I did post my rather criptic experience here somewhere but I will try the shortened version. Our rather traumatic finding of chicken/fowel ticks began in June. At that time we had three coops and 21 hens one Roo. We lost 7 hens when our heat hit no we have never ever lost that many in our 4+ years of keeping chickens! Our chickens were in a continual moulting state, weak, loosing weight, intermittent diarrhea when we discovered our uninvited beasties! Good reason to have a weakened immune system to die from 118 degree heat,for sure! We started spraying with Orange guard, power washed and sprayed again and again. We then had so many we disassembled siding and found such a huge infestation we burned coop one to the ground! The beasties had moved into coop two but I was determined not to loose another expnsive labor of love so I researched and attacked. Our 8 legged uninvited guests live where wood touches wood so we saturated all surfaces with Orange guard removed all hay from coop and boxes (found they love it there too). I climbed into coop and caulked and sealed all wood to wood surfaces, dusted everywhere with DE and permethrin dust and waited. They kept arriving!! At night creepy crawling up onto my girls! So I sprayed hens with poultry protect and hit the coop with Raid! Lots of Raid! No hens in the coop for a couple of days. Removed roosts rebuilt them painted them and sealed 8 inches of ends with flex seal (plastic stuff). I waited..toxic so far was my friend!! Dead and dieing beasties so I waited. Two weeks retreat with Raid wait and wait..no more beasties!! We celebrated by putting wood shavings in coop and boxes..big kind not fine the beasties hate the big stuff. Dusted all with DE and permethrin dust and retreat with poultry protect. Finally feathers growing, egg quality returning with hard shells and less failed eggs, slowly gaining weight..sadly we did loose one favorite hen during this time she just couldn't recover her anemia Etc. No more diarrhea!! I check every night (can only see them at night with flashlight) so far all is good. Our third coop was new and not close to the other two and chickens don't mingle across the wash..good thing since birds drop guests to coop they crawl to hens and wait for 7-10 days then fall to find wood which is required for their ugly exoskeleton maintenance and proceed to breed and eat from then on! Not mites..specific to birds of feather, not horses, goats, dogs, cats, or human hosts..the other ticks like those folks these ticks are a particular lot and prefer feathered hosts. Good luck..do your research.. Toxic is not recommended ever..but I resorted to it to save my girls.
Thank you for sharing this. I will check to make sure whether our coop is clear of this. You say you can only see them at night with a flashlight... did you just wait and hope to see them crawling? I'm wondering how to be able to tell for sure.
Thanks for all the info and I too am wondering. I haven't seen anything crawling but will keep an eye out. This coop doesn't have much wood to wood spaces and they've been sleeping on roof lately but new coop we built ourselves/framed so it does have more. We put linoleum/vinyl on the floor but i will see about sealing areas. Besides that though is there any sort of preventative thing like maybe putting DE down or even making a DE whitewash with water and painting it on?