Ok I have been through that so let me tell you how to get rid of them:
To get rid of the infestation:
Buy poultry dust from the feed store (permethrin). Dust each chicken under wings, vent area, and everywhere but the face with dust in a tied off sock. Toss all bedding and nest box material (VERY important). Repeat dusting in 7 days and again in 14 if they are still not gone or if you are also dealing with lice, not just mites.
Dust coop as well (or spray coop with liquid permethrin). You can also spray your chickens with the liquid diluted permethrin if you don't want to deal with dust.
When you are dealing with an infestation, take precautions such as these:
Take off clothes and put them in a plastic bag, which you keep in the garage. Vaccuum house and change sheets - wash all laundry at least every 4 days, as that is the minimum life cycle I have read about for the Northern Fowl Mite, which I am assuming you are dealing with.
They don't breed on human blood but can live for 3 weeks with no poultry blood meal. In the meantime they do bite and annoy humans and pets. They will not "infest" your animals but will bite them while they are trying to find chickens. The red mite lives for 9 months with no poultry meal and comes out at night and lives in the cracks of the coop. The Northern Fowl Mite is active during the day and runs VERY fast. It will run up your arms as you collect eggs.
Sevin dust is effective but is no longer approved for poultry. It is sold at garden centers and lost its approval in 2009 so is banned for poultry. Some mites are resistant to permethrin.
There are websites on internet that claim that mites can breed on human blood but I read a university entomologist's report that stated that this has never once been proven. The people who get a bird's nest near their home and the mites come in through the air conditioner in the window...they get thousands of bugs in their home and end up calling an exterminator- those people state they are being infested but remember those bugs can live for 9 months with no bird blood meal so it may appear to them that they are breeding off human blood.
I have been in tears, sleeping in a cot in the living room with mites crawling all over me, taking showers and baths three times in one night because of mites.
If you take a shower they CAN escape the shower and only a tub bath will make them float up dead. So if you are bothered by them this is what you do:
Vaccuum home
Change sheets/blankets
Take tub bath/submerge your head
Repeat as needed
If you collect them in your home they are just awful. So what I do in times of infestation is to leave my clothes in the garage and just run for the shower. I always keep my chicken keeping clothes in the garage in a bag now just out of habit, having dealt with mites on and off for years now.
If you don't change the nest box material and all the shavings in the coop with each treatment then they will be back. I now use sand in the coop and mix dust in there so I don't have to throw out bedding all the time.
Wild birds bring in mites. If I am having a lot of trouble with mites it really helps to dust every 4 months or so, just to keep them away. If you give them a woodstove ashes/DE/sand bath that will help as a preventative but I have had DE all over my coops and still had mites everywhere running up my arms. So I recommend chemicals to treat an infestation.
Keeping chickens requires mite treatments if they have mites, as mites can kill chickens, as can lice. It is such a joy to keep chickens bug free. Rest assured that if you are vigilant and just keep at it they will go away. As soon as you notice that you are itchy when you go in the coops it is time to do another round of treatment, as it is very difficult to see these bugs. I cannot find them on me at all until I take a bath and they float up dead, or find them in my socks, dead with blood stains.
They are very fast and nasty little creatures. They fall dead instantly with the insecticides. Please do follow the approved insecticide plan though, as these things are highly regulated. I hope this helps and I hope you are back to the joy of chicken keeping soon!
