Chicken Lice

[tortoise]

At least one of my chickens has lice. Ewww!

How do I get rid of them?!!!

 

[patandchickens]

Any kind of commercial poultry dusting powder will do it -- sevin powders seem to be most common/popular in the States, rotenone powder is all you can get up here. Dust *all* the chickens, if one has 'em the others do too. I have had best results by filling the toe of a somewhat threadbare retired sock with powder, knotting it shut, and using it as a powderpuff to pat all over their bottoms and armpits and in to the base of all their feathers; but there are lots of other ways of doing it too.

Some people will tell you to us food-grade DE but my experience is that while DE probably *is* useful for prevention and for just a coupla mites or lice, it really does not cut it against an actual active infestation.

Make sure to treat repeatedly, I forget offhand what the schedule is for lice but it's like every five days for a few weeks type thing, since no dusting powder will kill louse *eggs*.

I am under the impression that using ivermectin wormer will also kill lice on the birds (have not tried this myself, nor seriously read up on teh subject) but as it's questionable if you're eating the eggs and would have to be repeated a couple times I am not sure it's the best tactic unless you were about to worm them *anyhow*.

Good luck,

Pat

 

[tortoise]

I have DE and ivermectin on hand, so maybe I'll look into using those first.

Thank you!

 

[miss_thenorth]

I have used ivermectin successfully for chicken lice. I only treated once, and kept checking, but the eggs never hatched and then eventually fell off. The ivermectin I use is .08%, and I used three drops to the base of the skull. I didn't have to repeat thankfully, and we gave the eggs to the dogs, (okay, we ate some too). Bonus is it treats for some other worms too.

 

[tortoise]

I used Ivomec (1% Ivermectin) 2 drops between the shoulders. Repeated twice. I checked today (haven't been handling them much lately) and they are lice-free. Yay!

Thank you!

 

[me&thegals]

I really should know this, but how do you know if they have lice? Is it obvious?

 

[ToLiveToLaugh]

I've always used sevin. As for scale mites (know this wasn't the q, but may be useful) my aunt got me started using tea tree oil. Works well and makes the chicken snazzy looking!

 

[Farmfresh]

I really should know this, but how do you know if they have lice? Is it obvious?

If you look under the wings you can usually see them marching along in their little "wing - pits". Mites the same way. Kind of like seeing fleas crawling along a dogs tummy where the hair is thin.

 

[me&thegals]

I really should know this, but how do you know if they have lice? Is it obvious?

If you look under the wings you can usually see them marching along in their little "wing - pits". Mites the same way. Kind of like seeing fleas crawling along a dogs tummy where the hair is thin.

Are their outward signs and symptoms that would first make me suspicious? Thanks.

 

[Farmfresh]

Lice and mites both live by sucking blood (although there ARE kinds of mites that just eat dead skin cells and the like). When you have blood loss of this kind the birds (or other animal for that matter) is more easily tired, droopy, less thrifty and more prone to other infections.

I don't like my animals to get to this point. So just as I periodically look my dogs over for fleas and other boo boos, I look my chickens over for parasites like lice. Just good husbandry practice.