red mite

[rick]

Yeah! You may have missed this bit before but you can use the smite powder as a sort of 'emulsion' by mixing it with water and painting it into the corners, cracks etc. That way it sticks there and doesn't move/blow around in the wind or when the hens are flapping around in the coop. Not having it as an airborne dust (at least not too much) is important as chickens are very susceptible to breathing problems/infections from fine airborne dust and that, believe it or not, can be a lot worse than having red mite!
Behind thin sheet on the walls of the shed is just the place where mite will hide. I would be very tempted to take it all off unless it left big holes in the sides.
Where are you? In the UK? As the temperature drops the mite will slow down and eventually stop their activity for the winter months. It's when the weather warms back up again in the spring that we will all need to be on the look out for them getting out of control again. Its good to leave just one hiding place near the perch in the coop - a piece of wood with a gap underneath or a rubber car mat - where you haven't put diatom powder and is easy to lift and check under. Then you will know straight away if they are still around or have returned.

 

[dye29]

great im in north yorkshire so it is getting colder , ill try the paste mix then see how i get on thanks rick

 

[rick]

No problem! The only reason we know anything about it is by having the little red devils and doing battle with them! Except for Marigold, of course. They wouldn't dare!
How many hens have you got on your allotment?

 

[Margaid]

No one uses garden lime (hydrated lime) near animals Margaid. It's a powerful alkaline that would cause sever burns if they walked in it.

It sounds as if Dye does, Rick. Maybe not a good idea, Dye, as they have to walk through it to get to the perches?

I wasn't talking about Lime Rick (although you don't want to breathe that in!) I was referring back to the posts about Diatom. It's silica right? so you don't want to get it in your lungs unless you want to end up with silicosis.

 

[dye29]

i have 15 hens

 

[Marigold]

I think you've been doing all you can, Dye, and I'm sure your efforts will be very helpful to the chickens. Removing the boarding on the walls will have helped enormously. The colder weather moving in will mean they're less active as well. Painting the surface of the walls won't do much because, as you know, the mites don't line up on flat open spaces, they choose cracks and crannies to hide in.

Does the shed have a felted roof? If so, the mites will be under the felt, where you can't get to them, and there's nothing you can do about that except to strip off the felt and old boards underneath and replace with green plastic corrugated sheets. These are better for a roof anyway as the corrugated edges let extra ventilation in at the top level, and being all one surface there's nowhere for the mites to hide.

 

[dye29]

hey guys got some news yesterday i went to a agricultural shop where farmers get there items and got talking to a farmer which turned out to be a poultry mainly farmer , i asked him what he recommends for red mites as i believe farmers haven't got time to mess around with weak products and he said he never uses anything else but this Digrain Perbio Choc RTU Insecticide so i purchased a bottle you basically spray all over shed or hut NOT animals keep them away few hours , it smells very strong i used a mask while doing this . hopefully this will kill everything it claims to last upto 3 months and is oil based so will soak into wood and give off repellent . i will keep everyone informed and what are people views on this product if used or not

 

[3441sussex]

This is very strong stuff. Having read its Safety Data Sheet I would not advise using this product in a small chicken house. It is for use by trained professionals only.

Before you use it I suggest you find out if it will it react with the other red mite products that you have been using and how long you have got to keep your hens out of the house? Is there a egg withdrawal period and will eggs be tainted?

 

[Marigold]

It will certainly have killed any red mite which it could touch - but, as everyone keeps saying, the problem is that they will have crept away into nooks and crannies, where a spray can't reach, and laid eggs in there, which will hatch sooner or later and start the cycle over again. If the product stays around as an oily skin on the woodwork, I suppose it could then kill any which crawl out on to it - but if it did this, I would be worried that the hens would also come into contact with it and absorb it into their blood streams as well.
How long did you shut the hens out of the coop? A commercial farmer may well use this stuff to clean up a large shed where all the hens have been sent to slaughter, before re-stocking with young birds, but I would imagine they leave it for longer than a few hours. In a small enclosed coop, the spray would linger as particles in the air for a long time, and the hens would breathe it in, with consequences for their health, and possibly it could be transmitted into their eggs. As you've already used the stuff, you'll just have to wait and see - but if they were mine, I wouldn't eat their eggs for quite a while - certainly during the three months it's supposed to be actively giving off fumes.
Did you buy a specialist mask which would exclude the particular sort of particles this stuff contains? The risk to your own health from strong chemical sprays is pretty high, and not worth it, in my opinion. Do make sure to wash your hair and all your clothing - professional operators would wear proper protective clothing and masks.

 

[dye29]

ive emailed company already as instructions on bottle are not very good , they say eggs are perfectly fine to eat and it will not harm birds at all just let the hut vent out few hours first , they also say its the oil based that stays around giving off a scent that stops mites coming out

 

[rick]

You are kind of committed now to using it all for it's intended use, or storing it forever, or disposing of it legally and safely. The trouble with substances like this insecticide (apart from being an industrial forge hammer to crack a nut that you had probably cracked already) is that if you need to dispose of them it means making an appointment with the local authority at a disposal site, filling in the paperwork and paying the fee. I fear that too often it ends up in landfill or worse. Whatever you do don't tip it down the drain - it would have the same effect as throwing several dozen hand grenades into your local river so far as the fish would be concerned!
If you use it carefully as advised it should be OK. You wont have any mites, or flies, or any insects for that matter!
... but then, as pointed out above, the poultry farmer that said that they only use the professional 'hard core' stuff would only expose one flock of birds to it once. That would be to blitz the barn before the new layers or growers came in and then they wouldn't do it again until that flock went wholesale to slaughter. The suppliers were not anticipating someone using it repeatedly on the same flock because, basically, that would be unheard of nonsense.
Some 'backyard' keepers do replace their flock in a similar way to the industry, either with the hard cut off or when the numbers/laying is dwindling and there's nothing wrong in that, depending on your interest. If so keep the insecticide to treat the coop a few weeks before the new flock come in.
Just to put things in perspective - a 'chicken farmer typically has a barn of a thousand or tens of thousands of hens in a flock. An outbreak of red mite early in the cycle would be pretty devastating to their investment and they can't micro-manage the situation like we can.
It would be interesting to hear Poultryman's views on the subject as he does keep over a thousand birds in South Africa where red mite are surely even more of a problem than in the UK.
... I love my birds so much! (looking for a suitably dewy eyed emoticon!) and have made mistakes along the way that I regret (though not beating myself up about it too much.) One mistake has not been aware enough of the red mite population but I know their tricks and habits now and I, for one, will be very surprised if they get the better f me again. In keeping pet chickens I will be inadvertently be keeping some 'pet' red mite and nematodes! Just not very many if I have anything to do with it!
Another mistake has been underestimating the sensitivity of a bird's respiratory system (sorry Teabag and Betty.) That one I defiantly won't be repeating. There are not many fatal ailments in a bird that don't start, in one way or another, with the air sacks including respiratory, heart and reproductive problems (the intestine or just plain old age are about the only exceptions.)

 

[dye29]

so far so good no signs of red mites ive 2 rubber mats hung against shed nothing there also my red mite tester from durham hens havnt anything so thumbs up for now , out of all hens 2 still look bit red but feathers are starting to regrow , would i be right in putting some poultry tar on there bootys

 

[rick]

That's good news dye. Had never heard of Stockholm tar before. Sounds like it might be useful stuff but not on pin feathers. Pins are very fragile and you don't want to mess with them or even handle the chickens more than necessary until they have grown out sufficiently.
Broken pins can lead to a wound/pecking cycle that will be a nightmare to break.
In a couple of weeks they will have fluffy pants again in time for the winter

 

[dye29]

ill leave well alone for now then , ive just setup several dust baths up what do you guys use to mix with earth powder just beach sand obviously dry clean stuff

 

[Marigold]

I use play sand from Homebase.

 

[dye29]

perfect got a homebase near me thanks

 

[Marigold]

I was interested in the redmite tester from Durham Hens that Dye reported using, as it had apparently worked to show the presence of redmite, so I looked it up. The website wasn't very clear about what you actually got, but it was only a fiver including postage so I thought I would get one. It turned out to be two cable clips and a 5" length of 18mm wooden dowel, slipped into a 4" sleeve of plastic tubing, with the ends of the dowel sticking out of the tube. You use the cable clips to fasten the device under a perch and check it for mites once a week by sliding the dowel out of the sleeve. It reminded me of the ingenious little devices Rick invents, you could definitely make a profit marketing your ideas if you had time, Rick. You could probably make one that lit up and rang a bell when a red mite landed on it....
I shall certainly install it and check it regularly, to make sure that my claim never to have had redmite is still holding up. However, it's not radically different from what I've been doing for some years in my plastic Green Frog coop, i.e. sliding out the perches from the slots they sit in and looking for mites. So far there have been none, but it will be good to have a belt to my braces, I suppose.

 

[Margaid]

I seem to remember reading somewhere that if you fasten an ordinary drinking straw to the underside of the perch, if you have redmite they'll hide in it.
Never tried it myself as I was able to creosote my wooden houses - the secondhand one had been infested, and my other house was a Solway plastic house, secondhand, which I completely dismantled and scrubbed out when I got it, but then doidn't get much use.

 

[rick]

Humbly - Thank you for the vote of confidence Marigold!
Sliding the perch out of its slots to check (if the coop is made that way) is defiantly the most direct way of checking the same thing as the tube device.
Inventions are one thing but the practical need for them within reason is another - could make a unit that had a mite attractive gap which, at 12 noon every day, used an ultrasonic driver to kill and discharge everything in the gap into a bag for inspection leaving the gap clean and mite friendly for the next night but I reckon the unit would retail at about £500 unless every keeper in the world wanted one which seems unlikely!
Other than keeping chickens I would like to add another string to the bow with woodblock printing (cant work in an office forever and the prospect of that is getting less appealing all the time) Diary of the kid who had to take apart the radio
... rather than listening to the rock 'n' roll which is, by far, the better thing to do.

 

[Marigold]

I seem to remember reading somewhere that if you fasten an ordinary drinking straw to the underside of the perch, if you have redmite they'll hide in it.
.

How would you know, if they were deep inside the straw?
Make a cup of tea and suck them up?