I really hate red mites

Posted by louisa on Thursday 12 May 2011 in chickens | 7 comments

Last night, our chickens gave us a bit of a scare.

The chickens are generally very good at taking themselves to bed in good time. I think with the exception of a hen or two on one or two occasions when there has been a disruption late in the day, they all tuck themselves away well before dusk. They’re so good that we generally don’t feel the need to check on them every night. (If they are left out, they’re relatively safe in the reasonably fox-resistant run anyway.)

So, anyway, last night. As I was going to bed, I heard a chicken clucking considerably louder than I should have done – she was clearly out of the coop and a more than a little perturbed. Remembering a story from my chicken keeping course, my first thought was “fox!” — had one got into the coop and scared them out? We ran down and looked around but couldn’t see any problems. We put the (mostly asleep) chickens back into the coop and then went to bed ourselves – but I was worried that I’d wake up to the aftermath of a fox attack – a night of anxious dreams. Now though, I suspect the culprit was equally red but a lot smaller.

In the same way the chickens are good at taking themselves to bed, I consider myself pretty good at keeping on top of red mites. I dust the chickens with powder regularly and keep a close eye on the coop – checking & cleaning all the regular spots just about every day. The problem is that I focused on “the regular spots”… When I got down there this morning, the chickens were all mingling in the run as happy as normal but when I started to poke around the coop, I realised there was quite a red mite infestation — in the regular spots, in the litter, in the nest boxes (which hadn’t been a problem before). Not a good situation at all.