Mites on sitting chook??

[jmcal41]

Recently my sisters chook has been sitting on a big clutch of eggs. In the middle of the night she left them, and didn’t go back. 🙁 Closer inspection revealed mites all over the eggs. What can we do to prevent this from happening again?? Is sprinkling lime in their house/nests an option?? Thankyou in advance..

[Ravyk]

Unfortunately a rather common issue with broodies, they’ll sit until they cannot bear it any longer and leave [usually around day 18].

Best way to prevent it is when a hen goes broody, in the night, dust her and the box she is nesting in with a mite powder like Pestene. This should help keep the mites at bay for the duration of the sitting.

If you have access to an incubator, you may be able to still get some of the eggs to hatch.

[BlueWren]

That’s a shame.Don’t have time now but I’ll check my chook books and get back here later,someone else may have advice for you by then.

[BlueWren]

BlueWren post=324744 wrote: That’s a shame.Don’t have time now but I’ll check my chook books and get back here later,someone else may have advice for you by then.

Edited.You already have! Hope you can save some of the eggs.

[Sonya]

We’ve used Pestene too and it was effective. They are horrible things – I suffer from bites from them too – took me a while to work out what it was!

good luck,

Sonya

[Iduna]

You could try sulphur or ivermectin.

[karyn26]

Iduna,can ivermectin be used on laying hens to help with scaly legs,or will it interfere with the eggs.

[Iduna]

I have used it on my laying hens when one had scaly leg mites, you do have to with hold the eggs for 7 days. I just feed them back the chickens or my cats. If you have a dog you can feed the eggs to it. I have in the past only with held to 5 days then gone back to eating the eggs with no problems. It’s an external use product so it’s more so acting on the side of caution than any set rule I have seen. I only use it once to twice a year, mostly when new birds come onto the propaty or when my birds leave. If you use a commercial wormer at the same time you don’t have to with hold the eggs twice, only once and they are seen to both inside and out. I have used on broody hens too, no eggs to with hold then.

[Ravyk]

Just one word of warning with using Ivermectin, some breeds of dogs are very sensitive to it [Rough Collies in particular along with other collie breeds], so be wary about feeding the withheld eggs to them.

[Hummer]

karyn26 post=324778 wrote: Iduna,can ivermectin be used on laying hens to help with scaly legs,or will it interfere with the eggs.

I have no idea what ivermectin is, or what it is used for.. but something I use for scaly leg mites is a combination of the good old vege oil and tea tree oil. I dunk the chooks legs in it. I do this every 2/3 nights for a week or so and it fixes the problem. This does not affect the eggs at all.

HTH 🙂

[sue e]

We use moxidectin which does them for internal and external parasites simultaneously.We used to have terrible mite problems but I usually do them at the change of season and we have minimal problems now.We withhold eggs for a fortnight just to be sure and feed the eggs back to the chooks so its good if you can time it for when they are off the lay- in spring we try to do them before they come into full production. 🙂

[karyn26]

Just wanted to say thanks for the info Humbug I am having trouble with my laptop and havent been able to reply :angry:

I will try the Oil and T-Tree mix as the girls are in full production now and the eggs are flying out the gate and I dont want to disrupt that.

[perthgirl]

Just thought I’d add an extra suggestion – grow a couple of wormwood bushes inside the chook’s pen as a preventative. :tup: I’ve kept chooks in the same place in our back yard (suburban Perth) for 27 years now and used to have problems with scaly legs etc probably brought in by the bronze pidgeons etc that come to visit. Until about 10 years ago that is, when a dear old relative told me about wormwood and gave me some cuttings. The trick is to prune them so that they grow low and bushy so the chookies have to brush past them to get to their water or feed. The prunings can be used to line their laying boxes and I chuck some around the yard to keep the flies down a bit as well…Seems to work. Haven’t seen a mite, louse or flea on my chooks since I planted the wormwood and no signs of worms either – I’ve never wormed them because there’s no sign of runny bums etc.

Wormwood’s easy to find and grows easily from a cutting.

[karyn26]

Thanks perthgirl I do have some wormwood but its only a small plant ATM.

I’ll give it a go too.

[GirlFriday]

I was going to suggest what perthgirl did- wormwood/ rosemary and other fragrant and bug repelling herbs. That way the chook can sit on them and you can ‘dose’ her as required without worrying about anything being toxic.

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