What a nightmare.
My birds do not have lesions etc.
Their scales are slightly lifted, with black "dirt" under the lifted up scale edges. That is all.
Picking up every single bird, every single night, for two weeks straight sounds to me like a living nightmare.
That is why last year I did the diesel, or fuel oil, or whatever it was I used.... I researched which toxic petroleum product would hand over the least amount of heavy metals to my birds...And used the winner... But no longer remember which it was.
Point though.... Way less bird handling required.
BUT it didn't last... Did take a full year for the numbers to build up enough that I can tell they are back....... Or I guess just back to a heavier load.
I am crunchy granola enough that I do NOT want to toxify the world every fall.... And I have enough birds that treating every night for two weeks is not going to happen....
So... I am not sure now what I will do. Humph.
My Dom rooster has it the worst I think:
I do see some roughness.
Did you read the part about sending in a sample for testing?You can't see it really well in that photo.. But you can tell that there is black around the scale edges... And the toes are no longer as smooth as they should be.
It could be something else and not mites. This site does testing in California:
cahfs.ucdavis.edu
If they will not test for you, Maybe you can get someone from the college up there to run it under a microscope.
