My poor older girl Moon has scaly leg mites. Yuck, poor thing. I feel so bad that I hadn't noticed anything amiss until I was sitting watching them on Friday as they were hanging out in the sun. I've spent so much of this year being distracted on other things other than the garden that I haven't really paid the girls much attention. In the morning they are fed and let our to roam for the day before I head down in the late afternoon to feed them again and shut them in for the night. I noticed Moon looking very quiet and a bit wobbly on her legs and realised something was up with her. On observing her I noticed her poor nobbly legs.
So a bit of googling had me rushing out after lunch to get some mite powder (they've been so good at dust bathing that they don't seem to have these sorts of mites) and vaseline. In the meantime I bought down a bowl of warm soapy water and washed her legs down and put some olive oil on her legs. Then after returning with our goods I dusted her all over (although she appeared to be ok as far as her feathers and skin goes) and then slathered vaseline all over her legs and pushed it under all the scales in the hope that it will smother the horrible mites.
Today we moved the coop and scrubbed down the nesting box and perches. I then poured a jug of boiling water into the nesting box (not sure if that would penetrate any eggs that had fallen into the cracks of the wood or not though), threw in a bowl of water with tea tree oil in it, let it dry and then dusted it down with the mite powder and reset in the clean coop. I re-dusted the girls and re-vaselined their legs in their clean enclosure.
I found this site with good all-round info that was also confirmed elsewhere.
4 comments:
If you know where they take most of their dust baths, put some of the mite dust in there too. We used Sevin on ours for mites.
Thanks for the link! I'm going to check it out... Unfortuneately we had a chicken casualty this past week with our heat situation. We have a fan set up, but the dryness and heat are really severe. I am starting to research the breeds to be sure I am getting the ones that can take the Texas heat...We lost one last year under the same conditions...All but one of the remaing Chichi Sisters are Americaunas so I'm hoping since they are a mix coming from South America they will do well...
Sorry to hear you had a casualty Nancy, it's never nice is it?
Thanks about the reminder to dust their dust bath - I meant to do that, only it was raining yesterday but today looks fine so will do that.
We're dealing with scaly leg mite with our new chickens. We're first time chicken keepers so its been a bit of a trauma - especially when catching them for the first time led to getting chicken blood on my boot. Horrible!
Post a Comment