Stick Tight Fleas

[kaylee]

I did a search and didn't come up with any answers so I thought I would start a thread for stick tight fleas. The little brown buggers that stick to the chickens and have to be pulled off to get rid of them. They are a pain in the butt.

Some solutions I have been told are
Concrete the base of the chicken coop that will deter just about anything from surviving and given our hens all free range a concrete base is not such a bad idea. Another suggestion was builders plastic covered in mulch as an option.
The fleas lay their eggs at night while the hens are roosting and then they burrow down into the soil to hatch out so if there is no soil there is not survival.
Another option is ivermectin. You can use cattle grade or sheep grade. I used 1mm on our roosters and they were fine. They were covered in them and now they aren't. But if they weren't covered i would have used 5 drops on the roosters and 4 on the hens.
Ivermectin is way cheaper from the local farm store than it is buying it online from a fancy chicken shop.
Diatomaceous earth works great if there are only a few floating around and I have mixed this with Ash from our fireplace as well but once there is an infestation i felt the hens needed a little more help.

If you have found any other solutions please share.

I know some people use the frontline spray on their hens but i wouldn't use that it isn't safe for human consumption at all, whereas I know people who take ivermectin safely and it is used for human consumption.

 

[Mandy Onderwater]

Ooh... I hope @daveb or @JP 1983 might have some knowledge stored away in their heads regarding this.

From what I know, what you said sounds pretty solid/common. Some people love treating the nesting boxes too, just as a preventative measure. And regularly cleaning their areas helps a tonne too.

 

[kaylee]

Oh i also wanted to add that you can't use it on any type of collie or kelpies. They have a gene that means they can react to it.

 

[JP 1983]

Fleabane is a common weed that grows everywhere (Conyza/Erigeron species). Not sure if it will work, but you could try a leaf extract (say, 100 g of leaf, fresh or dried, extracted into 500 ml boiling water). Let the extract cool and put it in a spray bottle and spray on your affected chickens. I thought manually washing the chickens in the extract would be a little difficult, but perhaps you could pour a large quantity of it (4-8 L) into a bowl and set it up for the chickens to bathe in as they like. Diatomaceous earth as a dry bath (and scattered liberally around their roost/pen) for the birds to fling over themselves may also help.

 

[Grandmother Goose]

Giving them a spot to dust bathe (a dry spot, maybe in a dedicated container such as a kiddie pool or the like, filled with a mix of fine sand, wood ash, and diatomaceous earth) that the chooks can fluff themselves around in might not get rid of the fleas completely, but it'll dramatically cull the population.