PARASITES
Dealing with Parasites
There are a number of different parasites that will affect your hens and a number of different ways to treat them. The first is treating the hens themselvewith some form of poison and secondly treating the pen in the same way.
Below we show Lice, Worms, Ticks and Mites which can all be treated in similar ways but in themselves are quite different in the way they effect your hens. Lice are the most benign of them all mostly just causing annoyance to the hens and yourself.
Worms being picked up in nature readily and therefore needing regular control which can be achieved using a strong garlic water mix quarterly throughout the year, but if left unchecked will lead to decreased laying performance, poor general health and ultimately shorter lifespan.
Ticks are probable the worst thing to effect poultry as they generally cause death although an ammunity can be reached it they are introduced into a flock one at a time. They can be extreamly hard to get rid of due to the fact that they can lay dormint in the ground where they are hard to get at to eradicate.
The only good thing about ticks is that they are not as common as some other parasites whilst still a pain in the ass.
By far the worst in my book are the Red Mite which don't usually live on the hens but actually live in the pen close to the area that the hens roost, this is due to the fact that the red mites are nocturnal being most active at night when they climb onto the chickens and have a good feed before returning to they're lair like vampires.
What makes them the worst is the fact that they bread extreamly quickly when conditions are right meaning that you can go from having a couple to a magor infestation in a couple of weeks, in large numbers definatly bringing death to your hens.
To Treat your hens for all of the above parasites we recommend using Ivermectin as a sure bet, placing a dab under the feather on the back of the neck using it neet on a cotton tip or match stick, klick on link to see about Ivermectin
To treat your pen its not so easy, firstly keeping a clean pen is a great way of avoiding problems but is by no means a cure all. Most of the time these parasites are brought into the flock either by bying chickens from unreputable sources but more commonly by feral birds entering the pen like Sparrows, Indian Minors, Crows etc.
There are many treatments available but from my experience most arn't as effective as they are made out to be due to the fact that they are only contact treatments and don't stay around to be effective enough to get rid of most problems completely,
allowing some parasites to survive and start the process again. We recommend using a Carbaryl spray but give a precaution warning with that recommendation. Firstly follow all usage precautions on the packagingto avoid personal contact and secondly to only use it as needed, like all poisons overuse will only lead to pest ammunities as has already happened to many others that used to work. Carbaryl is a long lasting surface spray that will eradicate all pen dwelling parasites that we know of if used sparingly. It can be found in Bunnings in a small bottle and is a mite spray for fruit and nut trees, find a bescription in link.
