[ScotsGirl]

Twice now I have been crawling with mites, they are about pinhead size and greyish in colour. It feels like they are dropping on me when I go in chicken shed.  I touched goats but as they are all round my head and shoulders I don't think its from them.


How do I get rid of them off me and in house if they followed me? I doused my head in hedrin and showered plus put all clothing in wash.


Ordered another plastic house so gotta somehow dismantle large shed and burn. Can't stop itching!

[chrismahon]

Red mite are only red when they have been fed ScotsGirl. Unfed they look as you describe, the biggest being almost the size of a pinhead. So they will be hungry and will jump onto you from above.


I have heard of house infestations. I know someone who came in from an infested chicken shed and the mites took residence in the settee. They are supposed to be 'host specific' so only feed on birds, but I'm not convinced. Anyway the settee had to be burned as did the chicken shed.


We have had infestation of three small coops and they have been completely dismantled, sprayed with Nettex in the process to stop the things spreading, the panels scrubbed, dried and creosoted. We had to spray the outside to kill mite fleeing the creosote inside (outside is Cuprinol Garden Shades). The mite have been carried in the wind and also hidden in the ground. They are jumping onto the chickens and trying to get back to the coops. I am checking perches every morning (all ours lift out) and killing any mite on them. They are also living in the bedding in newly creosoted coops, so a plastic coop won't be immune from attack, just easier to clean.

[ZaktheLad]

Can't offer any advice but what a horrible experience and it makes me itch just reading it!  Hope you get it sorted soon and manage to get rid of the pesky beggars.

[lord flynn]

they will bite people but can't live on them-they (as we know) can persist in the environment though. For people only, tea tree oil will kill mites, I am not sure if off the shelf tea tree oil shampoos etc are strong enough.


please remember though, tea tree oil is toxic to cats, poultry and dogs so please no one get tempted to use it in chicken houses and neat in the house!




to fumigate clothing/overalls, put a few drops of tea tree oil on some cotton wool in a dustbin/container that can be sealed-drop clothes in there, close and leave for 48 hours to decontaminate.

[landroverroy]

They aren't red mite.
They are a sort of dust mite, and whereas red mite tend to congregate in the areas where poultry roost, these will be found anywhere in a building. Like you say, they appear to drop on you from above, as they get onto spiders' webs which touch your hair as  you pass.
You can get rid of them in much the same way as red mites, although they are not so  persistent. So a good spray round with insecticide, or creosote diluted with  paraffin/diesel usually sorts them.
They are quite easily brushed out of your hair or off your clothing, preferably before you enter the house. They don't live on furniture, but you may find a few escapees  still crawling over you in the evening. It's annoying but you can just pick them off and squash them between your fingers. 
Once you've had a spray round you'll find things a lot better! But in the meantime, don't touch anything you can avoid in the poultry shed, and if you do, then look at your hands or whatever, and brush the creatures off before they get all over you.

[little bo peep]

I read once that you can check the type of mites by hanging a clean white piece of cotton in the coop over night because the red mite become active at night, you can then see them clearly. I believe they like the cracks and crevices and you can see crusty detritus where they are harbouring, it's making me itch, hope you get the problem sorted!

[waterbuffalofarmer]

I would fumegate their house, then paint it with a special red mite paint.

[Marches Farmer]

Red mite will drop on you as they sense the warmth of your body and think "Supper!"  In the morning they will be red as they'll have fed on the birds overnight.  Later in the day they'll have digested the blood and be grey.  If they fall on you (or drop onto your hand if you hold out your palm under an infested perch) they'll make their way to your head after a few hours as it's the warmest part of your body.  The best way of dealing with an infested house is to burn it, on a still day when they can't float on the breeze and infest anywhere else within range.  Four drops of ivermectin pour on on the skin of the neck will kill mites on the bird, but don't eat the eggs for a week afterwards.

[landroverroy]

Red mite do not, as a matter of course drop upon you from above during daylight hours, as they are only active at night, unless you do something reallyextreme like spraying the area when they will emerge and scurry for shelter.
As mentioned above they congregate under surfaces frequented by poultry, such as perches, and you will only get them crawling on you during the day if you actually touch the areas where they lurk. At nightime, with a torch you will see them crawling all over the poultry, the perches, and the walls but they still don't drop from the roof like the dust mites do.
Dust mites are always grey and active in daylight. Red mites are active at night.       

[chrismahon]

I'm doing a bit of experimentation at the moment. We had a red mite infested coop and the birds were moved. The first time I noticed the problem was when the ants moved in -they eat red mite. I've being trying to make a red mite trap and wasn't sure if the reason it didn't work was because the ants had eaten all of them. So I dipped both ends of a perch in creosote and put a hen on it overnight. In the morning there were approximately 13,500 freshly fed red mite trapped on the perch by the creosoted ends. They had jumped from the walls and onto the hen, then couldn't crawl back. The hen was rather pale as you would expect -lucky we didn't lose her. The second time I tried it there were only about 2,000. I presume they climbed high enough from the floor to jump the creosoted perch ends.


So they do drop down on you. But I have to say they never jump onto me in daylight, only my wife for some reason? The red mite also live in the ground and jump onto the hens during the day while they are out -another experiment.

[landroverroy]

Err - if  they are so good at jumping, how come they were trapped on the perch and didn't just jump onto the floor?
Surely if they are intelligent enough to "climb high enough from the floor to jump the creosoted perch ends", they'd be able to work out a simple move like dropping to the floor?
If you had stayed up all night and watched, you would probably have seen the hen move close to the walls of the henhouse, enabling the mites to crawl across  her feathers to her body. They would then have their feast and if she was no longer in contact with the wall, would as you said, have been trapped on the perch.
Incidently, if you google "can red mites jump" you will find the answer is "no".

[Marches Farmer]

Do they jump - as a flea jumps - no.  But they do just let go and drift down, as happens when you put a hand under the perch at dusk.  They just drop onto your hand and they'll do the same if your head is below an infested roof, especially if it's T&G or felt.