anyone else keep chickens?

We've got 4 and a couple of geese.

The chickens have got an ifestation of red mite. Other than napalm what's the best way to get rid of them.?

The red mite not the chickens or geese. The geese don't even have red mite.

with a nice coating of red mite too.

Mind you if the geese don't keep the noise down eveytime a train goes past their pen they'll be getting a "special"  Christmas present.

Hi Pizza Man

 We have 8 hens and a cockerel.

 You can get "Red Mite Powder" from  most farm suppliers / feed merchants.  Best to treat in the evening as the mites tend to come out at night when the birds are roosting.  

thanks very much PS

exactly what I needed

thanks a lot guys ................................ the power of the forum.

The shops are shut now so I'll put them (the chickens) in the  guiniea pig hut tonight (the guineas are in their summer quarters) and blast the coop with the pressure washer.

I do like the sound of using a blow torch though. Not too far off the napalm approach

Bear in mind you will have to clean the guinea pig hutch too once they have been in there!

 If you have access to one, go for a steam cleaner rather than just a pressure washer.  With a pressure washer you might just be moving the mites around rather than getting rid of them!

This is the red mite powder we have used - was very effective, and if they have dust bath "wallow" areas you can put it in there and they treat themselves.  Although if your weather has been like ours, there isn't much in the way of dust around at the moment.

http://www.chicken-house.co.uk/acatalog/Barrier_Red_Mite_Powder_500g.html

all done dusted (see what I did there?)

the moveable bits of coop cleaned in the pool filter water and then pressure washed. The coop and the goose house sprayed.

Geese asleep in bottom of coop and chooks asleep in guinea hutch. 

I like the idea of the open coop though.

Perkeerk

We've got six ex-battery girls, three who we rescued last year and three newbies who we adopted a couple of weeks ago.   Suffice to say that it's a little stressful in Hash Hall at the moment as the ASBO mob aren't best pleased to have their coop invaded by a bunch of featherless newbies.  But then to be fair, if someone moved into our house, me and Blouse wouldn't say "welcome and help yourselves to the fridge".

Red mite is a bitch.   The only way to get rid of it is to clean every scrap of bedding out of the coop, and spray every surface with something intended for the purpose, especially the nooks and crannies, corners, under the perches etc..   I use poultry shield, but there's stuff called Smite which is new and supposed to be very good.   This needs to be done every week except in mid-winter when the temperature doesn't get much above freezing.  Also watch what bedding your using, as the wrong stuff will act like red mite hotel, and don't keep it anywhere near the coop for the same reason.

There is a really good forum here , although some woman on there keeps banging on about running

fireworks and chickens