Scaly leg mites

[bearcreekfarm]

In all the years I have kept chickens, I have never had a problem with mites. Recently, however, I picked up 23 free hens, someone's 3yo layers which were being replaced. The minute I picked one up I could tell that there was something wrong with it- the legs were all rough and scaly. I took the hens anyway, and later determined that they must have scaly leg mites. It is still really cold here in Minnesota- we had snow a couple of days ago and expect more before the week is out, so I was holding off on treating them until we get a couple of warm days.

After feeding them in their yard yesterday I watched them for awhile and all of a sudden, I noticed that most of their legs look much improved from when I got them several weeks ago. They have dug some big holes n the dirt and have been spending a lot of time dust bathing in them. I wonder if that has been enough to kill off the mites. Right now only a few of them are noticeably scaly on casual examination.

Any thoughts, ideas, experiences to share?

[Bear Foot Farm]

One of the easiest ways to treat leg mites is to spray the legs AND roosts with cooking oil to smother them

The cold weather may be helping to keep them in check, but they still need to be treated.

It's probably easier to do the birds after dark when you can get them off the roost, and you can spray the roosts during the day.

Most any type of oil will work but cooking spray is easy to apply

You could apply used cooking oil to the roosts with a brush to save a little money