Someone please help me!!

[Kiki]

The chickens are out of the house .they have been out for a few weeks now .my cat sneaks into the chicken area to watch them and since she started doing that is when we started seeing the pests .I thought they were fleas at first from the cat but up on further investigation ( online) I now believe they are mites. My chickens are free to roam the yard and they have a coop where they sleep .we have a lot of doves that come to visit (eat the chicken food) so I think that is where they came from .it is concerning that they have survived the amount of cleaning we have done.

Just cleaning won't kill them.

 

[All Ball]

If this is any help: Friends without chickens were getting bitten at night - in unpleasant places. The exterminator told them to put out sticky paper bug traps near their beds to catch what was biting them. They eventually tracked it down to a rat living in the laundry room - they were rat mites. It was a horrible experience for them. Once they got rid of the rat, the problem ended.

Likewise, as folks have mentioned here, wild birds nesting on the house can infest the house with bird mites. I don't think these are the same mites as our chickens get.

I am having a horrible problem at the place I rent now with what I think are straw itch mites - my neighbors also complain of them - they are microscopic and the bites are very itchy, typically during hot weather, if we let the weeds or grass grow on hillsides (as I was to provide forage and cover). This year, after the grass was removed, the ones in my yard seem to have moved to the chicken yard litter. Since I can't see them, I can only tell by when I get bites and where I've been. I have started wearing plastic rain pants out to the chicken coop, as the mites are so small they can get through any woven clothing. When I was working in the tall grass with mites, clothes would go immediately into the wash and I would go immediately into a hot shower, lots of scrubbing with peppermint soap, oil after the shower as the mites can't move very well through it. These guys are basically like invisible chiggers. Most sources seem to say it's not possible to spray them away, you have to remove the material they are in. They are parasites of insects, they can't live off humans but bite to try.

My experience with chicken mites was that if I sat in the litter in the coop for several hours doing construction work, I would get one bite, and it was small and not very noticeable. And you can see the darn things so you know if they are on you. My chickens manage the mites through dust bathing. I add some wood ash to their baths and nests to help with mite control and they seem to do pretty well.