Mites on Chickens

 On December 27th my two hens Lois and Cleo got into an argument, that ended with blood dripping all down poor Lois’ face from a nasty bite on her comb. I took her inside, stood her up in front of the kitchen sink and got to work cleaning the blood of her head. I used a soft towel dipped in warm water, and once most of the blood was gone and the wound had stopped bleeding I applied a layer of Nature’s Sunshine Silver Shield to protect the wound from any bacteria or infection and was set to take her back out to the coop. She had been such a good girl, I thought I would reward her with a piece of shredded carrot before she went back, and that’s when I noticed it. Little tiny specks crawling all over my hand, and my arms, and all over my sweater. I’m itchy just thinking about it!

Needless to say Lois was rushed back outside and I went to work DE-ing myself, my kitchen, and anything else that came in my way. (I lightly dusted her too before I stuck her on the roost with her sisters).

We have mites. Northern fowl mites to be exact.

Since we had not introduced any new birds to our flock my guess is that they came in on the wild birds, that have been making a habit of eating out of the goat food bowls before we started on our commotion free feeding system. When the goats were running back and forth between dishes little chickadees would fly down and grab some of their grain. I had thought it was cute at the time. Now I’m like “chickadee be gone!” I have since let my bird feeders hang empty, and with tying the goats to eat, the birds have stayed away. I love watching the wild birds so the bird feeder on the other side of the house and well away from the barn will probably get a refill one of these days.

But I digress.

That night I read up on everything I could on mites and chickens, and what to do about it. The next day I went to work cleaning and spraying the barn.

We are very alternative in our health and prevention practices, and aim to use natural whenever possible. Most people think that natural always means safe, but you do need to respect some natural solutions as well.

After a lot of reading and research as well as listening to my own intuition I armed myself with the following:

1. Diatomaceous Earth. To be clear I am talking about the food grade D.E. It is a fine white powder that is made up of hard shelled algae that has been fossilized. These microscopic fossilized pieces of algae are very sharp, and scratch and dry up insects when they come in contact with the powder.
   • A Few Warnings:
     • Be sure to always use food grade. You do not want the grey powder that is used for swimming pools
     • Do not breath it in! Your lungs are soft and spongy, a prime location for D.E. to do some damage. A face mask is recommended.
     • D.E. will work on good bugs and bad bugs, so be careful where and how you use it.
     • D.E. looses it’s effectiveness when it gets wet, so if you powder your chickens and they go out and stand in the rain then you will need to powder them again once they dry off
2. Garlic. I love garlic. It can be used for just about anything, both externally and internally.
3. Essential Oils (for the Chickens) – Lavender, Pine, Peppermint, and Lemon.
   • There isn’t a lot of research on essential oils with chickens. I decided to go with ones from plants that the chickens would naturally eat. Lemon was the exception, as some people say citrus is not good for chickens. I only used a little bit of lemon but decided to use it because of its insect repelling qualities.
   • Chickens preen and clean their feathers with their mouths so you want to be sure to use oils (or anything for that matter) that are non toxic.
   • Also please note that these are therapeutic grade essential oils and not fragrance oils.
4. Essential Oils (for the coop) – Peppermint, Eucalyptus Citriodora, a blend called Purify, and a blend called Bug Off. (I use Native American Nutritionals Essential Oils. They are organic, high quality and aren’t multilevel marketing. I get no compensation for recommending them, I just really like them and think they are a great alternative to the more popular MLM brands.)

First I cleaned out the barn (even though we have goats on one side and chickens on the other I still had to do the entire thing. The mites could still be hiding in the goat side bedding). We had been doing the deep litter method to help protect our livestock from the harsh Canadian Winter elements. But desperate times call for desperate measures, so out came the bedding. I then sprinkled DE on the floor, and in any cracks in the boards inside the barn (beams, walls, etc), and laid down fresh bedding. I sprinkled the bedding with garlic powder then I put drops of straight essential oils in the four corners of the coop, around the doorway, and in the bedding in the nesting boxes. I also rubbed it onto the roosts. I repeat this every other day. (These would be the oils in Section D above)

* To make it a little easier, especially if your chickens are not tame like ours, do it at night or in a dark spot. We took one hen at a time into the goat pen (because it has a hook so you can close the door from the inside, the chicken side door does not), and closed the door so it was relatively dark when we sprayed them. This caused less stress for all of us, and less flap from them.

Mites can live for 4-5 days and lay 100,000 eggs during that period. 100,000!!! That is liable to get out of control very quickly! We were lucky to have caught it relatively early, as there wasn’t a lot of egg deposits built up in their feathers at that point, nor where they showing any outward signs of having a mite infection. Even if it looks like you are winning be sure to keep spraying for at least 3 weeks to make sure you have killed the laying cycle.

 1 oz of garlic juice – I bought a bunch of garlic and ran them through my juicer. My house smelled like garlic for days, but it was a cheaper and doable route for me.

12 drops lavender essential oil

12 drops pine essential oil

12 drops peppermint essential oil

5 drops lemon essential oil

1/3 cup Olive Oil

1 1/4 cups of water

Mix all together in a spray bottle, and shake well before spraying chickens. You can also use this as a spray for the entire coop if you prefer to go that route, however I didn’t find it to be as effective by itself (without putting the other E.O.s in the coops)

A few cautions with this:

• It stings like no other if you get it in your eyes (dang chicken flapped right as I sprayed)
• Wear a “barn coat” or washable clothing. I just wore my coat because it is freezing here and I only have one coat (dry clean only of course). I’m scaring away vampires now let me tell you!
• Your Hubby may have concerns over why you are (and I quote) “marinating them”

Within 24 hours the mites that we saw crawling on their little behinds had decreased by half.

I also mixed a bunch of garlic powder into their feed, and put a couple of cloves in their water.

After a week the temperature dipped too low here for us to spray them without the risk of frost bite or hypothermia. (We’re talking minus 20 Celsius as a day time high). I’ve continued to put E.O.s in the coop every other day, really concentrating on the nesting boxes.  The mites on the girls themselves continued to decrease and yesterday when I checked them I saw no mites on the majority of them. (We have a few that had them really bad, my guess is they’re the ones with the weakest immune system, and they were still carrying a few).

We did dust the girls once with a D.E. and garlic powder mixture that I put in the toe part of an old pantyhose (for easy dusting). I did not find this to be as effective, and had a hard time trying to keep the hens head away from the dust puffs (she shouldn’t be breathing in the D.E. either).

And amen.