Red mites are blood sucking ectoparasites that infest and feed on chickens and turkeys. They invade at any time but especially during the warmer summer months.

 

The life cycle of a red mite is generally composed of four active stages: egg, larva, nymph, and adult. After being laid, the mite larvae hatch within 2-3 days and are fully grown adults within 7 days and an adult red mite can live for 8 months without a feed. After mating, female mites lay 4–8 eggs per day over a period of three days, taking a blood meal between each batch.

 

Red mite infestations are a welfare issue for both commercial and backyard chickens. The mites are active at night and affect sleeping, appetite, activity and productivity.

 

Red mites are nocturnal, they will hide in cracks and crevices of your chicken coop during the day and emerge at night to crawl up the bird’s legs, through the feathers and then take a feed of blood. After they have had their fill, they return to their hiding places to digest the blood meal and breed.

​

A good indication of red mites is if your chickens are reluctant to go to roost at night. Red mites are visible to the naked eye and challenging to spot in low volume. But if you have a population explosion, they become difficult to miss.

 

During the day they won’t be around, but you can look where your birds roost at night and inspect their perch ends for red mite excreta, which is like greyish cigarette ash in appearance. You can also check for smears of blood on perch (using absorbent paper) and on the bodies of your chickens.

​

At night with a flashlight, you will be able to see them crawling around the perch and coming out of their daytime hiding places.

​

A neat trick you can use is to secure some flypaper (or white double-sided tape) on the bird’s perch, also near cracks and joints where mites can hide during daylight hours. This will also show you where to focus the main thrust of your attention when it comes to clearing them from the coop.

 

Another trick that you can use to check if you coop has red mite is using a short piece of doweling. Just under or alongside where the birds stand on their perch, drill a hole about 1” deep in the chicken’s perch to a size that will give the doweling loose push fit, cut a 3” piece of the dowel and insert the dowel into the hole. The mites will shelter in the gap around the dowel during the day, so each week as part of your prevention routing just pull out the dowel during the day and look for red mites.