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Sorry for the wait! Here goes. . .
I first noticed the red mites in the coop some time ago. I put my tee-shirted-naked-arm in to the nest box to gather a couple of eggs and when I drew it back out there were hundreds (I don’t think that is an exaggeration!) of wee bugs all over me. When I looked closer there were loads everywhere, mainly underneath the shelves and nest box roof. Some were small and black, some were slightly larger and red. The red ones have already sucked the blood out of a chicken. *shudders* Looking back now, I wonder if this had anything to do with losing one of the original hens, Hetty, so suddenly.
Immediately I started applying a dose of Jeyes Fluid as per the instructions found on several forums. The coop was emptied and the birds turfed out on their ear all day while I sprayed EVERYWHERE with the fluid. Over two days I attacked these wee blighters and was mighty pleased with myself that they seemed to be gone. Unfortunately, after a couple of weeks, I noticed them coming back again. By this time I had put in the Ikea Hack nest boxes and wasn’t best pleased that they weren’t helping much – in fact there were now MORE lovely wee nooks and crannies for them to live in.
This would be the point where I started to temporarily lose interest in the chickens. They were very hard work. There were mites everywhere. When I had been anywhere near the coop I came away scratching my head, arms etc. Even when I collected eggs – the eggs had loads of mites on them. This wouldn’t affect egg numbers or do anything to the eggs themselves, but it was very off-putting.
Then one day Iain asked me how I was getting on with the battle against the mites and I admitted they were winning. He told me of a product called a Sulphur Candle that he had read about in the paper (The Sun DOES have its uses after all!) that gardeners use to fumigate greenhouses at the end of the growing season and which he had found mentioned on several forums after doing a quick search for “red mites and sulphur candles.” The idea is that the thick smoke the candle emits can get into areas that you might miss with the spray.
The very next day I made my way to B&Q to pick up two tins of this miraculous stuff (each tin was roughly £5) and had a lovely 45 minute long chat with the B&Q guy about chickens and red mite and sulphur candles – I heard his life story and came away with loads of images of him as a young child with red mites swarming over his skin after being in the coop for a few seconds!
I had to wait for several weekends before being able to use it though, what with family events and the weather and all. . . but finally finally, I was able to clean out the coop again, wash all the (very easy to wash) Ikea Hack nest box, and set the candle alight and shut the coop doors. After checking for obvious leaks of mucho smoke which would need taped up, I kinda left it for a while. It said 12 hours but I didn’t think it would take that long to kill all those itty bitty mites, so, after about 6 hours I went to the shed put the candle out. I got as far as opening the doors and stepping half a step inside when the smoke transformed itself into a clenched fist and punched me in the left eye, leaving me sore and smarting, before moving through my nose and attacking my throat from the inside making me think that the last thing I would see would be chicken feet and legs as they ran over my dying body lying in the mud.
I managed to shut the doors before this happened and made it all the way back to the kitchen where I seriously considered life without the sight of my left eye! Needless to say I left the candle to finish its business over night. Even the next day when the smoke was well and truly gone, the smell still caught in our throats when we went to check the levels of mite activity. At first glance it looked terribly disappointing. There were thousands of mites all over the walls of the sheds, they seemed everywhere. It wasn’t until I scrutinised the shed that I realised these were the dead ones. They must have felt the smoke creeping into the grooves in the wood and tried to make a run for it.
So far the news has been fairly up-beat. I did see one very small bug on one of the eggs yesterday which I am choosing to believe was something other than red mite. Play along with me on this for a while please. I suppose it is possible that there were a couple of mites still on the chickens while they were out of the coop. The good news is, if it DOES come back I have the other tin of sulphur to use immediately – I don’t have to wait for months spraying and letting them take control – I can just zap them again.
So long as I keep my eyes shut and don’t breathe!
So BIG thumbs up for using a Sulphur Candle rather than a spray. As long as you have somewhere else safe to put the chickens while the candle is lit, I would say it is a much more effective solution and definitely a lot less effort! Good luck – let me know how you get on.