How to check your chickens and treat them for parasites
Keeping chickens is a lot of fun, but there is some work involved as well. One of the jobs involved in keeping chickens is checking for parasites and eliminating them as best you can.
Lice and mites are just two of the parasites that you may find on your chickens, there’s more. Generally speaking you will find these little critters on the skin of your chooks with a good inspection.
Not only will it be unpleasant for your birds to have parasites on them, it can make them sick and reduce their ability to lay eggs.
Of course this is just like all other pets, just about any pet can attract unwanted bugs. Just try keeping fleas off your dog.
Roughly once a month you should inspect your chickens. Spread the wings and look through the feathers underneath the wings checking for red and irritated skin, little clumps of eggs or even lice themselves. The lice are big enough to see.
And after checking underneath the wings look under the breast feathers as well.
If discovered you should treat your birds with a proprietary powder. However it is not sufficient just to treat the birds, you should also treat their chicken house as well.
The way I do that is to use a flea bomb that I get from the supermarket. It is one of those things intended to be let off in the house in a closed room to get rid of fleas that may be living there from your cat or dog.
I put a sheet over the ventilation areas of the chicken house, close off the entrance so that the chickens cannot get in, let off the bomb in the morning and keep the house locked up all day. Works a treat.
This won’t kill all of the nasty bugs, but will kill many of them, and will keep their numbers down until next time.
Here’s a short video showing you how to inspect your chickens.
And here’s a little more reading.
