Chickens & Red Mite control my way of dealing with them.

Well summers here ... well sort of.
 I've kept poultry for many years and something that seems to trouble a lot of people is Red Mite.
I have developed/stumbled upon or whatever you want to call it a way that kept my hens pretty free of Red Mite.
So I thought I'd share it and hopefully help a few others to control them.
Things I used to do with my wooden coops:
Years back you could paint them with creosote which seemed to kill everything pretty completely but now the use or indeed the purchase of it it restricted.
I found a good alternative was to either waft a blow torch ( electric hot air gun or a plumbers gas thing ) over all the nooks & crannies, alternatively or afterwards ( please not before ! ) was to paint the whole inside with paraffin using a paint brush be liberal ! You see why I said not before the blowtorch !

Next I used to give my hens and their surroundings a good dust with a farmyard/horse powder called "Gold Label Get rid powder" comes in a red tin you can find it on ebay or just google.
Where the perches sat on their brackets I would sprinkle some permethrin based crawling insect powder, such as the stuff you buy from Wilko's. Being careful though not to get it near my hens or their food.

There you go my way of keeping the red mite pest at bay, I found by following those simple steps my hens used to stay relatively red mite free, and when they did rear their ugly head the use of the above methods used to rid them effectively within a few days, with most of the blighters dying the same day.

Hope it helps

Digging finished

Well I finished the majority of the digging on the plot before Christmas, plus I ordered a raspberry collection from J.Parkers these are the one's I bought, came very promptly within 10 days I was very surprised how fast they came, plus I got some free bulbs



I found a few more plants amongst the weeds at the top of the plot, so I moved them down to be with others. The found ones are those with the leaves still on. Hopefully they will survive the move.


I was given a 3/4 full roll of Mypex so I've used it for the paths along the long run of the plot, and around the raspberrys. Hoping it'll stop or slow down the weeds coming through from my neighbour, now just to stop the dreaded twitch( couch grass ) from coming under the slab path from my other neighbour a weed war on 2 fronts !, I buried some old laminate floor boards along the path edge that might slow them down we'll see. In the spring a good dose of Sodium Chlorate I have stored in the shed at home may help too.