Red (Black) mites

[Suechooks]

When you say creosote substitute, which type do you mean exactly? Perhaps a PM with the details if you're not aloud to say it out loud

I was settling for being pleased if I got the mite population down to 3 or 4 sqillion. All dead will be fab. X

I got some stuff called Creosote Substitute! Probably builders merchants rather than DIY stores. "proper" creosote is no longer available - carcinogenic. DIY places seemed to have something that smelled much like creosote but not sure if its as good as the C-Subs. With the Poultry Shield and Diatom then followed up by stripping the hut out and creosoting it then left empty for a week now to dry out and de-fume there don't seem to be any lurking about. I did however pour the stuff in the bigger gaps! Read somewhere that someone had creosoted the inside of the hut and the beggars all came out thro the cracks to the outside waving white flags! Good luck!

[RichmondHens]

Hi Lizzy - The creosote substitute we use is called (I think, without running out to the shed) CreoCoat. Probably available from any hardware/DIY places. I think we got ours from B & Q.
As Sue says, the proper stuff is no longer sold, but the replacement looks, smells and acts the same!
If using it inside a house/coop, just be sure it is thoroughly dry before re-introducing birds (may take a few days), and if doing perches, we tend to just paint the underneath and not the part the birds sit on. This is enough to deter/kill the mites.
We are confident enough in the product to say that we have not had a major infestation since starting using the stuff. I check every time I clean out the houses, and at the first sign (usually a small clump of mites at the end of a perch or just underneath) we treat again. Seems to only be once a year though.
Good luck!

[HayleyB]

That's handy to know abot the creasote sub, after reading this thread yesterday I went and seriously attacked the foaling box with ***** and a liberal dousing of red mite powder poor girls spent the night there smelling like a disinfectant factory

[MaureenHall]

Think I'll be taking a trip to B&Q on Wednesday (discount day!!) and get some of that! I haven't actually seen any mites, but that doesn't mean they're not there does it, I'd rather paint all the coops with the stuff than be sorry later

[Suechooks]

Think I'll be taking a trip to B&Q on Wednesday (discount day!!) and get some of that! I haven't actually seen any mites, but that doesn't mean they're not there does it, I'd rather paint all the coops with the stuff than be sorry later

The one in B&Q is called Creocote.
I was amazed when I started looking for the blighters - there were some behind the perch support which was screwed to the wall by the manufacturer! I also tried a plastic carrying box as a nest box and they got into the holes where the pegs go to keep top and bottom together!

[RichmondHens]

Yep it is Creocote ( I spelt it wrong earlier) and yep, the little b ********s will hide everywhere.

We've been to a smallholders show today and several people had displays of their chicken housing there. The way most of them are constructed are just shouting for red mite to inhabit them - overlapping weatherboard, roofing felt, all sorts of nooks and crannies. It seems chicken housing is created to look pretty to humans, when the chickens couldn't care less what it looks like. And some of them were really heavy to move too.

[TPeers]

Someone mentioned spraying with poultry shield only every few weeks.

Spray every DAY for at least 10 days! Yes, that is a lot of spraying and yes it will cost. The alternative, that I now have to live with, is a dead hen! Killed because I thought that weekly cleaning and the occasional jet wash would keep the problem under control. It won't.

I have resorted to buying a new hen house so that I can disassemble the old one and really clean, paint and kill the mites.

The advice on daily spraying comes from Forsham arks who are in direct contact with the inventor of poultry shield.

[tlck9]

how do I know if I have mites. I picked up some of the super mite powder....because the guy told me it was a natural remedy. I plan to puff this into the house every week...

I havent seen any mites, how will I know if I have any and will a couple of puffs of this stuff be enugh

[RichmondHens]

When you clean the hen house out, take out the perches (if they are not lift out-able, then make them so, then the weekly chore is not so bad) and look in all the cracks and crevices inside the house and underneath perches too. If you run your finger around all the cracks and they come up with a blood smear then this is probably red mite. When the mites are squashed they feel sticky to the touch (and DO squash everyone you see).

In a bad infestation the hens will a) probably refuse to go in the house to roost b) start laying less/not at all c) look unwell with pale combs (they are literally having the blood sucked out of them at night). If you inspect the hens at night on the roost you may see mites on them - check the legs and "drumsticks".

Most powders are produced to apply direct to the bird. I would go for the belt and braces approach - powder the birds (as you would for lice) and spray/paint the inside of your house with a product designed to penetrate the joints/cracks in the wood. I personally have never found powder puffers particularly effective in treating the houses.

Anyway, you may not even have any red mite, but treating the house as a precaution is always sensible.

[di]

The powder we use on our girls,to my knowledge,doesn't actually kill the mites.They just don't like it,so will stay clear of going near it.
Whereas Poultry Shield will actually kill them.
I took our wooden nest box out & gave it a spray & then left out in the sunshine the other day.Once dried I sprinkled some mite powder in the crevices & was amazed to see loads of the little horrors come scuttling out cos they didn't like it...then had immense pleasure in squishing them!
I guess I hadn't got enough spray into the crevices to kill them all?
OUt of interest,when does everyone else spray...I tend to do it in the day so that I can then leave the coop open to air before the girls got to bed,but I read on another site that it's best done in the evening as that's when the mites are coming out of their hiding places?How harmful is Poultry Shield for chooks to inhale...I know it really gets to the back of my throat!

[TPeers]

Good question. The packaging says not to get it on the birds but the info I was given via Forsham was that it wouldn't cause a major problem.

I personally think that the risk of an airway infection from locking the hens into a damp house is LESS preferable that spraying in the morning and allowing the house to dry. You won't get all the pests on a first spray and I was horrified when I sprayed on day two to find so many monsters still in residence! The mites will run into daylight to avoid being sprayed and the spray is a direct contact killer - I think it melts their waxy 'skin' so that they shrivel. So you will need to spray both the inside AND the outside to catch as many as possible. The point about ten consecutive days has to do with the life cycle length of the mites as the spray only kills adult mites not the eggs, you have to keep spraying to 'catch' the young mites as they hatch.

The cynic in me says that even this will not erradicate the mites totally - but it might keep your birds alive and the problem back under control to the point where weekly spraying is sufficient.

Red Mites can lie dormant for half a year and are most active in summer when the air is drier and warmer, and I have been told that red mites can travel up to 300m (!) in a night.

Since red mite are a naturally occuring parasite and can probably be found in most wild birds nests (and probably on most wild birds) the problem will almost certaintly reoccur and unfortunately it is our habit of keeping the birds in the same accomodation every night that allows it to get out of hand in the first place. Wild birds move their roosts on a regular basis.

Hope this doesn't sound like a lecture!

Terry

[di]

Not at all Terry!
Having come incredibly close to losing one of our girls to mites a few months ago,any advice is welcomed with open arms!
Before we had our major problem I thought they were just a bit of a nuisance & the weekly scrub out would keep them at bay...like you we learnt the hard way!Marigold had been sat on eggs for almost three weeks & we put her ever paling comb down to the fact that she was eating less & not going outside much...turned out the blighters had been sucking her blood...possibly 24/7 for eighteen days.
Lizzy I think you've started a great thread...takes a lot of balls to admit to our downfalls,but as you can see,many of us have suffered from the same problem!xx

[lizzylemon]

I only admitted a problem (pride goes out the window when I'm panicking about something) so it's thanks to you all for such positive and constructive advice and help, perhaps we can save others a bit of heart ache further along the long.

I checked the girls yesterday after my double blitz and much like you guys was amazed (horrified) at how many where still coming out at night. Luckily the majority I squashed were already dead but others were not, and red too.

I've decided to bring a big box home tomorrow and the girls will go in there for the night in the downstairs loo and I'm going back to the coop dusk time and spraying inside and outside as I've found this the more effective time.

The little brutes are nocturnal so will be about anyway and as they won't be bunched in the corners etc I figure the spray will have an easier job getting into the far reaching hideyholes.

The Vaseline (in my case old hairwax) trick is excellent. I did this and it caught loads of them so will be doing this as new step when cleaning the girls out.

A PUFF OF POWDER WILL NOT WORK - I'VE BEEN DOING THIS ALL SUMMER EVERY WEEK AND IT MADE NO DIFFERENCE.

[TPeers]

Good luck sorting this problem, you'll find the hens recover quite quickly once the mites are dealt with. Apart from the girl I lost mine are all fine and laying again.

Terry

[RichmondHens]

I can honestly say without hesitation, that having dealt with red mite infestations in the (fortunately) distant past, that since using creosote substitute, we have not had a major infestation, as some of you describe. We have used Poultry Shield, which does "flush" the mites out, but to definitely kill them all, we have found the Creocote to work best for us.

At this time of year, red mite seems to strike most, but on checking the broody coops that we creocoted even a couple of years ago, there is no sign of mite, and they have been in use since early Spring.

I have found a couple of small (less than 1 cm) clumps underneath perches in our LF layers house within the last month, and we instantly creocoted again, and since then no sign at all.

Don't mean to bang on, but it REALLY works for us.