Red mites in the daytime? Please help. What kind are these?

[Dutchgirl]

What kind of mites do we have? There is a hen on eggs on our back porch. when my sister gave her water at noon today, her hands were covered in an army of crawling tiny, red mites. We think there may be a wild bird nest or two about 15 feet away, too. If they are red bird mites, why are they active in the day?

 

[Dutchgirl]

The mites are crawling all over the eggs. They do not look red when crawling on other things.

 

[Dutchgirl]

Oh, the coop does not have this! This bird is on the porch. Now, we see that wild birds are eating her food.

 

[my sunwolf]

Sounds like Northern Fowl Mites. They crawl fast and have no trouble crawling onto you. Most important thing is to dust the birds as it can't survive long off of them. However, you may want to dust the coop as well just as a precaution. Good luck!

 

[Dutchgirl]

Thank you! Reading about it, I'm confused because it says:

Fowl mites live on the birds. (These are crawling around on the water container, among other places-in the day. When I put a new, clean water container a foot from the nest, it was crawling with mites in five minutes.

Are fowl mites ever red?

If they are Red mites that are active at night, why are these active during the day?

Since they are up against our house, I'm very concerned about an infestation, when I remove them. I also need to remove some wild bird nests, but that is when the problems start for human hosts of mites. The mites move inside.

 

[my sunwolf]

When I read up on them, one of the signs that you have an infestation of fowl mites is that you can see them, even during the day, crawling on the eggs in the nest boxes (literally, that was the example of how you'd know you had Northern Fowl Mites). They will also be on the birds during the day as well. They basically live everywhere and are active all times of day, but take away their food source and they don't last long.

Not sure why they'd be red. I understand that red mites only turn red after drinking blood, but not sure about the fowl mites.

You should also see dark scabs around the vent as evidence that the mites are feeding there, if that helps.

Hopefully they are fowl mites and you won't have any infestation problems in your home... I do hear that red mites can be a real pain for humans!

 

[Dutchgirl]

Thank you!

 

[Dutchgirl]

I treated the bird and eggs with Sevein5, moved them to a new nest--though she may not be sitting on them, now. Burned the entire bag of pine chips that she chose as her nest, and that was crawling with the critters all day. They were esp. thick on the edge of the bag. I put Sevin on the floor of porch near where the bag had been. I don't think that could have gotten all of them, cause they were everywhere. crawling. everywhere. I'm sure some dropped into the grass of the yard, while I did all of this.

I hope that showering and washing my clothes was enough to get rid of them. Just thinking about these things makes one itch. Tomorrow I'm going to tackle the wild bird nests, also on the porch.

I'm going to put DE in the coop to ward off any that might come by. They don't have any, so, I don't need to treat with Sevin--right?

Should I spray with Adams or something around the deck where the bird nests are/were?

How fast does Sevin work? I didn't see any dead ones after sprinkling it on them.


Thanks everyone! I would appreciate it if anyone can tell me more.