Not too long ago, a family friend found lice on her chickens and didn’t know how to treat them. I wanted to help, so I took her to the local vet to get some information on chicken lice. When you keep chickens, lice and mites are par for the course, and you must know the signs of infestation. It made us wonder how to treat the lice in chickens and how to prevent them in the future.
Chickens with lice can be treated by moving your chickens out of their coop to slow down their spread and sanitize the coop. Lice are parasites that live on the chicken’s skin and feathers. Treat the chickens using a powder (like garden or poultry dust) or a spray solution to eliminate the lice.
When we left the vet’s office, we were confident we had all the information to treat my friend’s chickens against lice. We knew we had to act because lice spread quickly, and they can infect an entire flock really fast. Some may even die if the infestation is bad enough. Here is the information we gathered.
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How To Treat Chickens Lice
Chickens are prone to louse infestation, especially around the vent area. Chicken lice are small, flat insects with six legs. Chicken lice can only live on chickens, so there is no threat that they might spread to other animals or humans as they would die should they feed on anything but chickens.
They tend to lay eggs at the bottom of a chicken’s feathers, and the adult lice will live directly on the skin of the chicken. They don’t have a long life cycle, so they are easier to treat, but you need to take action immediately when you suspect your chickens have lice or your entire flock is at risk. The treatment and medication will depend on how bad the infestation of the flock is.
We will discuss the prevention methods later in the post, but in the next section, we will look at how to treat chicken lice.
Remove The Chickens From Their Coop
As soon as you find one or more of your chickens have lice, you must remove the chickens to another part of the property to eliminate the lice in the coop. Lice primarily live on chickens, but between feedings, they do dwell around the coop. Here is how you clean the coop to eliminate the lice that are present;
Step 1
Remove all the bedding in the coop and flooring in the run (if you don’t have free-range chickens), put it in a bag, and burn it safely. It will ensure the coop and chickens are not reinfested. Before adding fresh bedding, you have to clean the coop and run.
Step 2
Put gloves and gumboots on to protect your skin from hot water. Spray the coop down using a high-pressure hose, then use boiling water in and around the joints and cracks of the coop and the joints of the run’s fence.
Step 3
Wash thoroughly with dehydrated lime and wait until the coop is dry. Then dust the entire coop and run with Pestene powder to destroy any lice or eggs that might have survived.
Step 4
Add fresh bedding; after you are done, you can treat the chickens and let them back into their coop and run. You must re-dust the coop with Pestene after seven days to ensure no eggs survived and hatched in that time. Persistence is key to eliminating the lice for good.
Use Dust Powder To Treat Chicken Lice
One of the most effective chicken louse treatments is to use a garden and poultry powder. It’s a powder you put on the chickens to kill the lice without harming the chicken. Ensure the poultry powder you use contains Permethrin, as it is the ingredient that destroys the lice.
You must use gloves and rub the powder into the skin of the chicken as it needs to have direct contact with the infected skin to be effective. You will need to dust all the chickens to ensure the spread stops. You will need to wait seven days and reapply the dust to all the chickens to kill the newly hatched eggs as the insecticide is ineffective against the eggs of the lice.
Provide Iron Supplements To The Chickens
To help your chickens get better quicker, you must give them an iron supplement to replace the depleted red blood cells. You can feed them treats of pumpkin seeds, spinach, and peas to help get them back to full health.
How To Prevent Chicken Lice In Future
If you have dealt with a lice problem in the past, you will know it’s better to prevent a lice problem from happening than to treat a lice infestation when it pops up. Here are a few ways to prevent chicken lice.
- You must monitor your flock and do regular checkups to catch a lice problem early,
- It’s important to put the new members in quarantine for at least 30 days before introducing them to the flock. That way, you can treat any lice before the lice can spread to others.
- Create a chicken dust bath using diatomaceous earth and play sand. The chickens will roll in it, and it can help prevent lice from getting onto the chickens in the first place.
- Add a fence around the coop to ensure rats and other wildlife won’t get into close contact with the chickens and thus prevent the lice from spreading to the chickens.
- If you find that one chicken has lice, you should treat all the chickens to ensure you get all the eggs and adult lice.
- You must regularly clean the coop and change the chicken coop’s bedding and the bedding in the nesting box to eliminate any lice or eggs.
Conclusion
When you have chickens, you will need to deal with a lice problem at one time or another. You must monitor your chickens, treat the chickens and clean the coop thoroughly. Make sure to quarantine any newbies before introducing them to the flock. If you find you have a lice issue, you need to act immediately and treat the chickens and the coop, repeating the treatment after seven days.
