Chicken Lice are extremely irritating for your chickens, and a severe infestation can kill small chicks. These lice are just big enough to be spotted with the naked eye as pale insects on the skin.

When you examine your chicken’s feathers, you might spot them crawling around the base of the feathers, and you may see clusters of their eggs on the feather stems. Lice love somewhere soft and warm, so also check under the wings and around the vent area.

Other symptoms include a dirty vent area, weight loss and reduced egg yield. White build up around the feather base near the vent can often be seen and in a bad case there could be a build up on feathers as well. The whiteness is lice eggs.

Chicken Lice Treatment

Lice should be treated using a specialist lice powder for chickens, and always apply it exactly as per the instructions. Apply the powder to EVERY bird in your flock, infected or not. Poultry lice can survive for up to 5 days without a host bird to feed on, and can reproduce in just 3 weeks.

What’s more their eggs are resistant to the powders, so you should brush them off and repeat the lice powder treatment in 7-10 days to kill off the next louse generation before they can breed again.

You must also clean out all bedding and dispose of it well away from the chicken coop. Then, properly clean and disinfect the chicken coop including under the perches, before filling it with fresh bedding, and returning your birds.

Chickens naturally rid themselves of lice by taking a dust bath. If your chickens do not have access to natural soil, provide them with a box filled with dry soil or sand. If your chickens do have a lice infestation, remember to replace the dust bath contents with fresh materials, and add a dash of lice powder just to be on the safe side.