The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: Declan on November 06, 2011, 05:15:54 pm
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Red mite- i've had poultry for 3 years. This spring i noticed an investation of red mite in two of the 3 (wooden)hen houses. Ive tried everything- power washed everything- burnt them off with a blowtorch, creosoted, varnished, dusted the birds, cleaned, red mite spray, everything- all ideas gleaned from this forum. Was out again this afternoon and lo and behold- under one perch of each house- there they are again. Im at the end of my tether-completely sick to the back teeth. Came in to go on computer to give the whole bloody lot away on ebay or gumtree but turned to you all in desperation.
Where am i going wrong? Is there any type of housing that would be less susceptible to these mites? plastic oil tanks/coal bunkers you know the thing... What do the commercial poultry people do?
Any advice most welcome.
Declan
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You don't have to just remove them from the housing but from the birds at the same time. I've always used a steam cleaner in the houses----boil the buggers to death :D and at the same time sprayed the poultry and used a powder in their dust baths. You will have to do all this a few times to keep on top of the little blighters. And when you steam the house make sure you do it well, not just a quick blast but a concerted and viscious blasting >:(
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How's your roof constructed, Declan? Victoria Roberts always says roofing felt is heaven for red mite, and recommends us all to use onduline / cordyline.
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we had red mite back in the summer..... >:( >:(
we clean now using smite and have diatom on all ledges and around the edges and on the floor and perches
aqlso in the nest boxes.....
we went in at niight and killed loads, did this for about a week.
touch wood the diatom is doing its stuff and we are clear (well i not seen any)
Mx
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Its horrible,I had the same problems, Diatom (touching wood!!) has done the trick here as well, I've also put it down where they dust bath(luckily they have dust baths in a covered open barn so they're staying dry) Brilliant stuff :)
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If I remember right you have to give treatment every few days to break the breading cycle of the little B's. last time we had them I used the pink spray net-ex I think and powder in the dust baths
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That pink nettex spray was brilliant when we had redmite last year! We didnt' have any this time round thank goodness.
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That pink nettex spray was brilliant when we had redmite last year! We didnt' have any this time round thank goodness.
Smells nice too which is a bonus ;D
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it does!! and having 4 young daughters the colour was another added bonus ;D Fleece wife suggested a weedwand to me last year and described a satisfying sizzle upon using it on redmite - I was tempted!
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okey dokey- will give the nice smelly stuff and the diatom stuff a try. Maybe i wasn't persistent enough. I was stopping once i saw no more- maybe i should stick with the treatments t obreak the cycle as you suggest. Thanks for that.
Declan
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Diatom works for me, and nice that it contains no pesticides. I put down in the cracks where I know they appear as a regular routine. I reckon you can't eliminate them on a permanent basis as they will be reintroduced by wild birds which carry them.
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i was reading in one of the mags about red mite
that you don't clean the shed for about 2 weeks and introduce
another mite that lives of the red mite and dies of when there is
non left to feed on
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i got it in both my huts and my rabbit run this summer, what i did was move all birds and rabbits into one shed, this was cramped but it was only for a short time.
power hosed the other shed, coated in diatom, 2/3 times a week for about 2 weeks, (during this time i was treating the birds and rabbits in the other hut),
them moved the birds into the other hut and gave it the same treatment, all the time treating the birds to stop any mites reinfesting the cleaned hut.
Touch wood i havn't seen any since
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Diatom works for me, and nice that it contains no pesticides. I put down in the cracks where I know they appear as a regular routine. I reckon you can't eliminate them on a permanent basis as they will be reintroduced by wild birds which carry them.
That sounds right - we get swallows nesting in our hen houses every year and that's always when the little horrors start crawling around. Ours were particularly bad this year, so we have added diatom on the birds (and in the swallows nests) and wood ash copiously sprinkled around the sheds and perches to our armoury - along with the weed wand to zap the little b****rs and Cuprinol everywhere several times a year. If we have them, then I use the weed wand every day for about a week (being careful not to set fire to the baby swallows :o) but they re-infest quite soon. It is tempting to stop keeping hens but I love them too much, with their gentle chatter and raucous screeches, and their funny henny ways which I could watch all day long.... :chook: :chook: :chook:
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good luck Declan. Don't give up
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I've had hens for nearly 3 years, starting off with 8 POL girls and a brand new flatpack henhoose. Mites appeared in their second summer and we have never managed to get rid completly. I had read about felted roofs being a haven for mites and so this summer I removed the felt and roof sections. The gaps between the roof sections and the tops of the walls were thick with the b*ggers, but there was nothing between the felt and the roof timbers. I creocoted everything, put it back together and refelted. Within months we were back at stage one.
What I have never done is treat the girls themselves, so maybe that is what's called for.
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i had major infestation and still got them they will go off for a while as they dont like the cold . but the best thing i find that works is diatom i bought 8kg of the stuff the other day. but this week im cleaning all the bedding out then steaming the whole house taking every part i can take apart i am then im letting it all dry then spray with jeyes fluid mixed with water let dry again. add the bedding and diatom adding bit of diatom to the birds feed. best advice is not to give up i been battling all year long so far and steaming every nook and cranny works a dream but is very time consuming. i use a wall paper stripper with a nozzel addapter and you can just see them burn. make sure you take the felt off the roof if you have felt as they will be under there to do a small house about 150cm X 100cm and 100cm high it took me about 5 hrs to steam and multiple refills bear with it and you will succeed honestly. also put vaseline on the perch ends as it smothers them be liberal with diatom aswell and spread everywhere house birds feed maybe even build a dust bathing hole if possible and put some sand and diatom in for them to bath in
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Creosoting (with the old stuff I still have, and yes I let it all dry out, we always have a spare house) does it for us. Haven't seen a mite in over two years, no other treatment and wild birds (crows eating the eggs >:() galore.
We also have plastic nestboxes and onduline roofs on all our hen houses.
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I was desperate too, earlier this year, and I resorted to Milben Ex - expensive and lethal- you need to wear face mask. I bought it here: www.jsrservices.co.uk (http://www.jsrservices.co.uk)
Another product widely recommended is a liquied called Poultry Shield, but I haven't managed to track it down locally, and by post it's expensive because heavy.
Anyway, I used the milben ex twice, 6 days apart, having first removed the roofing felt and internal fixtures like the perch support. Seems to have worked, but I intend to keep up the efforts every few weeks. The milben goes a long way I've found, so in the long term not as expensive as I first thought. good luck Declan
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Hi - when in the UK we used Deosect - mainly used for red mite on horses. We never sprayed the birds though just the housing. Worst housing of all is the shed-type chicken house as the mites get in between all the lapped wood. Never found red mites on the birds - just the grey ones - look a bit red when gorging on blood but a different type of mite.