didn't pay off.
I've spent 5 hours stripping every single piece of wood apart today, millions of screws and gallons of poutryshield scrubbing and jet-washering later, I've got a big pile of wooden bits in the corner of my garden, nice and clean. or so i thought..
I've just locked the freshly D.E 'ed powdered girls into the spare coop on the far side of the garden, and went to examine my handiwork on the old coop and yes you guessed it... loads of little mites 'LOVIN' the nice new clean house i made for them, running around on top of the sorry bits of soggy wood that once had been a respectable coop. 'Come on! bring us the chicken' I can hear them shouting now.
Guess they're just waiting for the dinner ladies to come back.
So wish now I'd taken advice from another article I read on mite control:-
Move the girls to a nice new home as far away from the original as possible and just burn down the old coop, were it stands, with a gallon of petrol, sounds extreme i know, exactly what i thought and what a waste of wood. then i started adding it all up.
I've just looked on eBay and I can get almost the exact same coop for £150 delivered, brand new, clean and MITE free! Whereas I've just spent £70 on chemical napalming with 5 hours heavy intense labour, so far, and probably another 10 hours to go, repainting another £70, and putting back together my old coop. and it still looks like I'm going to have to wait 6 months for the evil things to give up hope and look elsewhere, before i can move the girls back in.
So that's it! I'm sold
Guess what I'm going to be doing Guy Fawkes Bonfire night every single year now?
Unless i can find a 100% metal coop that you can just light a fire under once in a while, hey what a great idea.. Dragons Den anyone?
