Scaly Leg Mites - Need Best / Easiest / Quickest Solution - Scaley

[rancher hicks]

Haven't read all the posts , just to many, but remember an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

I dust with DE all the roosts, inside the nest boxes everytime I change the hay and dust everywhere in the coop every time I clean. I dust the floors real well. I even make sure I toss a good amount into the wood chips. I can't say for sure but using Exprinex may help too. I haven't seen and mites so far. I try to keep things as dry as possible. You might want to give the roosts a good brushing with mineral oil, soak it into the wood, then a dusting with DE.

I wish everyone a cootie free coop,

Rancher

 

[horseyjess]

Quote:
I am having the same problem with ONE Roo. Problem is he is a Brahma how do you do that with all the leg feathers?

 

[KandiandJerry]

vasoline works great it smothers them out and is cheap

 

[froggiesheins]

I am going to throw in my 2 cents worth. I am the QUEEN [well by my house] of getting rid of these buggers. THE best way [althought for some of you peeps it is impractical] is to catch the afflicted one, wrap in a towel on your lap and scrap away all the cootie junk under every scale, this can take anywhere from 1/2 hour to two hours. If you put the towel over the birdies head they calm down alot. After scraping, take a stiff toothbrush and scrub under the scales. Then put vaseline on and place birdie in a clean clean clean cage/coop. Repeat ALL OF THIS in two days. Ususally it only takes one repeat to get the scales cleaned out and healing.

These pictures below are of scaley leg mites that have started to invade the bone....HORRORS!
This little OEGB was brought to me to "fix". Little "Lucky" [I named him] had lost one toe completely and a second one was starting to die. He had on his feet an accumulation of mite cooties / filth & Blu-cote. I cried when I saw him, never have I seen such a bad case. I had to use pliers to break the "seal" of all this crap around his feet. Scraped till I was down to live skin [this took over 2 hours], slathered neosporin on and wrapped loosely in cotton guaze and paper tape. 3 days later took off the wraps and cleaned again, repeated wrapping. Once there was a healthy looking scab on the raw skin, I started leaving the bandage off. It took 2 weeks for the left foot to heal and all toes had BEAUTIFUL pink skin showing and ALL toes left reacted to pain WOOT!!!!! AS A FOOTNOTE: I also very carefully clipped his toe nails, evertime I debrided, till they showed blood, this was to encourage the bllod flow to the end of the toe.
Lucky has gone on to live with the little boy that found him and you would never know that this little roo has had a life threatening foot problem

BEFORE: [ but AFTER two hours of scraping & debriding,].

AFTER two weeks of healing:

This is Lucky, he was a model patient.

 

[poonam]

Thanks for that response, froggiesheins. What did you use the do the scraping?

 

[froggiesheins]

Thanks for that response, froggiesheins. What did you use the do the scraping?

VERY STEADY hands, good clse-up eyesight and a cheep paring knife. You want the knife, or similair sharp edge, to be thin, small and a little flexible. You will be choking up on the knife and holding it ON the blade for greater control. Think like you are scraping goobers from under your own finger& toe nail beds.
It is so much easier to work on LF too! I was working on all small banty sized birds..

Hope that helps........

 

[tiki244]

froggiesheins Augh I can barely look at those pictures! I have a rooster that is feather legged that I got 2 weeks ago and he has a bad case also. I overlooked his feet (obviously) when I bought him. But now he is mine. He doesn't have bent toes but lots of crust. I soaked him in water for a half hour and by hand pulled quite a bit off, then I put oil on them. My question is> What is my question? > How would you know if it went to the bone? Is there a way to remove them without the bleeding?

 

[froggiesheins]

tiki, Can you take a picture of his feet? I would be able to tell you TONS if I saw the feet.

Are all his scales still attached?
This is the chain of events that occurs with the mite: First they will raise the scales off the leg till the scale dies and falls off. the mites then work deeper into the scale bed and start chewing there way around a joint [skin easier to penetrate]. They just keep eating away around the joint and leaving their trail of cooties to keep building up. Once they have broken the skin and bleeding/fuilds start to ooze, that combined with the "cooties" to start forming a ring of junk around the joint. as they keep eating the ring gets more fluids and keeps building till you have a constricting ring that just gets tighter and tighter till it gets to the point it starts cutting off circulation and necrosis occurs. On Lucky, if you look at the right foot right outside toe, you can see where the buggers actually cut off the circulation and death of the end of the toe occured. It will eventually fall off on its own. Now on the left foot middle toe, this one got to the point where it was gettin constricted [U can see the swelling of the toe]. I was able to save that toe by getting that ring of crap off of it and clipping the nail until it bled a little bit to encourage circulation. Left foot far right toe, was in worse shape where the skin was open and the fluids/blood were actively flowing. I was very diligent about cleaning and keeping a scab from forming untill there was good circualtion thru the toe nail. I also gently bent/massaged all the toes. cleaned / wrapped in loose gauze / neosporin / PAPER tape. CLEAN CLEAN bedding. Left on 3 days, remove, repeat.

Once I see Mr. roos feet I can walk you thru. You also need to GENTLY clean around the feather shafts as well. If his infestaion is not too bad you will not see blood [well unless one of the feathers is a blood feather]. Just let me know, I am MORE THAN HAPPy to help.

 

[Beekissed]

Nu-Stock....one, good, worked in application. One time. You can see immediate relief in the birds by the next day and when the old scales slough off, there are new, shiny scales in their place. It's not expensive and it's all natural ingredients. This worked for me when repeated vaseline, bag balm, olive oil and tea tree oils had no effect whatsoever.

 

[froggiesheins]

Nu-Stock....one, good, worked in application.  One time.  You can see immediate relief in the birds by the next day and when the old scales slough off, there are new, shiny scales in their place.  It's not expensive and it's all natural ingredients.  This worked for me when repeated vaseline, bag balm, olive oil and tea tree oils had no effect whatsoever. 

 

OOOH, gotta look into this product then! Thanks for your info