One of the girls

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Lornsy

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Geraldine also know known as Honey by my 16 year old son as she's now his as he's home from college and didn't want to left out of having his own chicken .
Last week when we brought the girls in nothing on them ..today when I sat down with her there were little things crawling off her onto me are these mites as I have never seen mites before so I'm not sure ..very tiny nearly see through little spidery things ..I never see any in the coop as yet ..but they are so tiny .
What does everyone use in their hens ? To get rid of these things x
 
A picture I forgot to add of Geraldine AKA Honey
 

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Lovely chicken! I use Smite powder on my girls. Easy to apply and works well.
 
I'll give them a routine dusting maybe twice a month. If I notice anything on them in between that time I'll dust them over again. They also have a favourite bathing spot in the garden and I sprinkle Smite in there too!!

Key to keeping them mite/lice free I find is good coop hygiene and free range access to the garden. Being able to naturally dust bathe seems to help massively.
 
Thank you for the advice ... My girls are in a run half pea gravel and half wood chippings ..they love to scratch around in the wood chippings and have their dust baths inside their coop in the sawdust bedding ..did get some sand for outside but it just got wet and isn't very dust bath like to use as a dust bath so I think that's why they opted for bathing in the sawdust for now :-)
 
Over here they use potash in the soil baths to control lice and mites Lornsy. In the countryside everyone burns wood for heating. I sieve out the ash and add the fine stuff to their favourite dry corner. Apparently it suffocates the bugs. We created soil baths last year using sand with 10% potash added and it seemed to be working fine. You can't buy the chemical treatments over here -most of them are banned for environmental reasons apparently.
 
Diatomaceous earth.
DE does for dusting chickens, perches and their bedding, smothers bugs, but harmless to the girls, apparently also used for worming. Called other products with other names - still DE!
Cheap, cheerful, works, and harmless.
 
Yes, harmless unless breathed in, either by chickens or humans. Be very careful when puffing it around and don't swamp the place with it, as it consists of minute particles of silica and if you get these in your lungs you are in big trouble, of course.
 
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