The "New Girls on the Block"!

The girls are here! It took us nearly two weeks longer than we had anticipated, but they are here and all settled in. We are VERY happy to have these lovely ladies as part of our flock!

We recently underwent a huge make-over in our coop which included the purchase of new laying hens, re-model of the coop itself and a major clean out/sanitization of the run and coop. Things did not go as planned after my unfortunate discovery of "mites" in our coop and the re-model of the coop that followed. The delays caused us to shut down our egg sales temporarily as we had no chickens to provide us with eggs for sale (we had originally planned a smooth transition from old to new, but as things quickly went sideways that did not happen).

I posted on the "Backyard Chickens" forum asking for suggestions on what we could do to get rid of our mite problem. I had been keeping an eye out for them, but unfortunately I was looking in the wrong place! The mites were localized on the roost and the plywood behind it. I believe they were "roost mites" that come off and on the birds at night. I was absolutely shocked when I found them! I believe the mites came with the second set of hens we got and over time slowly grew into a problem.

On the forum post I asked many questions and discussed my options with both novice and experienced chicken keepers. I posted my "attack" method with some of the successes and failures I came up against, if you are interested in reading it, click HERE. I will elaborate at a later time on here once I take proper pictures of the "after" as well as uploading the pictures of the process.

After two weeks worth of hard effort I am happy to say the girls came home on Saturday, July 9th to a clean remodeled hen house! We will keep vigilant in watching out for the mites (now I know what and where to look for) and I have put into practice some new methods (non-toxic) in keeping them at bay.

More posts to come!

~M~