After being away in Michigan with my son for ten days, I had to say goodbye to Leghorn, and hello to a flock covered in lice. Of course at first I had no idea what the heck was all over my hens bumms. I handle them frequently and always check my girls feathers and skin so it was a shock to see what looked like the end of q-tips at the base of the feathers.

    So after many web inquiries and reading for the last two days, I have discovered that my girls have the dreaded chicken body louse. So yes LICE..yuck! I have been researching and reading and devising the best course of action for my circumstances with a really old chicken coop, four original hens, and the newly added blue grey polish chicken and her two soul mates Pete and Repeat (still technically in the pullet stage, if my two pekin ducks have a pullet stage :). I added the three later after losing so many of my flock to a couple rough dog incidents. One dog was visiting my neighbor and the other was truly a starving lost dog whom found a meal in my favorite Rhode Island Red, rip Mohawk.


I was mildly comforted with the following concise summary of the chicken body louse,

Common Lice and Mites of Poultry - University of California ...

anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu/pdf/8162.pdf‎   2005

COMMON POULTRY LICE

 

[Lice are small (mostly between 1 and 6 mm [0.04 to 0.24 in] long), wingless, straw-

colored insects with a somewhat flattened appearance and in most cases an elongated

abdomen (the hindmost body segment). All poultry lice have chewing mouthparts

and feed on dry skin scales, scab tissue, and feather parts. They also feed on blood

when the host bird’s skin or feather quills are punctured. Lice are commonly found

on both the skin and feathers and can move from one bird to another when birds are

kept in close contact. The louse’s eggs

(nits)

usually are attached to the feathers.

Lice are ectoparasites and spend their entire life on an animal host. Most louse

species are host specific, meaning that they can feed on only one or a few closely

related species of animal hosts. Poultry lice cannot survive on humans or on our non-

bird domestic pets. In fact, a poultry louse generally completes its entire life cycle

from egg to adult on a single bird, and will die within a few days to a week if separat-

ed from a host. The number of lice on poultry tend to be greatest during the autumn

and winter.

Poultry lice are not known to transmit any avian pathogens, although some wild

bird lice are suspected of transmitting pathogens to their hosts. The presence of lice

frequently accompanies poor poultry health that is attributable to other causes, and is

especially harmful to young birds where high numbers of lice may cause sleep disrup-

tion. Effective self-grooming of poultry is an important means of reducing lice. Louse

populations are generally higher on birds with injured beaks or on those that have

had their beaks trimmed. Molting greatly reduces louse populations, and one effective

way to address a severe louse problem is to induce molting and then rapidly remove

nit-laden feathers from the poultry facility.

The two most common louse species affecting California poultry are the chicken

body louse

(Menacanthus stramineus)

and the shaft louse

(Menapon gallinae).

Adult

chicken body lice measure 3 to 3.5 mm (0.12 to 0.14 in) long while adult shaft lice

are about 2 mm (0.08 in) long. Adult chicken body lice are most prevalent around

the sparsely feathered vent, breast, and thigh regions. Eggs of the chicken body louse

are cemented in clusters to the base of feathers, especially around the vent.]

 

******BINGO******  We have a winner, this describes what I have seen on my hens.

 

I decided to dust them with 5% Sevin mixed with D.E. food grade. I put the dusting powder in a very large old pillow case and added my girls one by one. They were dusted heavily, maybe I got a little excited and over did it. I hope I didn't hurt my girls. I will need to repeat this every seven days for a total of three dusting's. I hope this will put an end to the scary brown creature scurrying around on my hen's vents.

I will update my blog with the results....first applicaton was July 18, 2013.