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When you need to treat chicken mites, it’s best that you stay away from chemical treatments, especially if you look forward to fresh eggs daily. In addition to being potentially harmful to your poultry, chemicals can also find their way into the eggs you intend to eat.
A better way to disrupt a mite’s life cycle and rid them from your birds is to use natural remedies. Using safe ingredients that you’ll find in many pantries and closets, the homemade sprays below are incredibly effective, but won’t hurt your poultry. Try one today, and you’ll soon have a flock of mite-free, healthy chickens.
RELATED ARTICLE: How to Identify Poultry Mites
Natural Sprays for Poultry Mites on Chickens
If you’re facing a mite infestation, the first thing to do is treat your chickens. An extremely effective natural remedy that will kill mites quickly is a homemade garlic spray.
Garlic Juice Spray for Mites
To make this garlic spray, you must first whip together a homemade garlic extract. You’ll need the following ingredients:
- 2 cups water
- 6 cloves chopped garlic
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Heat the water on low-medium until it starts to bubble. Add the garlic, and simmer gently for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, turn off the heat, and allow the mixture to cool so that the garlic releases more extract. When the mixture is cool, strain to remove the garlic, and add the vegetable oil to garlic liquid. Whisk well, and store in a glass container.Once you’ve got garlic juice, you can make your homemade mite killer. You’ll need:
- 1 ounce homemade garlic juice
- 1 teaspoon essential oil
- 10 ounces water
Mix the ingredients together, and pour into a spray bottle.
To treat an active chicken mite infestation, spray each of your birds generously under the wings, around the vent, and anywhere else you notice irritation. Spray every other day for three weeks to ensure you kill the adult bugs and the mites from hatching eggs.
Essential Oils Spray for Mites
While the previous recipe includes a teaspoon of essential oil to mask the scent of garlic, this mixture contains an array of oils that can not only repel mites but also kill them.
As an added bonus, some of these oils, such as the lavender, can be calming to your chickens during the stress of an infestation.
This recipe is a little harder to put together due to the various essential oils, but if you already use oils for other purposes throughout your home — like getting rid of ants naturally or making your own natural deodorant — you probably have most of these on hand. Here’s the recipe:
- 25 peeled and smashed garlic cloves
- 20 drops cinnamon bark oil
- 30 drops lavender oil
- 30 drop peppermint oil
- 45 drops eucalyptus oil
- 2 tablespoons white vinegar
- 2 cups water
Add all the ingredients to a spray bottle, and set aside for a few hours so that the garlic may release its oils. Shake the bottle well to mix the ingredients, and then spray generously on your chickens. Again, concentrate on the areas under the wings and around the vent.
If you’re dealing with the scaly leg mite, coat the chicken’s feet and legs too.
Use this spray every day for two weeks to treat poultry mites. Once the infestation is under control, you can continue to spray your chickens once a week to deter mites from coming back.
Natural Sprays for Poultry Mites in Coops
In addition to treating your poultry directly, you’ll also want to treat the chicken coop. This is because the bugs may fall off your birds and hide in the coop’s many nooks and crannies. Depending on what you have on hand and what you prefer to use, try one of the following recipes.
Vegetable Oil Spray for Mites
This vegetable oil spray for a mite-infested coop is easy to make and super effective. It works by suffocating the parasites. Here’s what you need:
- 1 tablespoon dish soap, like Dawn (this one is a good deal)
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 1 cup water
Add each ingredient to a spray bottle, and then shake vigorously before each use. Spray the coop floors, walls, and roosts each day for a full week.
Neem Oil Spray for Mites
If you already have neem oil on hand, you can use this powerful, natural insecticide to rid your hen house of red mites, tropical fowl mites, and other external parasites, like fleas and ticks. Here’s what you need:
- 2 tablespoons neem oil
- 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
- 2 cups water
Combine these ingredients in a spray bottle, and shake well to mix.
Use this spray every day for two weeks to destroy the mite population in the chicken coop. As with the vegetable oil spray, you should spray the floors, walls, and roosts to target chicken mites where they hide.
For ongoing pest control, you can use this natural coop mite spray once a week. This is sufficient to kill any adult mites and the mite eggs that hatch later.
Supplementing with Diatomaceous Earth
While oil sprays are excellent for treating mites, they can be messy in nesting boxes full of bedding. If you’d rather keep oil out of the nest boxes, pick up some diatomaceous earth (this is our favorite).
This fine powder is made from tiny fossils, so each microscopic particle is like a jagged piece of glass. When it comes in contact with external parasites, it slices through their exoskeletons, leading to dehydration and death.
Food-grade diatomaceous earth is safe to use in the coop and even on the hens themselves. Sprinkle the powder around the nesting boxes every other day to keep chicken mites at bay.
At the same time, you should also add it to the birds’ dust baths to help them remove mites while they’re bathing. For an even more effective dust bath, also add wood ash.
FAQs
There are several natural remedies that you can use to eradicate mites from your birds and the hen house. Here’s what to do:
- Treat your chickens directly with a natural spray or diatomaceous earth (DE)
- Add DE and wood ash to dust baths
- Treat the coop with a combination of natural sprays and DE
Remember that it’s important that you treat mites as soon as you notice them. If the infestation worsens, natural treatments may not be as effective.
Whether your poultry are being plagued by scaly leg mites, the northern fowl mite, or red roost mites, many of the symptoms are the same. Here’s what to look for:
- Skin irritation in the vent area and under the wings
- Missing or loose feathers from over-preening
- Reduced egg production in laying hens
- Hesitation to roost at night
- Pale comb and wattle from anemia
- Ragged leg scales (in the case of scaly leg mites)
Because you can’t see mite bites on your birds, and even the mites themselves are rather tiny, you must keep an eye out for the other signs and symptoms of a developing infestation.
While you can buy commercial poultry shield products to prevent mites from infesting the coop, it’s better to ditch chemicals and use natural tactics instead. Here are effective ways to keep mites away:
- Treat your chickens with a natural preventative, such as DE or a homemade spray for mites
- Keep your chicken coop clean, and regularly treat with natural preventatives
- Provide your birds with plenty of dust bathing areas so they can help keep infestations from getting out of hand
- Keep your poultry away from wild birds and other animals that may transmit mites
- Limit your visits to other poultry keepers to avoid bringing mites home with you
