What a time we’ve had. I’ve now got first-hand experience of dealing with something that is the bane of a chicken keepers life - red mite, writes Allie Short.
These hateful little blood suckers not only make birds miserable and depressed, but heavy infestation can prove fatal.
When I first felt the horrible things crawling on my hands while doing my daily coop cleaning, I didn’t know what they were but knew whatever they were, they weren’t meant to be there and had to go so I quickly scooped out as much of the coop bedding as possible and bagged it up before having to rush off to work.
I had heard of red mite and not only how dangerous they are for the birds, but also how difficult they can be to get rid of, so rather than taking any chances decided to deal with the then unknown parasite as aggressively as possible.
As soon as I got home from work that day I set to work, first with my trusty vacuum cleaner Henry (he’s Harry’s big brother) to suck out as much of the remaining bedding as possible, then onward with the steam cleaner to get right into all of the possible red mite hiding places.
These nasty things burrow deeply into wood so are almost impossible to eliminate from wooden coops which results in many being burnt and replaced with plastic coops which aren’t immune to red mite, but are much easier to clean as the mites can’t burrow and hide. Thankfully my coop is made from recycled plastic so nowhere for the nasties to hide.
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Once the steam cleaning was over and done with and bare minimum bedding added into the coop, I mixed up a batch of Dergall (a parasite treatment for use both on birds and their housing) and started the difficult process of catching and spraying each individual hen.
By this time it was just starting to get dark which was both a blessing and a curse as it meant the hens were calming down ready to sleep which made even the more flighty birds easier to catch, but I don’t have external lighting so had to work extra fast in the fading light.
Carefully holding birds upside-down by their feet and soaking their feathers with a spray bottle really isn’t something that can be safely rushed, but I got it done and eventually my girls were able to make their way to bed.
I was worried - they were all soaking wet with the Dergall, so after I had been able to get myself cleaned up, I went out to check them and had towels in hand as makeshift blankets in case needed.
All was well though, and when I opened the door of my Solway coop to check, the heat generated by just their bodies cuddled up together was impressive so I left them to rest.
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The next day there were still a couple of mites in the new bedding so I ordered some Androlis predator mites to add to the coop in the hope of finishing off any that had been missed.
These arrived on the Friday and were added to the coop that evening.
Saturday morning I once again found a couple of red mite in the bedding, but since then there has been no sign of any nasty little blood suckers either in the coop or on my hens.
It was intense, it was stressful, but it was well worth putting the effort in to get rid of these nasty things and keep my girls safe and healthy.
It was also well worth investing in the recycled plastic coop as so many people battle these things for many months and are still unable to get rid of them, often having to burn their wooden coops or even give up their birds altogether.
For me, that would just be out of the question because they’ve brought so much happiness into my life, in-spite of the various issues we have to deal with along the way.
