Red Mite

I used to think that red mite just 'fall from the sky', but whilst that is true the main reason you get them is buying in infected stock. Red mite don't just live in the coop and come out at night, some stay on the birds so get transferred when the birds move. Any new stock must be quarantined for two weeks, to avoid contaminating the main coop. If you do find red mite in that period they must remain quarantined until they have been completely eradicated and that isn't easy. Chemicals simply breed resistance. The answer is a combination with a steam cleaner hitting the coop and chemicals on the underside of the perch. It will be at least two more weeks after repeated deep steam cleaning the coop, paying particular attention to all the joints in the assembly. Works for us- haven't had red mite in our flocks for 10 years. To give you an idea of how many red mite chickens can carry we steam cleaned a coop to the extent that nothing could possibly survive. The next morning I removed the perch that two Orpingtons we had bought had roosted on and counted an approximation of 2000 underneath it. The mites were killed and the perch replaced. Next morning 200 so the the process was repeated until after two weeks the count was zero.
 
I knew that chickens can carry poultry lice on them, but I didn’t know that red might could stay on them in the daytime. We seem to have red mite breeding in the run this year; there are three narrow rolls of chicken wire on the ground at the bottom of the fence walls, where previous hens had scratched away at the ground under the fence. I've been seeing (& squishing) a number of red mite in the wire rolls in the last few weeks. Perhaps I'd better pop my mask on & dust the girls with diatom.

Tigger won't be pleased- she's a cream legbar hybrid & hates being picked up...
 
I had a friend who's hens were looking "peaky" I asked her if she had red mite, or anything else in the coops. The reply was "no as we change bedding every week. So I got her to hold a hen and put some powder on it, and to her horror she suddenly had a small army of mite heading up her arms.

Checking the coop, revealed them everywhere, no wonder the hens looked miserable and ill.

The new plastic coops are great at preventing mite as they can be easily taken apart, for a clean, and not so many nooks and crannies
 
We have a plastic coop these days, but I still don an FFP3 mask & dust the coop with diatom after I've cleaned it. Needless to say I wear the mask when I deep clean the coop too. I hadn't thought about the hazard of breathing in diatomaceous earth until you mentioned it a few years back, Chris.
 
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