I was unable to take pictures before because it is so difficult to do the treatments and take pictures as well.  But I really wanted to share what the birds’ legs are looking like.  So between my husband, two oldest kids, and myself, we were able to do the treatments and take pictures.

We have changed our plan of attack to include adding tea tree oil to the vaseline that we are putting on their legs.  I learned about this in Harvey Ussery’s book.  So every 2-3 days we catch the chickens, gently wash their legs with warm soapy water (a gentle soap), and spread the vaseline/tea tree oil combo on them with a toothbrush (gentle scrubbing is supposed to help loosen the scales).

I must say, our treatments are not showing results as fast as everything I’ve read.  They all say within 2 treatments you should see a big difference and the old yucky scales should be coming off with new healthy underneath.  As you will see in these pics, after 3 treatments ours are coming off, but there are still plenty on, and we are seeing very irritated skin and even a little bleeding.  We aren’t doing anything rough to cause this, we are being very gentle.  I don’t know why it is happening.

The roo’s legs.

The roo side view.

Gooping him up.

The youngest hen, the one in the worst condition right now.

Same girl, she’s the one that seems to be having the cracks and bleeding.

We will continue on with this treatment and see what happens.  Once they are clear of them I think our plan is to move them up into the big coop with the pullets and do a massive clean out of the small coop.  We are seriously considering using pesticide sprays inside the coop on the wood to be sure we completely exterminate this problem because we don’t want to move some of the young pullets down and have the same thing happen again.  But I don’t know – we really want to avoid pesticides if we can.

Our plan is to make the smaller coop our breeding pen with the roo and 4 selected females.  All the rest of the hens will live in the big coop.  But we really don’t want to move anyone into the small coop until we are sure that the mites are gone gone gone.