My chooks don't get mites. I take care to give them all year round dry dustbathing facilities to prevent lice and the lack of wooden nooks and crannies such as you can find in even the most stringently diatomed of wooden coops means red mite don't have anywhere to hide either. I've had chooks for 7 years now and had never heard of Scaley leg mite. 'Til now.
There is certainly always something to learn.
It is disgusting, forming as it does scabs, lifting the scales and, if the literature is to be believed, is excruciatingly painful. One of the reasons I didn't spot it is because mine were still eating, dustbathing and running about in their usual way around the garden. Eggs were in short supply but that's to be expected in early Spring. Lizzie was slower but still doing all the above and I had, as it turns out wrongly, assumed it was a side effect of the soft shelled egg laying that hybrids tend to do when they are coming to the end of their egg laying days at around four years old.
I know I took my eye off the ball when Pop died. I had given them really deep straw in their overnight pen all winter to generate warmth beneath their perches. I changed it all regularly, but with the warming of the days had kept on clearing it and replenishing it to the same depth. The warmth and moisture had combined to create an ideal home for the mite to flourish it seems. Having said that they can also catch it from wild bird populations apparently. And as a fellow chicken keeper once found when I asked her, they can even get it when they are roosting in bushes. So it is really random whether it'll strike or not. All the straw is gone now and next winter I'll have to monitor them and the temperatures even more closely.
Looking for what it was led me to what to do about it.
Didn't want to use ivermectin as my dogs are in amongst the chooks daily. Nellie likes chicken poo and although it would have been a spot-on treatment I am not sure what would end up travelling through the chook. Ivermectin is one of those avermectic drugs that can adversely affect border and bearded collies with the genetic mutation and even those without it. There are lots of arguments both ways I found but I'm not taking any chances. Even poor Misty (see other entry) is going to have to wait for her Advocate spot-on til she goes home. I know the chances of Nellie licking it off are slim but it contains moxidectin (another avermectin drug)and what I read about that and its effects on BCs is enough to make me not want it anywhere near her.
So I went a different route.....
A week of vaseline and tea tree oil mixed together and splodged all over all their legs and up under their knickers (Bert's too) every night for six nights caused a great deal of bad feeling in the ranks. There were episodes of slipping off perches and landing in feathery heaps beneath.....Moved on to every three/four days to kill off the mite within it's life cycle, easing off the scabs and monitoring each chook each day. They reeked of teatree and their feathers took a beating from the vaseline but.....
Now they are all clear. Lizzie went lame part way through this messy process. Daily inspections and extra treatment on her legs seemed to help then she'd relapse and although keen to eat, dustbathe and mingle she wasn't improving consistently. So off to the vet we went (yes, we have a chicken vet!) and, relief to find she was clearly a very healthy chook in every other way and then anxiety finding she had a secondary infection that had got into the skin when the mites had got under her scales.
So every day for a week she has had antibiotics and metacam - by beak...Have you ever held a strong-winged chook under one arm while holding her beak open with the hand of the same arm and used a syringe with the other hand?....Thought you'd find this amusing:
Iain did.
Glad to say she is much much better - I have to be a little more more devious about catching her as each day comes which is always a good sign with a chicken - but we're not clear yet.
If the antibiotics and metacam haven't clinched it by next week we are back off to see Lynn the vet.
I want my chooks to live as natural a life as possible and my management of their environment is geared to this with almost all their food 100% organic (the odd handful of sunflower seeds are not), they even have probiotic organic yoghurt. Big mess! Being out all day on grass around trees, hedges and bushes, with access to earth to scratch up, as well as the access to shade and sunshine and dustbathing, AND roosting overnight on branches in a large airy roofed pen overnight should mean no problems for the chooks. I am not that naive or so into holistic living I believe that it will provide all the answers and avoid all nasties. I use Drontal four times a year to worm my dogs (they are often amongst livestock - eating poo sometimes - and unborn lambs are especially vulnerable to the faeces of inadequately wormed dogs) and they have lepto jabs every year (it has reared it's head in the New Forest) but the others every three years (though I am thinking that Archie now ten might be able to skip those from here on). Like Arch and Nellie, Pop and Henry ate a raw diet, most of the meat, offal and bones they had came from within farming practices that have the same views as me - minimal intrusion free-range or organic. They had holistic treatments and only minimal intrusions on their bodies, in the form of antibiotics or anti-inflammatories. Yet they both died of sudden-onset cancer. There are no easy answers to the roots of disease and 'science' is not the enemy.
So I use flubenvet to worm my chooks which is the only preventative intervention treatment I use for them. Otherwise I will use antibiotics/anti-inflammatories if there is a likelihood of suffering if I don't. But this is the first time in as I say 7 years of keeping chooks that I have had to. The vet was most impressed with the effects of the vaseline/teatree oil, didn't try to hard sell the ivermectin and despite my paranoia about Nellie and side effects perfectly understood my concerns.
Moving on:
As for the veg garden - we have winter salad leaves in the green house, my sweetpeas are growing keenly in their empty loo rolls (my mother and I will have lots and lots of scented blooms!)
I have managed to keep parsley growing again all this winter too despite that extremely cold weather, so I definitely feel like a proper gardener now.
The garlic bed is looking like we'll have a bumper crop in the summer (we finished last summer's crop three weeks ago). I have got red onions growing well. The charlottes are in, numerous rows of rocket, mixed leaves, radish and land cress are growing. Even trying baby carrots again - the soil here is too good for them really so chucked in some sand to see if that makes a difference (thanks for the tip Edna!)
Planted raspberry canes, some new, some from neighbours. Red currant bushes in - from another neighbour. Basil is in a pot in the green house...
Runners and sugar snaps are in the greenhouse.
And lastly, the asparagus is growing again. And, whoohoo, this year I can eat at least some of it!!!!
Loads more to plant but with the new picket fencing around it the veg patch is looking like it means business.
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