Chicken MITES and LICE! 😭😱 The BEST Natural Treatments ❤️🐔

that moment when you're cuddling your chicken and you freak the cluck out because there are bugs crawling all over your chicken i have been there i know how awful it is so i want to help you with it in an uncertain world one thing unites us all the chicken from the suburbs to the big city let's learn an inclusive and stress-free way to raise chickens welcome to chickenlandia [Music] hey guys welcome to chickenlandia i am a backyard chicken educator here in the pacific northwest but you can call me the president of chickenlandia oh i am rocking the 80s vibe today whatever haters my philosophy has always been that chicken keeping should be easy stress-free and everyone should be able to do it but i cannot deny how stressful it is when you find mites or lice on your chicken i think the first thing that people feel is like oh my gosh can like can i get them are they going to bite me that's a legitimate concern but right off the bat i do want to tell you that for the most part the critters that are going to be on your chickens and living off of them as parasites they are host specific what that means is that they need birds in order to survive they can't really survive on humans so it is possible that you could get bitten by one but they can't live on you so it's not like they're gonna come inside and you know just completely infest your bed while you sleep [Music] so i do want to give you some options in how to treat them if you're already dealing with mites or lice but before we do that we're going to talk a little bit about prevention because that's really the best thing that you can do is prevent them and then not have to deal with them at all so i want to give you some perspective so maybe you can have a little bit less stress about it and maybe think about it a little bit differently literally parasites are everywhere they're they're just all over the natural environment and they're actually really important to the ecosystem that we live in if we didn't have parasites if they were all of a sudden gone tomorrow the human race and all life on this planet would be in really bad shape we actually need these types of critters in order to survive the problem arises when an infestation occurs we don't want our chickens to have an infestation and then really be vulnerable and at risk for other problems because their environment that they're living in is not balanced [Music] so it's not a bad idea to think about things in terms of what would cause an infestation the number one thing would be if you had a bird that is compromised in another way i've had a situation in my flock where i've had a bird that was sick i brought it inside i checked it over like you should do whenever you have a sick bird and i realized that it had mites and then i checked all my other birds and i didn't find anything on them now they likely had mites and or lice on them but they did not have an infestation of those parasites so i didn't really see them when i was checking them i did treat the whole flock so a lot of times when someone is asking about their sick chicken their concern they want to know what's going on people will say well check it for mites or lice because that can make your chicken sick and that is true in extreme circumstances there can be an infestation that is just so bad let's say it came from somewhere else and it infected your flock and there's a chicken that is really sick like anemic because they're being bitten by mites or lice but it's a lot more likely that the chicken was already compromised in some way and that's why the parasites were able to take hold [Music] so since we know that birds that are healthy are less likely to be infested with parasites then it makes sense that we want to make sure that they have everything that they need to live a happy and healthy life and really thrive one very important thing of course is to make sure that they have a nice well-balanced diet that means you want to give them their chicken feed you want to make sure that they have calcium supplement of some kind either oyster shell or their own eggshells you can crush those up and feed those back to them you also want to make sure that you're offering grit even if your chickens have a big space and you think that they're probably getting grit from their natural environment you know it depends on what the soil is like what the environment is like where you live i'm a big believer in having the option of feeding your chickens some healthy table scraps it's a great way to save some money as long as you are eating healthy and you're not giving them too much of one thing then i think it's perfectly fine to give them some table strap scraps and in fact it's a really sustainable practice so to me that's important to keep that as an option [Music] of course it is just good old common sense you want your chickens to have fresh clean water daily you can throw a splash of apple cider vinegar in their water that will also help the environment in their crop to keep those pathogens away i always say just put a splash in their water but you can put a tablespoon per gallon if it's really important for you to measure it but what is going on over there [Laughter] what do you do what are you talking about a very very very important thing to do to keep mites and lice under control is to make sure that your chickens have a place where they can dust bathe all year round in the warmer months it's easy for chickens to find a place to dust bathe in their natural environment but when the weather gets colder it starts to get harder for them to find a place to dust bathe so it is up to you to make sure to provide an area like that for them basically what i do is i use a kitty litter box and i put dirt or sand in it i will put wood ash in it diatomaceous earth now before you freak out on me the wood ash and the diatomaceous earth are optional i'm going to tell you in just a minute why i think diatomaceous earth is a good idea and i'll even put aromatic herbs in their dust bath so it's like they're at the spa you might say oh but they you know they won't get mites in the winter because it's too cold well mites will hibernate let's not go there let's make sure they have the opportunity to dust bathe all the way through the winter even if you live in a really cold climate it's just better safe than sorry [Music] to check your chicken for lice or mites you want to check behind their neck check at the base of the tail and under the wings and also look in the vent area sometimes you can see like clumps of dirt and that could be a sign of eggs so i don't want to lie to you you can have the best practices in the world you can have really good conditions and you can still end up with a problem with mites or lice sometimes it just happens i am someone that definitely leans in the natural direction when it comes to how i teach about chickens and how i keep my own chickens how we treat our chickens what we put on our chickens what we put in our chickens is not limited to your chickens it can go in either into their eggs it could go into the environment it could go into the water ways when you have chickens you're participating in an ecosystem that is already very stressed and we don't need to add to that stress so one treatment that i've been hearing a lot of good things about i haven't actually used it for myself although i did order some the other day is electr psp electro psp is made out of a bacteria that exists in the soil and it is toxic to some insects i do want to point out that it can be harmful for bees but from what i read it's only harmful until it dries and you can spray it right on your chickens you can spray it in your coop the one thing that i think is really a downside of the elector psp is that it is very expensive and a lot of people can't afford it pyrethrin or permethrin are both pretty good options you can put it directly on your chickens you can put it in your coop the big downside to these options is that they are very toxic to bees and also aquatic life also these products are toxic to cats that's something that a lot of people don't know be very careful because it can hurt your cat my last recommendation for what you can use to treat mites or lice is diatomaceous earth i can just hear some of you freaking out right now but i'm gonna be really honest with you i think diatomaceous earth has gotten a really bad rap and there is a lot of misinformation and alarmist information out there about it but it's important for us to know the facts about what we're dealing with because i'm not saying that diatomaceous earth doesn't have any risk it does so let me just explain some things about diatomaceous earth there are two kinds of diatomaceous earth there is amorphous diatomaceous earth and there is crystalline diatomaceous earth amorphous diatomaceous earth is considered generally safe it is in a lot of the products that we use every day it's in our toothpaste it's in things that we eat of course it is still dust you don't want to get a whole bunch of dust in your lungs but it is not associated with cancer crystalline diatomaceous earth is associated with cancer amorphous diatomaceous earth cannot be labeled as food grade with more than one percent of crystalline diatomaceous earth in it i always want you to get food grade diatomaceous earth even though it is generally safe i still use a mask if i am putting it on my chickens or if i'm putting it in the dust bath but honestly i really feel like when i am comparing that level of risk to the risk of something like ivermectin or frontline i'm gonna go with diatomaceous earth diatomaceous earth can be harmful to bees and other beneficial insects keep it limited to the coop and to your chickens don't use it if you're doing deep litter because it will destroy the beneficial critters that are needed for the composting process a lot of people ask me like okay well you know if there's the electro psp why don't you use that instead of diatomaceous earth diatomaceous earth is way cheaper than electric psp so in my effort to keep chicken keeping inclusive i want to give people this option and i want to tell people it's okay if this is what you need to use i know that people say it doesn't work that's not my experience okay [Music] you definitely want to clean your coop really well that's the first thing i want you to do for any of these treatment options treat the coop treat your chickens and you're going to do that by making sure you get behind the neck all the way down the back under the feathers the vent area and definitely underneath the wings that's where you want to concentrate the treatment you're going to do that and then in another 10 days you're going to clean your coop out again you're going to treat your coop again and you're going to treat your chickens again and if you're using diatomaceous earth i want you to do it again in another 10 days and then after you are golden because you've treated your chickens for mites and lice or you've prevented them you can start thinking well how can i prevent rats disease or other parasites in my flock i want you to check out this video right here it's going to show you how to do all of that and of course it's 100 friendly backyard chicken education and entertainment you're going to love it

Channel: Welcome to Chickenlandia

Views: 105,487

Keywords: Backyard Chickens, Chicklandia

Id: 7hRgaeGSJyI

Length: 12min 12sec (732 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020