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When a chicken mite infestation gets really bad, you may not have any choice but to use toxic chemical treatments to save your poultry. To keep from having to do this, it’s best to stop these parasites from becoming a problem in the first place.
Keep reading to learn how to prevent poultry mites using natural remedies. It only takes a little time to safely control mites, and you’ll be rewarded with happy and healthy backyard chickens.
Provide an Effective Dust Bathing Area (or Three)
As chickens do a pretty effective job keeping themselves clean when given the proper tools, one of the most important ways to prevent mites is to ensure your poultry have easy access to dust baths.
At the very least, your dust bath area should contain clean builder’s sand. But to really help keep chicken mites at bay, add diatomaceous earth (DE) at a rate of 1/2 part for every 1 part of sand.
DE may look like a fine powder to you, but it acts like jagged glass when it comes in contact with external parasites — it slices through their exoskeletons, leading to death through dehydration.
Another natural and effective additive for a dust bath is wood ash. Also a fine powder, it’s made from burning clean wood, and it kills mites, lice, and other parasites by suffocating them.
If you use wood ash in your dust bath, try to keep the area covered so the ash doesn’t get wet — wet ash causes a chemical reaction that can burn your chickens’ skin.
While sevin dust is often a suggested additive for dust baths, we caution against it. It’s a chemical pesticide, so it comes with serious health risks for your birds. On top of that, traces of sevin dust will also appear in fresh eggs, which is a major concern if you plan to eat them.
As far as how many bathing areas you should have, try for as many as you can properly manage. Birds love to bathe, and the more access they have, the better job they’ll do at managing bugs.
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Keep the Chicken Coop Clean
As these bugs are so tiny, they can conceal themselves nearly anywhere — and the chicken coop is the perfect place to hide out since it offers easy access to your birds, especially when they’re roosting at night.
Even if you don’t suspect a mite infestation, it’s good practice to regularly clean out the coop, and an even better idea to routinely apply safe preventatives. This will disrupt the life cycle of any mites that may be present, helping your birds avoid a serious infestation.
Treating the Chicken Coop with Preventatives
The most common parasites to infest birds — northern fowl mites, scaly leg mites, and red mites — tend to spend their entire lives on poultry, but they could fall off or hide in the coop. For this reason, using natural pesticides and preventatives is a good way to prevent infestations.
Two popular and effective preventative treatment methods include dusting with food-grade diatomaceous earth (DE),we recommend this one, and spraying with homemade formulas that deter and kill mites.
The easiest way to treat the chicken coop with DE is to use a bulb duster, like this one. Apple the DE everywhere you can, including in the nesting boxes and underneath roosts.
If you prefer to use a spray, you can mix water, vegetable oil, and dish soap or apple cider vinegar, neem oil, and water. As with the DE, spray these mixtures over every surface you can reach.
To prevent and combat mites, treat the hen house with DE or a homemade spray every one to two weeks. The idea is to treat frequently enough that you kill adult mites that lay eggs and then the mites that later hatch from those eggs.
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Regularly Inspect Your Poultry
An effective way to keep mite populations in check is to simply be on the lookout for them. Once or twice a week, conduct a thorough inspection of your chickens. Look for signs of an infestation, such as irritation around the vent, loss of feathers, and visible mites and egg clusters.
Also take note of your chickens’ habits. Excessive preening and a reluctance to roost are giveaways that something’s amiss. A reduction in fresh eggs daily can also be a sign of parasites as stress can lead to a downturn in egg production.
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Use Insect-Repellent Herbs
The use of strongly-scented herbs can deter mites and other bothersome poultry pests, such as fleas and ticks.
There are several ways you can use herbs, and there’s no such thing as using too much, so feel free to double or triple up on these remedies.
For starters, you can sprinkle dried herbs like pennyworth, peppermint, rosemary, and wormwood in your chickens’ bathing areas.
In the coop, try adding dried marigold or lavender, both of which smell nice and can be calming for your birds. Sprinkle the herbs on the coop floor, in the nest boxes, and under the roosts.
You can also use fresh herbs to keep chicken mites away. Planting fragrant lemon balm and mint around the coop will deter all types of insects and parasites.
Lastly, you can add dried herbs to your poultry feed. In addition to boosting the hens’ immune systems, the herbs will also change the taste of their blood, making the birds less attractive to bloodsuckers.
Feed Apple Cider Vinegar and Garlic
While on the subject of feeding chickens, look to ACV and garlic as ways to keep the birds mite-free.
Add one tablespoon of ACV per gallon of drinking water. It’s thought that ACV works by seeping into a chicken’s skin over time, eventually acting as a repellent.
Garlic is also a successful way to prevent chicken mites. You can sprinkle powdered garlic into chicken feed, or you can add fresh garlic cloves to drinking water.
Garlic juice is another option. Rather than feed it to your hens, combine the garlic juice with water and a little bit of essential oil, and then spray the birds, concentrating in those areas where the parasites tend to gather — specifically, the vent, under the wings, and to ward off scaly leg mites, the legs and feet.
Restrict Contact with Other Animals
Wild birds, especially, are the most common culprit when it comes to mite infestations. The best way to keep wildlife away from your hens is to not inadvertently attract them in the first place.
Getting rid of bird feeders and bird baths, emptying drinkers after use, and securing feed will help with keeping mites (via the wild birds that bring them) at bay.
FAQs
Providing birds with ample bathing areas, a clean coop, and natural preventatives are the best ways to keep bugs away.
Mites are extremely common external parasites, but keeping their populations in check can be the difference between healthy chickens and sick ones.
Assuming that you’ve been proactive, there are several natural methods you can use to get rid of mites before an infestation worsens:
- Apply diatomaceous earth directly to the skin, especially in the vent area and under the wings
- Soak mite-infested birds in a bath of water and apple cider vinegar
- Clean and treat the coop using a homemade pesticide of vegetable oil, dish soap, and water or neem oil, essential oil, and water
In severe infestations, signs of mites can be quite apparent. There’s a good chance you’ll see egg clusters and even live northern fowl and red roost mites scattering as you part a chicken’s feathers. Before it reaches this point, other symptoms may include:
- Red, irritated, or scabbed skin
- Feather loss or damage
- Reduction in eggs in laying hens
- Unwillingness to enter the coop to roost
In the case of the scaly leg mite, a chicken’s leg scales will be lifted and damaged.
Lice, another common chicken parasite, feed on dead skin and other debris, so while still a serious concern, they aren’t typically as dangerous. Mites, on the other hand, eat a chicken’s blood, which can lead to anemia, infections, and other serious complications.
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