Solved How often are your chicks getting lice, scaly leg mites and bumblefoot?

[Farrier1987]

I get some mites from time to time, I dust the next boxes once a year or so, when replacing nest straw. Setting hens are especially prone, and I will use coppertox on their legs and dust their bums if they are infested. I paint the perches with used frying oil once a year, mostly takes away the cracks and crevices where they hide and live when not on the bird. These mites are arachnids, members of the spider family, tick etc. DE dustbath always available in the coop in a ruffneck toat. I give them worm medicine in the fall after a killing frost.

Bumblefoot, about one or two a year, flock of 25 free rangers. Treated the first this year last night. You scrape off the scab, open a little with a sharp knife, squeeze it like a zit and apply iodine after. A yucky job, but needs to be done. She is still limping this morning, but I expect to not be noticeable by tomorrow.

[Satellite]

I am so grateful for all of your responses

[KimChick]

This is our first year with chickens, and yes, I feel we are getting a lot thrown at us! First, we lost a BSL hen to bumblefoot, only because we had no clue what it was. Now, some of the other flock, RSL's, have mites. And that could be from the semi-deep bedding, or the very hot summer.
Now we know that the bumblefoot probably came about from a change in their diet - we had started taking them out of the yard for 10-15 minutes, 3 0r 4 times a week so they could eat fresh grass and bugs.
The deep bedding was suggested to us just for better cushioning and moisture absorption in the coop.
Needless to say, I probably look like an eccentric, fastidious chicken keeper for the time I spend out there scooping surface in the coops. Not to mention how often I spent time raking the out of the yards in the summer just so it wouldn't smell of if someone drove up (also so the bumblefoot chickens' feet didn't get worse).

[KimChick]

Farrier1987, we did the same thing to treat bumblefoot. In addition, though, we soaked their feet in a warm epsom salt bath put polysporin on a small sterile pad, then wrapped their feet with some vet-wrap called MEDca which adheres to itself and doesn't peel off.
And to think that others we had asked re: bumblefoot said it was rare.

Can someone share the ingredients in the potpourri? This past hot summer, I put sprigs of mint in the 4 corners of each coop (we have 2) to deter flies.

[Skinny rooster]

I got mites this year in an empty pen, all my birds had been gone for weeks and I hadn't bought anything new in over a year. Even when I had chickens, I almost never let them out because of predators around here. My neighbour got scaly mites and she had her girls from day olds over two years ago, she has no chickens close by her flock either. I am just telling you this to show you dodo happens so don't feel guilty. Like the others said get to know your enemy and get rid of them. Good luck.

[Killerbunny]

Maximus has a pot pourri recipe. Perhaps she'll share? I had some she sent me and the broody girls seemed to like it.

[kelliszoo]

My birds have a big coop with a run that is sand base, as our whole place pretty much is sand. I have had chickens and ducks going on probably 20 years now.

I have jersey giants which are supposed to be predisposed to bumblefoot due to their size and the impact when they jump down from up high. I keep my roosts low and have only ever had one case and that was on a rooster I had on loan from another breeder, came to find out later he'd had it before he came but the breeder thought he had it licked, but there must have still been something festering in there. Opened it up, cleaned it up and got him past it.

Lice, all birds have to a degree, they're impossible to get rid of altogether, as long as they have dust baths and are on a program of some sort of treatment at least once a year, very rarely will they build up to numbers where they are a problem. Usually only in birds that are already weakened in some way does that happen.

Scaly leg mite, I had in a group of OEGBs I bought several years back, that has been my only case, never had it in my home raised birds. I just put vegetable oil in an empty plastic container and stood them in it for a minute or so for a few days in a row. It smothers the mites and also softens the scaly skin and is sloughs off and leaves a smooth leg. A dose of ivermectin at the same time will help clear most types of internal and external parasites including the scaly leg mites. I always inject my ivermectin, using an injectable form of it, as I think it's the only way to ensure they are getting an accurate dose. Pour on is meant for animals with fur and is absorbed through hair follicles, since birds only have feathers and much fewer follicles, you don't really know how much they are absorbing.

[Jaye]

I haven’t had to deal with Bumblefoot before, but if I ever do, I plan to try a new approach that a member on another forum posted about not long ago. I think it's a really good idea. The hen had a dark plug about ¾ cm in diameter on the bottom of her foot, and she used a drywall screw to remove it. She held the foot and bird steady and placed the screw tip dead centre to the plug, and slowly turned the screw clockwise, while monitoring the hen's reaction, because she didn't want to screw it right through the foot, just in deep enough for the screw to grip on to most of the plug. When she felt a little wince from the hen, she stopped turning. She held the foot firmly, pulled the drywall screw straight out and the whole plug and mushy under core pulled right out with it. She then probably applied some sort of wound disinfectant and put the hen in a hospital pen – a wire bottomed rabbit cage with a flat wooden perch - so that the wound would have a chance to heal over without being exposed to germs and debris back in the hen’s regular environment. Apparently the hen was back to business as usual by the following day.
Her approach was also shared here on PTO recently by Killerbunny, I think.

I have had to deal with scaly leg mites before though, and I used Ivermectin - parted the feathers on the spot on the neck between the shoulders and applied the appropriate dosage directly to the skin, so that it is absorbed through the skin. In addition, I treated their legs with VetRX. Bag Balm, Vaseline or any kind of vegetable oil and even coconut oil works well too.

[windwalkingwolf]

Mites: broody hens here will get them almost as a matter of course, because they're sitting still and not dustbathing often enough to deter them. Stick your hand under a setting hen to take out freshly laid eggs, and suddenly have hundreds of the tiny things crawling up your arm, UGH! I Noromectin twice a year, but when I get broodies with mites I dust the nest, hen included. If you're seeing mites inside the empty coop, Skinny Rooster, they may not be poultry mites. There's one that looks very similar that likes to hand around on wood and doesn't bother chickens. I got them in my duck pen one year, had them marching up my hands anytime I touched the coop wall. They're crawly but harmless.
Lice: I see them only when there's something else wrong with the bird, and again, they aren't dustbathing or at least not as often as they should be. If you pick up a bird and it has lice, it's a REALLY good indication that there's something wrong. Lowest on the pecking order will be the first to get lice. They were the first clue I had that my old rooster, Buddy has something wrong with him, turned out he was losing his eyesight. Broodies are also prone to lice just by virtue of staying still.
Not just wild birds, but rodents and predators like raccoons spread them around too. Mites and lice can't live on a mouse, but they're happy to hitch a ride, and sometimes a sudden mite or louse infestation is an indicator of a rodent problem or that a predator has been sniffing around.
Bumblefoot: One or two birds a year. I've found more half-rotten prickly ash thorns embedded deep in feet than I care to admit. Always the big roosters though, so far no lighter guys or hens, but I've been lucky. As a matter of fact, aforementioned Buddy rooster has a chronic case, has for years, and probably contributed to the lice he got :/. I did bumblefoot surgery 3 times and it won't clear, and antibiotics included injected directly into his foot. Whatever is in there is too deep for me to dig out, and too encapsulated for ABX to touch, so I gave up. He lost the front 3 toenails on that foot to compromised circulation, and he high-steps with that foot because it feels funny (probably my digging around in there damaged nerves, but it could just as easily be the pressure of the swelling) but other than that, it really doesn't bother him so I let him be. Anybody else though, I try to catch it as early as I can so if there's a foreign body, it doesn't have a chance to wiggle deeper. I've heard ducks are prone to bumblefoot, but I've had a lot of ducks and none of them have ever caught it.
Scaly leg mite: My worst poultry coop enemy. I brought in an old hen with it once, had no idea what it was--I thought it was her advanced age that made her legs look like that and three years went by and all my younger birds had ugly legs before I figured it out. It turns out it takes about two years of infestation to gross up a chickens' legs, so if you see it, you know it's been hanging around a while. I tried canola oil and vaseline and everything short of the old cures of used sump oil or diesel. It wasn't until I started using ivermectin that I got it under control, and you can't even tell if you've got them all until your birds molt out diseased scales and grow new. They do not molt leg scales at the same frequency as feathers, so in severe cases, some encouragement can be necessary in the form of regular scrubbing.
Is it just me, or does it seem like when we were kids, these things were a non-issue LOL--hens lived unmolested until they died? On the one hand, it was a much simpler time where hens were expected to earn their keep, keep up with the flock, and if they couldn't they hit the stew pot, but on the other hand, we never had a hen that lived and still laid eggs at 16 years old.

[Ontario Chick]

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Is it just me, or does it seem like when we were kids, these things were a non-issue LOL--hens lived unmolested until they died? On the one hand, it was a much simpler time where hens were expected to earn their keep, keep up with the flock, and if they couldn't they hit the stew pot, but on the other hand, we never had a hen that lived and still laid eggs at 16 years old.

My guess would be that chickens have suffered the same problems in the past, it's just that nobody really looked that closely and the one that wasn't feeling very well got picked off by free ranging dogs.....one way to keep a healthy flock.....
...... once we started to use chickens as therapy animals and entertainment, then things started cropping up.