The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: twizzel on July 25, 2014, 04:29:50 pm
-
Am I right in thinking Poultry Shield and Diatom powder are the best things to get red mite under control? My 6x4 hen house has a pretty bad infestation so going to strip out tomorrow and deep clean.
Can anyone recommend what I can put on the hens- some of them have mites on them, some don't. Thanks :raining:
-
When it turns bad I make a paste of Diatom and paint the whole house inside, filling all the gaps with paste. Normally a good dusting after the weekly clear-out is enough. Diatom can also be used on the birds. I also put Vaseline at the side of the perches all round, mites find it had to get over that barrier.
-
Ok thank you. I'm not sure how long it's had mites but the last week has seen me coming in slightly itchy when shutting the house at night, and in the last 24 hours a couple of my hens that are broody (but not sitting) have gone off colour. So I guess the hot weather we've had has exacerbated it :gloomy: Is Diatom ready available? Going to local country store tomorrow morning.
-
I have always bought it online. I've never seen it for sales in country stores around here.
-
I had a bit of an infestation a few weeks ago ( my first ) - I dissembled the henhouse and blasted away with the blow torch every 2 days for a week and inbetween dusted liberally with diatomaceous earth.
When I put the houses back together, I left little gaps in the joins to stop the blighters gathering and make it easy to dust.
Seems to have been very effective because they seem to have disappeared - I have been searching and havent found one for weeks now.
All my houses are wooden & tongue and groove so the worst style i.m told.
I bought my earth in a 5 kg bag from ebay.
-
We've got to go to several farm stores tomorrow so will see what they've got in- need to treat it with something tomorrow once I've cleaned it out or it's going to be another 3 or 4 days before I can treat it with stuff bought from the internet.
:-\
I can't dismantle the house it's a large shed type house...
-
So this morning I cleaned out the house of all bedding and cobwebs, sprayed it with poultry guard, sprayed it again an hour later. Hens have got diatom in their dust baths and I've puffed a bit on to them too under their wings (well the ones I could catch, will do the odd few left later), once the house is totally dry I'll put some clean shavings down and diatom those too along with the perches.
Phew... on the hottest day of the year too! Have to admit I did question my sanity at 10am this morning dripping with sweat but it's for the greater good- prepared to do it all again on Friday next week too.
-
We had a major attack the other day in a 10 x 12 house. It was disgusting and DE does not seem to have helped this year. I tried to get some poultry shield but couldn't locally and couldn't wait for online to arrive so I bought a can of Nettex stuff. I don't usually like chemically stuff but I opened the shed right up and sprayed some around sparingly once the birds had finished laying around 4pm. By the time they went to bed there was no smell at all. I did this a couple times and a week on, all the mites have gone and the hens seem fine. Egg numbers are well up and the birds seem much happier. I have to admit that although I didn't like the idea of it, the mites were doing far more harm than a small exposure to the chemical in my view (hope). I also had an infestation in our small Sussex house but this time I sprayed it and shut the hens out ntil bed time. Again, killed the lot where DE had failed. I've noticed a dramatic improvement in shell quality with them as well, which is good news.
I'm not a fan of pesticides but in this case, we had it so bad, I felt I had to take urgent action for welfare if nothing else. I will get some Poultry Shield concentrate and give that a go though. I believe you can mix it yourself quite cheaply and a weekly soaking with a spray bottle might do as good a job as the horrible stuff.
-
Have to admit I was sceptical but after coming back before the 2nd spray of poultry guard it had killed a lot of red mite but there were a few around which is to be expected. I bought one of those hand pump pressure sprayers from b&q too for £20 which was really useful, and the poultry guard I bought was 5 litres and I used about half of it for a 6x8 shed sprayed thoroughly the first time and then again the second, with the really bad spots (door and frame) sprayed probably twice again in between.
The hens were NOT impressed being locked out this morning but found a spot on the hedge to queue up and lay in one by one... the 2 broody hens were very pissed off (not sitting on anything)- they are the worst affected but still very keen to come into the house :-[
-
Poultry shield doesn't kill red mite, it just washes them about. Nettex total mite kill is good, but expensive when bought undiluted. A steam cleaner is quite effective and the chickens can go back immediately. But once you have them you will always be fighting them off. We use creosote, but it means for a few weeks the coop can't be occupied. It also doesn't stop them for long. After two weeks mites will walk over it from nests in the floor bedding to get up to the perches. We have discouraged them by a line of ant powder all round the floor. We also remove the perches every day and check them, killing any mites found. They can live outside and fall from the air off wild birds, so an invasion is always imminent.
-
blowtorching is strangely therapeutic but the smell stayed with me for a few days. :roflanim:
-
I can't remember the brands but you need something with an active ingredient of permethrin. I had a niggling feeling that I hadn't checked our main layers house for a while and cleaning it out today found clusters at the ends of perches. I've sprayed with the little permethrin I had left and coated everything in diatom. The diatom works longer term by breaking the life cycle so it doesn't give instantaneous results. The quickest results we had last year were with creosote but like Chris says you have to have somewhere else for the birds to go for a couple of weeks at least - something I don't have at the moment.
-
Checked the house this morning- the door and doorframe which were the worst parts are fairly good now, no new redmite at all. The nest boxes are a slightly different story which I was expecting- the roof of the nest boxes is fairly rotten so I expect they are in the layers of wood... have coated everything again in diatom but I suspect we may have to make a new roof for the nest box which isn't the end of the world. But on the whole, definitely a lot less than there were on Friday :)
-
I am starting to itch and we dont have mites at the moment. Creosote was my answer, the proper stuff not creocoat, not had mites for a year :fc: and have just creosote the ends of the perches to keep the mite free.
-
A longer term answer might be use of other materials for housing. We have an old eglu for our garden gang and have never had mite in there. They just don't seem to like the plastic. Very easy to dismantle and pressure wash too. Also I've seen hanging roost bars so that there is no connection with the walls of the house. Probably wont get rid of them but might stop them marching out at night and getting to the hens.
-
Plastic housing is very expensive, I'm not sure I could afford a plastic house to house 35 hens, or if there is even one available?! The hanging roost bars sound like a good idea though.
We are going to get a new roof made for the next boxes so hopefully that may help slightly...
-
Have a look at onduline or similar roofing. The houses I got from Wells have no wood on the roof - just onduline - so they're more airy and fewer places for the mites to hide. I'm sure they'll still get mites at some point but hoping not as easily/as badly. I'm going to switch over the main house soon - although I'll keep the wood roof but replace the felt with onduline.
-
There was an article in Practical Poultry about three years ago. A new design of perch to limit red mite movement. It was a standard perch but was mounted using metal rods and inverted cups to stop red mite climbing up. Based on my experience it will have limited effect. Red mite will drop down from above and then be trapped on the perch, which we discovered when I creosoted the mounting ends of a perch and then put a roosting chicken as bait. No way was she carrying over 10,000 ! That's how many were on the perch in the morning looking for a way off. But fresh creosote only stops them for a week or so. Once it is dry they will cross it.
Suspending a perch rigidly on wires though sounds as though it will have the same effect permanently. All you have to do is spray the perches every morning to kill them off. Eventually there will be none left I suppose.
-
Word of caution on houses using recycled plastic - rain finds a way through as the outer skin isn't a solid sheet. We thought the drips falling from the inside roof were down to condensation, but no. Also ends of sheets aren't smooth and have many tiny holes for red mite to hide.
If you put a piece of wood around 30x30 cm on the floor of the house it will act as a magnet for the red mite to hide under during the day and you'll quickly be able to see if the house is infested.