Colour it green

________

housing and run

redmite

red mite

Red mite are a spider like insect, not to be confused with red spider mite, that live in chicken houses, in nooks and crannies, and come out in the night and feed on the unfortunate hens.

Junior and unfed mite are grey, full ones are red.

The easiest way of telling if you have red mite is to run a white cloth of paper towel along the underside of the perch - if it comes up red - you have an infestation.

Red mite can arrive on the birds, on new stock, on wild birds and on vermin. The numbers rise in warm weather.

The many solutions available are:

a good clean out having a hen house design with very few nooks and crannies
blow torching the little blighters (without setting fire to the hen house!)
mite kill spray. Also Ardap has been suggested. As far as I can tell they have the same active ingredient
red mite powder, laced with lavender and tee tree oil
poultry shield
creosoting the hen house. Creosote is no longer available to Joe public, and you have to let the house air for some days. Some people think creosote substitute works just as well.
painting parafin on the inside of hen house (not to be used alongside the blow torch!)
diatom
ivermectin. frontline and panacur, have all been suggested by other people. All not licenced for use on poultry, unless prescribed by your vet. as they are not designed for use on poultry.. what egg withdrawal to implement is not clear, so not keen on these.
limewashing the inside of the hen house
jeyes fluid

and the conclusions we have come to: Starting with a house with very few nooks and crannies, is a great start.. so that's no larch lap, no felt. First reaction to red mite should be a good clean out , removing floor covering and nesting materials, then using either poultry shield - we have not actually tried it as it is not readily available around here, but as far as I can tell it has no magic ingredients, or jeyes fluid, but actually we just swept it out. Blow torching the little blighters is very effective - and satisfying as you hear them pop!, but you can only get to the ones out in the open.. hence not having too many nooks and crannies. We tried the lavendar and tee tree powder .. and apart from smelling nice.. did nothing. So, setting aside our no chemical principals (enough was enough), we used the mite kill spray , which does work. Apparantly it leaves a residue that keeps on killing them. I'm not sure about that, but we did spray it directly onto alive mite, and they soon became dead mite, so it definitely works on contact.

Diatom is like chalk, and made up of very tiny fossils. To something the size of a red mite, it would be like walking in a field of razor blades. At first we witnessed the mite tromping through the diatom with no worries, carrying their beach towels. OK, I exaggerate... But later we found dead ones. it is supposed to take time... and we feel it has worked - and the advantage of diatom is there is nothing particularly nasty in it. We plan to make a dust bath box and lace sand with diatom, in the hope it helps. I think diatom may be more useful as a preventative rather than a treatment.

We are in the process of building a new hen house, although the urgency is less now the mite appear to be all dead, and are making it as nook and crannieless as possible. Treating with creosote/ substitute, with a view to lime washing later, as this is more suitable for when the hens are in residence then the preservative. Lime wash also has the advantage of lightening up the house, and possibly extending the egg laying period as winter approaches. or that might be an old wives's tale..

Meanwhile, mordun, funded by DEFRA are developing a vaccine.