Mites, Lice and Fleas, Dealing with External Parasites

Great article on parasites! These creepy crawlies are bad, but thankfully they’re all treatable, and best of all, preventable.

I love the explanations and visuals of what mite are and what they do to our poultry, and how to treat them. I've never had them albeit the SLMs as we too believe in prevention so use Food Grade DE for years, even in the parrot cages for fruit flies and pantry moths.

Excellent and so informative!!

This is an absolutely amazing article, however it's not helping me with my problem. I have an absolutely HORRIBLE infestation of WOOD MITES!!! They are all over everything. I got some predatory mites and although they did kill most of them and they still are. However there are just so many that they can't keep up.
I'm giving you five stars, but I'd suggest you add in a bit on wood mites.

Great article and pictures.
The second part ‘Prevention of external parasites’ is a need to know for everyone with chickens.

I’d prefer prevention over treating and until now I never needed to use Permethrin or any other poison to keep away /destroy lice or mite.
For me its no go to keep songbirds out of the chicken domain so I need to check often, especially in summer.
I do use DE in their sand bath, mixed with sand under the bedding in the nest-boxes, and use it as a paint (with water) to prevent a red mite infestation. The two times I discovered a few lice I could act quickly (cleaning and applying DE afterwards) to get in control again.

good information and pictures so people can identify what they have

Excellent and comprehensive article with practical and actionable advice. Thank you for mentioning sticktight fleas, usually found in warmer and wetter zones like the tropics and subtropics (where I live). They can be easy to confuse with mites but have a different life cycle so it's important to make that distinction. Thanks for writing this up.

Very simple easy to understand article. I also found the pictures helpful including the size comparison diagram.

Well written, comprehensive overview of parasites that can affect the backyard flock, including information for prevention and treatment. I'm bookmarking this one!

thanks for a very informative and well illustrated article

Great to have pictures of the parasites.

Lots of excellent information on these parasites. Very good read.

Great article! Informative and easy-to-read. It covers the basics of parasites well - from identification to treatment and prevention. Very nicely done. Thanks!