red mite prevention

[clucking chicks]

Please can someone tell me if Johnsons poultry mite and lice powder is a way to prevent my ladies getting red mites, or a curative?
If it is a cure, please can you suggest a method of prevention?
Blimey! I sound more like a vet every day!!!!

 

[chrismahon]

It's a discouragement, but doesn't kill them if they are already there. Good idea to dust the birds regularly to help stop them taking mite they may pick up back into the coop. Once they are in the coop- well, bit of a problem as Karminski and others will tell you. Creosote , the old fashioned stuff, seems to be the only sure way of protecting your coop if it's wooden because there are so many places they can hid away and breed that ordinary chemicals won't reach. But you need a spare coop while it is drying -about 3 days when mixed 50:50 with paraffin. If your coop is plastic it is simply a matter of spraying every so often with a liquid red mite killer to protect it.

 

[wendywoggles]

Anything you dust a bird with can only be what I think you are referring to as a cure, and then it seems to be a fingers crossed situation and with red mite you've got to treat the coop as well, and very probably several times. Also RM don't usually live on the birds unless there's a really serious infestation. They tend to regard our chooks like a soup kitchen and just call by, have their fill and go of to sleep it off in some dark crevis in the coop.

As for a prevention then if there was a failsafe one there wouldn't be so many threads on the subjects. Keep up the cleaning, scrubbing, jet washing, finger crossing and prayers. Good luck though.

 

[Stapfam]

Don't think anything is a full preventative but Mite Powder will discourage the blighters.

The real problem is "Where do they come from?" Wild birds?- introduced infested stock?-I can't say. Only definite thing is that once you have them- you have a problem.

They do get noticed in the coop and it is not only the full adults you will first see. I noticed them a couple of months ago when I had what appeared to be a Spiders nest on my back. They were the juveniles and there were hundreds if not thousands of them. That is the time to Clean the coop and spray with Poultry Shield or any other known product that will do the same job. I have a Feather Edge coop and plenty of places for them to hide so it was out with the garden sprayer and Get right into every crack and edge there is. Not only inside but outside up inside the boards aswell. The pressure sprayer does get the Liquid right into the cracks and into the wood aswell. Do it in the morning and keep the birds out of the coop all day and it will be dry enough for them to go back in at Night. Obviously discard all floor covering and nest material and I just put the minimum back in as 7 days later you have to do it again. The life cycle of the mite is 7 days from laying the egg to hatching -hence the 7 days. Then keep spraying every 7 days till you are certain you do not have any left.

I think I have cured the coop at present but from now on I will be cleaning and spraying the coop once a month as a preventative. The poultry shield does not stay resident for long but it does work. At the same time as spraying the coop- I dust the birds with Mite powder and to be honest- I have never found a mite on a bird. Places to look for them are on the perches at night after the birds have been in a couple of hours. And even then it may just be the juveniles as they crawl out of the woodwork and along the perches.

 

[chrismahon]

Smite works better than Poultry Shield, which is only a sanitiser really. Nettex Total Mite Kill does what it says, but doesn't contain the degreaser of Smite which you need to flush out the eggs. So we use both. Liberal spray of Smite in all the cracks. Then the angry mite are killed with Nettex -which gives off fumes and we leave the coop closed for an hour before opening to dry out. Apart from creosote the best method. Can use Elector biocide, but only alternate years as they evolve immunity -as they do to any partially successful chemical attack anyway.

 

[wendywoggles]

Smite works better than Poultry Shield, which is only a sanitiser really. Nettex Total Mite Kill does what it says, but doesn't contain the degreaser of Smite which you need to flush out the eggs. .

so if its the degreaser that's needed would GUNK do the trick?

 

[chrismahon]

Well I suppose Gunk would flush out the eggs. But then you've got to kill the mite that laid them. It needs to be applied with a pressure sprayer and Gunk then has to be flushed with water. No, I think Smite is better and its probably the same price.