Bugs in the chicken coop
March 1st, 2010
YUCK! I’m scratching my head over here trying to figure out what is happening in the hen house. Sunday was a nice warm day here for us and as I was in the middle of mucking out the coop I took a pause and looked at it’s walls. There were little (tiny) crawly bugs everywhere on the walls and ceiling. They were evenly spaced except for a few places where they were more clumped up together.
I got worried we had mites so off Lee and I went to get some food grade diatomaceous earth. The only store where we could find it only carried 50 pound bags, so I am well stocked on that now. I went nuts with it dusting down the coop. Then I got two of the girls and checked around their vent areas and other places as well as I could. I still didn’t find any of these bugs or eggs on them. Later that night, when I went to go lock the hens in for the night, I looked around the walls again. Most of the bugs had disappeared. I don’t know whether this was because it was colder by then or if it was because of the diatomaceous earth.
Today when I went out to do another dusting of diatomaceous earth in the coop I still saw them but not nearly as many. It was also a colder day so I don’t know if that affected the bugs any. So what I am wondering is if I have a mite problem or a spider problem. I can’t seem to find anything that tells me you can find mites during the day time in plain sight on walls and such. The hens are laying just as fine as always. In fact I have more eggs per day then last year. They don’t seem to be adverse to getting into their coop. Those would all be signs of mite infestations. Now they do have some peck marks to their combs but I am attributing that to their 5 days of being stuck in the coop.
Here are two links that talk more about mites in poultry.
March 2nd, 2010 at 10:52 am
YUCK!!! are those mites? Or feas or what?
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
March 4th, 2010 at 7:48 am
Did you get rid of the bugs? They look like spiders to me, but I’m certainly no bug expert. Once, when my chickens were very small, I was sitting in my coop with them, holding them, and I noticed some kind of bug on my hand. I had no idea what it was, but it was small & wiggly. I freaked out & went inside & showered. The next day we cleaned the coop & started sprinkling just a little bit of DE under the bedding when we put down new pine & cedar chips. I’ve never seen anything since, and I’ve looked for bugs often.
March 4th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
We’re wondering if it was a spider outbreak. There’s not much sign of them at all, although the weather has been cooler too. Robin has added DE to the bedding and nesting boxes, and also on all the lips and edges in the coop (window frames, ledges in the ceiling, around the roosts, etc). If they are spiders, then the ones that survive the DE will probably grow up to be chicken feed. No sign of bugs on the birds. Whew!
March 15th, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Free protein!
July 11th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
I have been frantically searching the internet today because my 2 year old daughter suddenly had bugs in her very curly hair, and then suddenly going down her neck, the back of her shirt, on on her torso. They transferred to me very quickly.
At first I thought she had head lice, but after dousing us both in DE and bathing her with Castile soap I did what I always do–hit the internet. I looked at lice and much to my dismay AND relief, the pictures looked nothing like what was crawling in my daughters hair.
I post, because we had just come from tending the chickens (we are chicken sitting the chickens at our school) and she had stuck her head inside one of the smaller coops to look for eggs. I can’t tell if the picture above is the same kind of spider, but it definitely looks like the size of the bugs crawling in her hair.
I am relieved to have found your thread!
July 17th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Glad, to know we aren’t alone. We have the same crawly bugs when we go to our coop. They crawl all over us (my kids and I have all had them on us).