We have persistant lice that will not die

[janiedoe]

If you're still finding the lice themselves, I'd try bathing the birds. If you don't see any, it's probably just taking a while for them to feel better.

Saturday I am going to clean out the bedding again, clean the cool with bleach and spray them again. I will bathe the birds and look for bugs at that time. I certainly don't want to use any more chemicals on them if I don't have to do so.

 

[janiedoe]

Thank you all!

 

[AlyssaB87]

We are also battling lice here. We got 4 hens from a breeder closing up shop... 24 hours after we got them home, we caught them all to look them over and saw that 3 of 4 had adult lice and AWFUL lice eggs on TONS of feathers. It was really terrible on many levels.

I consulted a poultry vet as well as the local backyard chickens group. Here's what we've been doing: clean the coop house out every single day, spray it down with a permethrin dilution as well as the entire inside of the coop and in the nooks and crannies of all the wood, we've been moving the coop (we didn't intend on moving it as it's quite big but thankfully our lawn tractor can handle it) every 2 days, burning all the shavings and the ground the coop was on. We've also bathed all the affected chickens with high quality flea shampoo, treated with Ivermectin twice now, and set up a dust bath that has poultry dust in it. We are cleaning the dust bath out daily.

Needless to say, this is A LOT of work! Especially when we thought we were getting hens that would be easier than chicks. Yikes. Anyway, we haven't seen any adult lice since that first treatment of Ivermectin. BUT, we have TONS and TONS of lice eggs on the feathers. It was my understanding that Ivermectin and the flea bath would kill those lice and that the chickens would work them off by using the dust bath and preening. But, they are still there! How do we get them off? We soaked them in the flea bath and tried to work them off with a fingernail, clip them off, etc. Some feathers came out when we were working them off but it's SUPER time consuming (45 mins to get just a tiny amount off one bird). Will they fall off eventually? We treated the chickens again today because it was 7 days after we first noticed the lice and we heard that was the life cycle of the lice. Help!

 

[janiedoe]

We are also battling lice here. We got 4 hens from a breeder closing up shop... 24 hours after we got them home, we caught them all to look them over and saw that 3 of 4 had adult lice and AWFUL lice eggs on TONS of feathers. It was really terrible on many levels.

I consulted a poultry vet as well as the local backyard chickens group. Here's what we've been doing: clean the coop house out every single day, spray it down with a permethrin dilution as well as the entire inside of the coop and in the nooks and crannies of all the wood, we've been moving the coop (we didn't intend on moving it as it's quite big but thankfully our lawn tractor can handle it) every 2 days, burning all the shavings and the ground the coop was on. We've also bathed all the affected chickens with high quality flea shampoo, treated with Ivermectin twice now, and set up a dust bath that has poultry dust in it. We are cleaning the dust bath out daily.

Needless to say, this is A LOT of work! Especially when we thought we were getting hens that would be easier than chicks. Yikes. Anyway, we haven't seen any adult lice since that first treatment of Ivermectin. BUT, we have TONS and TONS of lice eggs on the feathers. It was my understanding that Ivermectin and the flea bath would kill those lice and that the chickens would work them off by using the dust bath and preening. But, they are still there! How do we get them off? We soaked them in the flea bath and tried to work them off with a fingernail, clip them off, etc. Some feathers came out when we were working them off but it's SUPER time consuming (45 mins to get just a tiny amount off one bird). Will they fall off eventually? We treated the chickens again today because it was 7 days after we first noticed the lice and we heard that was the life cycle of the lice. Help!

I used Ivermax pour on after a lot of research. Knock on wood, we seem to have it under control now. I wish you luck, I know how frustrated you must be.