Of Mites and Men...

A few days ago, hubby was cleaning out the basement, getting it ready for a delivery from "Better Choice Foods". He had the chicken coop door open, as usual, and one little hen just kept following him around everywhere he went. After noticing that Kevin wasn't paying much attention to her, she started wandering over by the sand box, the kids, me, the deck, and finally laid down on the deck, right by the entryway. She was laying in the sun, eyes closed, and I really didn't think anything of it, just thought she was super people-friendly.

When Kevin was done ripping out the stairs in the basement, he picked up the hen and noticed the source of her "friendliness". She had MITES. YIKES! Not 10 minutes ago, my son was trying to pick this little thing up, while I tried un-successfully, to get him to leave the poor thing alone!
My first thought was: "Can the mites transfer to humans?!" but hubby assured me that the kids were safe.

So now what do we do??? Ahh..the power of the World Wide Web! If you can imagine it, you can Google it! hahaha Or as I have been doing lately...Swagbucks-It!

We found out that a special powder/dust is needed to treat the mites, and it's probably a good idea to treat ALL the chickens, to avoid the spread of these pesky critters.
Yesterday, Kevin drove to THREE different places to get this "special dust", which is probably something I could have found at PETCO/PetSmart! And spent about 2 hours, if not more, dusting all of 40-something chickens in the coop! LOL! They were NOT happy hens! But hopefully they will be mites-free!

The joys of trying to have a farm!